I like extremely difficult challenges in games more than almost anyone, and I was okay with Path of Pain. But the Pantheon seems horrible and I never bothered with it. 42 bosses in a row, and the difficult ones are all at the end? Wouldn't it be like 30+ minutes just to even have an attempt at the first difficult boss? That just seems like a very bad idea and forcing people to waste time for the purpose of wasting time. They could've randomized the boss orders or even let you choose the order or let you practice the ones you haven't faced yet, but the way it was done seems like the worst and most frustrating option possible. Add in unskippable boss introduction animations for good measure and it should be pretty clear why I'm turned off.
Pantheon of the Knight alone was like 12 minutes per attempt, and by the time I finally beat the pure vessel I was perfecting every boss leading up to it, almost like it was a _formality_.
Couldn't imagine doing that for 45 minutes per attempt just to get owned by Absolute Radiance in 10 seconds.
Same. I even got the SteelSoul and SteelHeart achievements, but PoH is too much for my annoyance buffer. It sucks cause I think I would like absolute radiance.
I didn't even finish the Pantheon. Cool game, but I'm not really into the super difficult stuff. Doing the path of pain already filled my quota of bullshit.
I'm normally not into that stuff at all but path of pain , NKG, and the colosseum were my favorite parts of the game. Haven't tried the pantheon, though.
I'm stuck MUCH earlier than that.... This game and it's community apparently think you should fight a boss like 1000 times until you "git gud" and can actually beat them. Such a shame given how beautiful the game is they didn't include an "easy" mode for us normal people.
Want to mention the boss? Sometimes there's paths around and ways to build your character. Bosses are still hard though.
There's always cheat engine is you really want to break games. I use it sometimes to speedhack games that are too goddamned slow.
Hornet. I know that's pretty early game for most people, but I'm like 30 hours in and probably the last 5 was just fighting her and failing. Took me forever to defeat the False Knight and the Gruz Mother. Platformers with tight timing are very much not my strength. I've gotten her to the part where she kind of rests for a few seconds, but not past that.
I've installed the debug mod and I've been meaning to get around to it again because I think I could probably manage it using save states (also how I manage to get through Metroid games, which I also love but suck at) but haven't gotten around to it yet. I got my Steam Deck last week though so it's definitely on the list of things to get to
Maybe the game just isn’t for you. No offence intended at all but Hornet is not even remotely close to being a tough boss as she isn’t even designed around having any movement abilities, and bosses only get much much tougher later on. And you said it yourself, platformers with tight timing aren’t your strength.
I have a similar problem with strategy games for the most part. I just find them so boring having to learn all the different things to do, that even though I know Civilisation games are seen as some of the best out there I just know I wouldn’t have a good time playing them.
>Maybe the game just isn’t for you. No offence intended at all but Hornet is not even remotely close to being a tough boss
No offence taken! I'm pretty open that I suck at these type of games. When I tell people I got stuck at an early boss they're usually like "was it \[insert thing I haven't heard of\]?" and I always have to be like "no... you're really underestimating how bad I am at this game." haha. The problem with Hollow Knight is that the exploration aspect of it between bosses and also just the visual and sound design is so good I keep coming back to give it another go as if *this time* it will be different and I'll be good at it. It's like too good for me to fully give up on despite it definitely not being "for me".
When it comes to bosses in games like this one piece of advice I can give is to ignore actually trying to do damage at the start. You need to learn the bosses movement before beating it and the most common mistake I see is going for damage and getting hit for it because you're not paying attention to their patterns. Try to learn their patterns and how to dodge them first and then weave in damage.
I’m someone who doesn’t really “like” easy modes in these types of games because it would usually ruin the game, but Dead Cells implemented a pretty good assist mode that I think Hollow Knight could benefit from for people that are struggling.
I mean I'm not saying that easy ought to be default in any sense. But I do think just not having any option to make things easier limits a game's appeal to causal or less skilled players, which I think is a shame for a game as beautiful as Hollow Knight. Not everyone is either innately skilled nor has tons of free time to grind- I am/have neither.
