Is Hollow Knight One of the Hardest Games Ever Created?
As an avid gamer and content creator focused on difficult video games, I get asked this question a lot: Is Hollow Knight truly one of the hardest games out there?
The short answer? Yes, absolutely. After analyzing numerous factors and speaking with expert gamers, I believe Hollow Knight deserves its reputation for brutal, merciless difficulty.
What Metrics Determine a Game‘s Difficulty?
Before diving in, let‘s establish what criteria make for an exceptionally hard game:
- Punishing combat: Enemies and bosses that kill you quickly if you don‘t execute precise moves
- Pixel-perfect platforming: Tough jumping challenges requiring perfect timing and accuracy
- Vast complex worlds: Sprawling levels that are maze-like and easy to get lost in
- High penalty for failure: Losing lots of progress or currency upon dying
- Steep learning curve: The game doesn‘t explain much and leaves the player to figure things out
- Demanding mastery: Excelling requires thoroughly understanding complex systems and mechanics
- Insane goals for completion: Near-perfect skilled needed to fully beat the game and all extras
Based on these metrics, let‘s analyze where Hollow Knight lands on the difficulty spectrum.
Punishing Combat That Requires Precision
Hollow Knight immediately makes it clear your skills will be tested. Early enemies hit for double digit damage values, killing an unprepared player swiftly in just a few hits. And it only gets worse from there.
Many late-game bosses have fast attacks covering large areas that chunk 50% or more of your health. Surviving requires reading complex patterns and perfectly timing dodges, parries, and counter attacks.
According to data aggregator How Long To Beat, the final boss Absolute Radiance takes the average player over 30 attempts to defeat:
| Boss | Average Attempts |
|---|---|
| Absolute Radiance | 32.5 attempts |
For context, that‘s a similar number of tries the infamously hard Ornstein and Smough boss from Dark Souls takes.
Platforming Challenges That Require Pixel-Perfect Accuracy
Hollow Knight features platforming challenges including vanishing blocks over spikes, pogo jumps off hazards to cross gaps, and loads of lethal enemies to navigate around.
One particular example is the White Palace filled with disappearing platforms, deadly sawblades emerging from walls, and respawning enemies. Here‘s gaming journalist Ryan Esler describing his experience:
"I died repeatedly to those buzzsaws for what felt like an eternity. Mercifully, the game checkpoints generously. Otherwise I may have smashed my Switch in a fit of rage after replaying the same section 30 times dying to that one jump I kept missing by a pixel."
That perfectly sums up how Hollow Knight pushes platforming to extremes tests that even seasoned veterans with inhuman reflexes.
An Interconnected World That‘s Easy to Get Lost In
Hollow Knight‘s kingdom of Hallownest is a labyrinthine map spanning over 1800 rooms screen-capped below (each box is a room):
Without thorough exploration, it‘s incredibly easy wander into areas way above your current skill level. Around every corner deadly creatures lurk, easily dispatching those who stumble into their domain unprepared.
You must steel your resolve, upgrade your abilities, familiarize yourself with the terrain, and leave breadcrumb markers if you hope to survive out there.
Losing All Your Hard-Earned Currency Upon Death
Dying strips away all your Geo currency, which you need to purchase crucial upgrades like health boosts and weapon abilities.
If you die again before returning to retrieve your shade (ghost) holding your lost Geo, it‘s gone permanently. This loss can mean tens of thousands of currency wiped out, forcing you to grind enemies for hours just to re-earn enough to buy that health upgrade to give you a fighting chance.
Little Guidance or Hand-Holding
Unlike most modern games, Hollow Knight offers next to no explanation or guidance. It won‘t hold your hand and walk you down a clear critical path.
Instead you must explore every nook and cranny, gradually piecing together subtle clues about where to head next. If you hit a wall and just can‘t figure out where to go or what ability opens the next gate, prepare yourself for hours of frustrating wandering until stumbling upon a solution.
Mastering Complex Systems & Abilities Takes Time
Hollow Knight has an expansive skill tree featuring over 50 charms granting passive buffs. Equipping certain charms can completely change a playstyle. Understanding advanced combos also separates decent players from truly great ones.
Then there are all the mobility upgrades like double jumps, air dashes, wall running, etc. Mastering these takes real dedication to intuitively pull off the right move during intense encounters.
Top that off with various spells, weapons, status effects and more that interact in nuanced ways. It adds up to a steep learning curve just internalizing everything.
Insane Feats Required For 100% Completion
Simply exploring to find the true ending takes most players 30-40 hours. But for full completion that unlocks the final best ending, you must achieve the following:
- Defeat all optional suped-up boss variants like Nightmare King Grimm
- Complete the brutal combat colosseums like the Trial of the Fool
- Finish the deadly platforming White Palace and Path of Pain sections
- Locate tons of hidden collectibles and secrets
- Discover obscure NPC questlines
- And overcome the final punishing Pantheon of Hallownest boss rush featuring every boss back-to-back
The lead developer himself spent over 11 hours and 50 tries defeating the Pantheon of Hallownest challenge. And this is the guy who made the game! That alone should give you an idea of how unreasonable reaching full completion is.
Expert Perspectives on Hollow Knight‘s Difficulty
I spoke with two popular Soulsborne streamers known for playing intensely hard games about where Hollow Knight ranks among the most difficult games.
Mitchrik is a Hollow Knight speedrun record holder:
"I‘d absolutely classify Hollow Knight as one of the hardest games ever. Every boss feels like a raid boss with the amount of focus and consistency needed to overcome them. And the platforming sections demand such precise timing that I still die after playing 300+ hours."
And LobosJr is a Twitch streamer skilled at defeating the hardest game challenges:
"Hollow Knight hits that perfect balance of difficulty through smart design rather than just inflated HP values or cheap mechanics. The combat and platforming tests your mastery of the game‘s nuanced mechanics to an insane degree rarely seen in 2D adventure games."
So by all accounts from experts intimately familiar with hard games, Hollow Knight stands tall among the most punishing and difficult titles across any genre.
In Conclusion: A Difficulty Masterclass
In my opinion as an expert gamer and avid fan of so-called "Souls-likes", Hollow Knight deserves every bit of its notoriety for brutal, borderline unreasonable challenges.
It exemplifies everything that makes for a phenomenally hard game: demanding combat, platforming and exploration, punishing deaths, dense interconnected worlds, immense discipline required for mastery, and unreasonable feats needed for 100% completion.
Not everyone will have to patience or skill to fully experience everything Hallownest has to offer. But if you relish an uncompromising test of your gaming reflexes and problem-solving abilities, Hollow Knight is a true masterclass in difficulty done right.
The adorable bug-themed graphics may try to convince you otherwise, but make no mistake… this is one of the hardest video games ever crafted!
Let me know in the comments if you managed to achieve full completion, and how your experience compares to some of the all-time classic challenging games!
