It’s Monday morning, and that can only mean one thing. Yup, time to work on that get-rich-quick scheme you’ve been cooking up talk about the games you’ve been playing over the last seven days.
I’ll kick us off with…Hollow Knight
Yeah, this is literally the only game I’ve played all week. It’s absolutely dominating my free time in a way that very few games do and every single time I think about taking an evening off it draws me back in. I’m absolutely loving it.
That said, I’m starting to wonder if I have the sheer ability to get through the game. I’m not all that good at the combat, and unlike games like Elden Ring or Sekiro there’s only so much I can do to mitigate my own failings by increasing my health gauge or improving at one specific part of combat. In short, I’ve got to git gud.
I absolutely loved Hollow Knight, it was a much needed proof to me that video games can still be fun and suck me in.
I never played any souls game before it for more than a few minutes at a friends place and in the mid game I too thought that I would not be able to finish it. But I’d say I got quite good at it by just playing the way I wanted to and exploring. Yes, I did have to leave some bosses and come back later, but it always felt doable and never unfair. Granted, I did not complete the whole 112% of the game, but that’s something that I liked about it, it felt like I could do all that I wanted, felt satisfied with and leave.
Anyway, my point is, don’t worry about the difficulty too much, I think the game is balanced in such a way, where there are always things to do at your skill level.
Also, if you don’t feel like you are getting better at it and just getting better gear, I’d recommend starting a new temporary save and seeing how far you can get to without dying. I cannot describe how much this surprised me, how all the patterns I memorized stayed with me and how much I could do with minimal upgrades.
I beat the Hornet (second fight) a few years ago. It was a case of just… learning her move set and putting down a good run, as is usually the case with these games. I do think her fight was ever so slightly unfair though, which grates with me because I feel like these ultra hard games/fights should be incredibly fair (but punishingly difficult).
Still. Onwards we go.
I’ve been playing CrossCode, an indie action RPG that’s basically a love letter to 2D retro games.
I’ve found it incredibly engaging, almost addictive. I’ll sit down to play, and multiple hours will pass in what feels like no time at all. There are parts where the difficulty gets high enough to become genuinely frustrating (mostly in the puzzles, not the combat), but the game feels so good to play that I’ve never been tempted to quit. It does an incredible job of evoking the feeling of a retro game without compromising on modern quality-of-life features or polish.
I’ve found lately that polish is the single thing that most makes a game stand out in my mind, and perhaps surprisingly, some of the most polished experiences I’ve had have been with indie games. Hollow Knight was one of them, and from what I’ve seen so far, I’d rank CrossCode in the same league. Very excited to see how the story ends, and check out the DLC.