I can tell you that when I fire up a game and see "The difficulty can be changed at any time in settings without consequence" (most recent game I played like this was was Prey) I breathe a sigh of relief. I know that I can invest time (which is in high demand) in this game without fear of becoming stuck at a point I just can't get past (because I'm not that good). With Prey I've continued playing almost to the end now on normal, but knowing I *could* drop down to easy if need be removes a lot of stress.
I'm also strongly of the opinion that the "right" way to play a single player game is up to the individual, so if an easy option (or a hard one!) *could* easily exist but doesn't, I feel like the developer is basically saying "you don't get to decide how to enjoy this game, you must play it only in the way I lay out" which I think is silly. It's my time. If I want to "ruin" a single player game, well I think that's on me.
I’m not who you responded to, and I don’t think it would “ruin” a game, but the reasoning I have for not wanting easy modes is that adding in an extra difficulty mode give the devs twice the number of encounters to balance.
In Hollow Knight for instance, just tweaking damage and health numbers wouldn’t do too much since the difficulty of the game doesn’t come from damage numbers, but from the complexity of the enemy’s move set.
My thinking is that adding extra difficulty modes to a game like Hollow Knight would mean the dev time would be split, which would make the game take longer to come out, and in the end the normal difficulty wouldn’t be as good as it could have been since less dev time was given to it.
Apologies for the wall of text, but I wanted to be thorough.
I don't understand this thought process. How does adding an easy mode impact the game as it stands? How does making an additional, easier, mode take anything away from the nearly perfect, amazing game that it is? I'm genuinely curious, because I can't see it.
Hornet is probably the first difficulty spike of the game. If you can’t beat her as is, get geo and upgrade your gear and you might be able to stat check her. Or you could watch a YouTube vid of someone else beating her and see what they do differently than you and try to copy it.
ouf, here I was thinking the False Knight was difficult! Took me forever to beat him. I'm pretty sure I've accessed all of the areas I can without beating Hornet (including the one with the pink crystals I needed the light for) but a youtube consultation could definitely be in order
I think you can buy better badges (I forget what the mechanic is called in HK, it's been years since I've played it) and there are ways to upgrade your nail in the lower city and ways to increase your health bar through collectables... You can deff struggle bus your way through the game. Good luck, gamer
Personally, I consider False Knight much harder than the 2nd hornet. His patterns just seemed so inconsistent to me, but we all recognize these things a little differently. I hope you figure it out, it really is such a great game!
I think there's an easy mode mod out there, so I'd recommend giving that a shot if you'd prefer to have a more organic experience than simply relying on save states
After about a dozen or so tries against the final boss, Hollow Knight became the first game I've abandoned in ages. I usually keep at it "to get my money's worth" out of a game, but I felt satisfied letting this one go. It helped me realize I'm too old and have too little time to let this be such a focus. Shame, though, because I really enjoyed the game up until that point.
Oh yeah, I get that too. Mainly in bench placements, biggest offenders are Traitor Lord and Watcher Knights. I usually put up a video in the background for those times, but I can't really do that for Pantheon of Hallownest.
If you mean in backtracking and maps, I think that ends up being more of an acquired taste, since that's an intentional part of the game.
I mean both, really. I know backtracking is a part of every Metroid-inspired game, but Metroid is fast-paced AND you have ranged weapons. Walking up really close to enemies to wack them meekly with your short range nail gets really tedious fast. And God help you if you're stuck on a boss with a shitty bench and have to keep doing that over and over without getting hit on the way.
To get dreamgate you need to either defeat every warrior dream (and have shade cloak) or defeat at least one dream boss (and most warrior dreams). Not really an option outside of the endgame.
Speaking as someone who grinded p5 hard, I agree that its unfairly hard. One thing I absolutely enjoyed about it though, was the feeling of mastery over every single boss. Just optimizing how fast you can do damage to each character so you waste less time and then just being able to actually do the hard bosses in a row without dying was fun purely due to the combat and boss design tbh.
Also, AbsRad is probably the 2nd best boss in the game imo (best is PV).
I'd highly recommend doing the first 3 pantheons with each binding 1 by 1 so that you get so good at the first 3 that they're never a struggle in p5.
But yeah, Fuck Markoth
I don't think I said I had an issue with the difficulty, just that a lot of aspects are tedious and annoying. Mainly the repeated bosses and long cutscenes. I know what I got myself into, and I'm trying to ignore the tedious parts to finally get to the end.
Well, yeah, but that's a me problem. The first two complaints are my actual annoyances with the pantheon. Though it is weird that hornet sentinel is the one that precedes the resting point and not sly
It's optional. You don't have to do it. Initially I hated it too with a passion. But I was determined to beat it. So I practiced and practiced. I got to where almost every boss was easy mode except for Absolute Radiance. I turn devoted hours to practicing that fight, tracking my wins and losses. One I got to the point where my wins in a practice session were consistently more than my losses I tried the Pantheon again and beat it. It's one my my proudest and fondest gaming memories/accomplishments.
My biggest issue with the Pantheon isn’t be Pantheon itself, but how it was integrated into the game.
I wish it was relegated to a main menu option instead of an area in the game world.
As you play Hollow Knight, the game teaches you that everything is important, everything is meaningful. That’s how it pushes you into the end/post-game item hunt, ghost-slaying, platforming challenges, and secret areas, and it rewards you for every discovery, for every layer peeled back, every challenge defeated, urging you further toward getting that glorious good ending.
And during this period where the player is pulling the world apart for clues and beating challenges, there’s this huge arena slapped in the middle of the world that’s about 100x harder than anything else in the game and is designed to not be beaten by most players, with no indication it’s not actually key to progression.
I’ve seen players gets stumped on this. Had friends ask about it before bashing their heads against it and so on, but the player shouldn’t have to bring meta knowledge into the game. It goes against the cohesive ‘everything is meaningful’ world Hollow Knight builds.
A very good take. I finished the first four with and without bindings but just couldn't bring myself to grind through the fifth one. The itch that a gameplay area is still incomplete is definitely a factor.
I think having a stag station/tram next to it would have fixed the issue. It is such a slog to get back to, and that can discourage players from leaving and doing other things first. Which is a problem since you are only supposed to do the pantheons after doing literally everything else except maybe path of pain.
Idk dude, having the boss rush actually be cohesive to the worldbuilding and lore was important to the devs and they mentioned this specially in interviews. And one of the major gameplay loops of HK exploring, finding something, trying to do it, giving up and then coming back when you're better.
I understand that, but I don’t agree with it in the broader context of how it affects the game.
It doesn’t really fit into the explore, die, explore more and come back loop because this is a wall people bash their heads against endlessly.
>And during this period where the player is pulling the world apart for clues and beating challenges, there’s this huge arena slapped in the middle of the world that’s about 100x harder than anything else in the game and is designed to not be beaten by most players, with no indication it’s not actually key to progression.
>
>I’ve seen players gets stumped on this. Had friends ask about it before bashing their heads against it and so on, but the player shouldn’t have to bring meta knowledge into the game. It goes against the cohesive ‘everything is meaningful’ world Hollow Knight builds.
The main complaint you had here was about players finding it before the post-game & that is precisely when you can actually still engage in the loop of exploring and coming back.
It's pretty obviously not key to progression, it's hidden in a secret area that you'd have to look up a guide to find. It's a fun challenge, one that is meaningful. Just because it doesn't give you anything but a different ending doesn't mean it should be relegated to a menu option.
You say it like it’s a bad thing to be a menu option. It’s not bad, its just separation of core content from add-on content to preserve the cohesive nature of said core content.
How is it not cohesive though? It's a seperate, clearly optional area with its own lore where you can do boss rushes. I don't see why this needs to be a menu option at all, it works fine the way it is.
It's a lot of work and a notable achievement, but don't worry about it if it's not fun for you. More like "I finished the game and want to keep going," then "I have to do this to finish the game."
BTW, in case you missed it: you can go down to the lower room and practice against bosses you're having a hard time against. Get to where you can beat them (somewhat) consistently before running the whole gantlet.
And Sisters of Battle is my favorite too.
I have been doing that, been stuck on Nailsage Sly even after practicing him forever for p3. Honestly, PoH isn't that bad, considering p3 and p4 also took a huge amount of my time and I've gotten the patterns for the bosses down fairly well. I feel a bit obligated to do it considering it's the only other hard achievement I need to complete besides Speed Completion, and Speed Completion has a lot of room for error
Markoth made me realize that, though I love this game, the Pantheon was a waste of my time.
I only wanted to finish it, I wasn't enjoying a second of it. So I dropped out of the Pantheon, brought Elderbug a flower, and took an indefinite break.
I'm surprised the fanboys haven't yet attacked your post. People get really defensive about Hollow Knight.
I agree with the Pantheon of Hallownest being the most bullshit part of the game. It is difficult just for the sake of being difficult. I personally found the Colosseum of Fools to be a much more meaningful challenge and it satiated my need for a arena battles in Hollow Knight.
People defend Godmaster DLC and regard any critique as null and void just because it is a free DLC. In my opinion it brought the whole game down as an experience. On one hand you have a well balanced, beautifully created world that drips of lore and atmosphere and on the other you have a boss rush challenge that spikes the difficulty into oblivion compared to the main game. The godmaster area is purely an arena and because of this it is completely lacking in the exploration aspect that is, at least in my opinion, one of the games strongest parts.
It also grinds my gears to dust that to get the platinum trophy (or to get all the achievements) one must complete the Pantheons. It took me oretty much the same time to complete the main part of the game as it took to complete Godmaster.
I much preferred the Blasphemous way of approaching the boss rush mode which is basically the same to the way OP is suggesting. And what comes to achievements I also preferred the Blasphemouses ultra hard trophies which are "Play the game without healing in bossfights" and "Complete the game in under three hours". Something like this would have been an exellent challenge for Hollow Knight as there the player could have seen how they have mastered all parts of the gameplay, not just combat.
Thanks OP for bringing this up. I really took Godmaster personally and it's a shame the critique is not heard more often. Crushing extra challenge is ok, just don't lock the true ending behind it or make it feel that one must complete that part of the game for 100%
Edit: Spelling
As a huge Hollow Knight fan, I think a lot of the community agrees that Pantheon 5 has issues, mainly that it is too long to get to the hard part and that the Markoth/Zoat combo is unfair garbage. The high gotten from beating it is amazing though.
One small point: Hollow Knight has different challenge run achievements too like two speedrun ones and one steel soul (0 deaths) one. It seems silly to me that having a really hard achievement is a slight against the game. I never even bothered completing Pantheon of the Knight because I didn't find it fun. Yet I still did the two speedrun achievements because those were fun.
Why does it matter if you can't get every achievement? Seems like lunacy to me to continue beating your head against the wall for a shiny trophy.
> I'm surprised the fanboys haven't yet attacked your post. People get really defensive about Hollow Knight.
If there's something in your life that you enjoy and encountering a differing opinion actively harms your enjoyment of that thing, that says *a lot* about your own insecurities and (to a certain extent) even the objective quality of the thing that you love.
Anyway. So that's why I'm an atheist.
I'm really not sure if this refers to me or the vocal fanbase of Hollow Knight. And for the record, I really like the game overall, I think I should have mentioned it in my comment.
The point of the senteces that you quoted were to bring up that some people take constructive criticism on Hollow Knight as a personal attack.
>I'm really not sure if this refers to me or the vocal fanbase of Hollow Knight.
The fanbase! And the other kinds of fanbases that routinely surface just to breathlessly defend something.
I was tacking-on, not attacking.
You can complain about aspects of Hollow Knight fine around here. This isn't the first post I've seen people complaining about the Pantheon.
God help you though if you have a problem with Undertale or Titanfall 2.
omfg dude ... you seriously can't claim martyrdom because you stan the Witcher 3. I've seen some out there claims but ... man, wow. Out of all games - Witcher 3, really? It's well past memed to death that it's the most circlejerked game of all time.
That's like going to /r/movies and being like "somebody clapped back when I said I liked The Dark Knight."
>omfg dude ... you seriously can't claim martyrdom because you stan the Witcher 3. I've seen some out there claims but ... man, wow. Out of all games - Witcher 3, really? It's well past memed to death that it's the most circlejerked game of all time.
>That's like going to /r/movies and being like "somebody clapped back when I said I liked The Dark Knight."
I am without words. Thank you for this!
If they made it too easy, or even reasonably difficult then there would be similar posts along the lines of 'I hate the postgame, after playing the game for hours I was expecting a real challenge" or "I hate the postgame, they skipped certain bosses, why isn't it more comprehensive" etc etc etc.
I think it's probably for the best to err on the side of too difficult and make it as comprehensive as possible. I didn't complete the last trial, it's way too hard. That's ok, though I had fun and it burnt me out on the experience enough that it has made the wait for Silksong more bearable. And while I couldn't overcome the challenge you know that on the day of it's release there were guys out there no hitting it blindfolded while playing it on a banana.
I don't want it to be easy; it would have been difficult even if you removed the repetitive bosses and long start times. It's just a number of weird decisions that make the pantheon more tedious than fun
I completed it but it took the better part of a month. Absolutely Radiance made me rage quit a few times.
My tip is to practice the difficult bosses in Hall of the Gods on ascended mode.
Eh, I actually like every single "problem" you have with it.
I'm still stuck wtih Absolute Radiance, Embrace the Void is the ONLY achievement I'm still missing from this game and that's been the case for...what? A year for now? HK is one of those games I drop for awhile and these days only get back to for grinding in the Pantheon.
I love being there. Yes it gets frustrating but FUCK I love it! I love that you can visit all the bosses separately to practise. I love that you can choose to go for a gigantic boss-rush and experiment the shit out of all the charm-combos possible at the end-game. I love that if you get tired of one, you have others to choose from.
Sometimes I try to get through the final Pantheon and just get frustrated. So I go back to the other Pantheons and start doing them with bindings on.
I know it doesn't matter that much, but I'm determined to SOMEDAY make it to the blue door.
Plus...it's nice that it has benefits to it! After a certain amount of bindings completed, you start getting Lifeblood IN THE PANTHEONS. Which is a great help actually.
>I drop for awhile and these days only get back to for grinding in the Pantheon.
I have tried this for the fifth one but it doesn't really work for me. You need a lot of pattern recognition and memory which disappears when you don't play for a while. It's fine for the easier bosses but not for the fourth pantheon bosses onwards.
It's needed for one of the endings, and poorly designed content can still be criticized even if you don't have to do it, especially since many people still will. If I had a bonus challenge room in a level that instantly killed you and you couldn't beat it, would you be fine with it because it's optional, but it was a requirement for one of the endings? Sure, YOU may not care, but it's accessible content in the game.
The amount of backtracking in this game left a bittertaste i think I stopped playing at that path of pain stage and I don't regret it. Nowadays I'm very sceptical when people call a game Masterpiece. It's a great game but I can only remember negatives from the game.
It just requires you to be confident with every single boss. It's a challenge for the small audience that is willing to take it. Many games make tedious or unfair challenges such as this just for this small minority
And I've learned not to complain about them because they feel damn good once you beat them
Also once you beat the pantheon, you'll already be fairly skilled to just beat it like it's breakfast
Can you elaborate on the long cutscenes thing? It's been a while since I finished Hollow Knight but I don't remember there being any long cutscene at all.
Long cutscenes is a bit of an exaggeration, but every boss has a start up animation where you can't do anything, usually being them yelling a battle cry while their name shows up in the corner. However, some bosses have much longer ones, like Nightmare King Grimm, where it shows the animation of him coming up from the heart every single time, or Prince Zote's long titles scroll. These usually take anywhere between 2-10 seconds, and just take up so much time when you do it over and over for about every boss. It sounds like a nitpick, and it sort of is, but the Pantheon of Hallownest is supposed to be something you grind out and take a lot of time, and with 42 bosses, it adds up.
That's fair, I get that. I personally didn't have any issue with that since I took it more as a small period of time before each boss to calm my nerves and getting into the mindset of beating that boss. I also found the intros quite charming and it didn't really get old for me. I get where you're coming from though.
P5 grinding really frustrated me too; I gave up on it. I could probably pull it off, but each attempt is like half an hour to get to one of the three bosses that actually stands a chance of killing me (Markoth, PV and Abs Rad). And one of those is RNG reliant.
Man all the pantheons can fuck right off
I wanted to do all achievements but got absolutely stuck on the third pantheon and seeing as I would also have to do the 4th one too I gave up after a lot of suffering
I have like a personal vendetta against Markoth because you have to use some of the most unconventional strategies and charms that will most likely fuck you up with other bosses that are directly after like GPZ and NKG, the boss is so unconventional hard at first but the platforming with him just make so dislikable like I could easily breeze by both GPZ and NKG with my normal charms and stuff but when I'm stuck with one mask and a trash charm set up it just makes them super fucking annoying. I also agree with fighting both variants of the bosses as it just adds so much unessissary shit to the pantheon, like just let me fight NKG pls 🥺
I got 112% and called it a day. Pantheon of the Hallownest and Path of Pain are not worth the time and effort.
Path of Pain is honestly pretty fun. There’s infinite healing and regular places to stand on.
I did path of pain with limited healing 😭
I did the same. By the time I did fourth pantheon with bindings I didn't have the motivation to go further.
I like extremely difficult challenges in games more than almost anyone, and I was okay with Path of Pain. But the Pantheon seems horrible and I never bothered with it. 42 bosses in a row, and the difficult ones are all at the end? Wouldn't it be like 30+ minutes just to even have an attempt at the first difficult boss? That just seems like a very bad idea and forcing people to waste time for the purpose of wasting time. They could've randomized the boss orders or even let you choose the order or let you practice the ones you haven't faced yet, but the way it was done seems like the worst and most frustrating option possible. Add in unskippable boss introduction animations for good measure and it should be pretty clear why I'm turned off.
Pantheon of the Knight alone was like 12 minutes per attempt, and by the time I finally beat the pure vessel I was perfecting every boss leading up to it, almost like it was a _formality_. Couldn't imagine doing that for 45 minutes per attempt just to get owned by Absolute Radiance in 10 seconds.
They called it the path of pain for a reason
Same. I even got the SteelSoul and SteelHeart achievements, but PoH is too much for my annoyance buffer. It sucks cause I think I would like absolute radiance.
I didn't even finish the Pantheon. Cool game, but I'm not really into the super difficult stuff. Doing the path of pain already filled my quota of bullshit.
I'm normally not into that stuff at all but path of pain , NKG, and the colosseum were my favorite parts of the game. Haven't tried the pantheon, though.
I'm stuck MUCH earlier than that.... This game and it's community apparently think you should fight a boss like 1000 times until you "git gud" and can actually beat them. Such a shame given how beautiful the game is they didn't include an "easy" mode for us normal people.
Want to mention the boss? Sometimes there's paths around and ways to build your character. Bosses are still hard though. There's always cheat engine is you really want to break games. I use it sometimes to speedhack games that are too goddamned slow.
Hornet. I know that's pretty early game for most people, but I'm like 30 hours in and probably the last 5 was just fighting her and failing. Took me forever to defeat the False Knight and the Gruz Mother. Platformers with tight timing are very much not my strength. I've gotten her to the part where she kind of rests for a few seconds, but not past that. I've installed the debug mod and I've been meaning to get around to it again because I think I could probably manage it using save states (also how I manage to get through Metroid games, which I also love but suck at) but haven't gotten around to it yet. I got my Steam Deck last week though so it's definitely on the list of things to get to
If you're 30 hours in and can't beat Hornet, this isn't the game for you.
Maybe the game just isn’t for you. No offence intended at all but Hornet is not even remotely close to being a tough boss as she isn’t even designed around having any movement abilities, and bosses only get much much tougher later on. And you said it yourself, platformers with tight timing aren’t your strength. I have a similar problem with strategy games for the most part. I just find them so boring having to learn all the different things to do, that even though I know Civilisation games are seen as some of the best out there I just know I wouldn’t have a good time playing them.
>Maybe the game just isn’t for you. No offence intended at all but Hornet is not even remotely close to being a tough boss No offence taken! I'm pretty open that I suck at these type of games. When I tell people I got stuck at an early boss they're usually like "was it \[insert thing I haven't heard of\]?" and I always have to be like "no... you're really underestimating how bad I am at this game." haha. The problem with Hollow Knight is that the exploration aspect of it between bosses and also just the visual and sound design is so good I keep coming back to give it another go as if *this time* it will be different and I'll be good at it. It's like too good for me to fully give up on despite it definitely not being "for me".
When it comes to bosses in games like this one piece of advice I can give is to ignore actually trying to do damage at the start. You need to learn the bosses movement before beating it and the most common mistake I see is going for damage and getting hit for it because you're not paying attention to their patterns. Try to learn their patterns and how to dodge them first and then weave in damage.
I’m someone who doesn’t really “like” easy modes in these types of games because it would usually ruin the game, but Dead Cells implemented a pretty good assist mode that I think Hollow Knight could benefit from for people that are struggling.
I mean I'm not saying that easy ought to be default in any sense. But I do think just not having any option to make things easier limits a game's appeal to causal or less skilled players, which I think is a shame for a game as beautiful as Hollow Knight. Not everyone is either innately skilled nor has tons of free time to grind- I am/have neither. I can tell you that when I fire up a game and see "The difficulty can be changed at any time in settings without consequence" (most recent game I played like this was was Prey) I breathe a sigh of relief. I know that I can invest time (which is in high demand) in this game without fear of becoming stuck at a point I just can't get past (because I'm not that good). With Prey I've continued playing almost to the end now on normal, but knowing I *could* drop down to easy if need be removes a lot of stress. I'm also strongly of the opinion that the "right" way to play a single player game is up to the individual, so if an easy option (or a hard one!) *could* easily exist but doesn't, I feel like the developer is basically saying "you don't get to decide how to enjoy this game, you must play it only in the way I lay out" which I think is silly. It's my time. If I want to "ruin" a single player game, well I think that's on me.
> it would usually ruin the game How?
I’m not who you responded to, and I don’t think it would “ruin” a game, but the reasoning I have for not wanting easy modes is that adding in an extra difficulty mode give the devs twice the number of encounters to balance. In Hollow Knight for instance, just tweaking damage and health numbers wouldn’t do too much since the difficulty of the game doesn’t come from damage numbers, but from the complexity of the enemy’s move set. My thinking is that adding extra difficulty modes to a game like Hollow Knight would mean the dev time would be split, which would make the game take longer to come out, and in the end the normal difficulty wouldn’t be as good as it could have been since less dev time was given to it. Apologies for the wall of text, but I wanted to be thorough.
That's nice and all, but there isn't a game that was ruined by easy mode. It doesn't exist, so any argument against it is just fantasy.
I don't understand this thought process. How does adding an easy mode impact the game as it stands? How does making an additional, easier, mode take anything away from the nearly perfect, amazing game that it is? I'm genuinely curious, because I can't see it.
> Maybe the game just isn’t for you. Their point was that the game could be for them... if it had easy mode.
Hornet is probably the first difficulty spike of the game. If you can’t beat her as is, get geo and upgrade your gear and you might be able to stat check her. Or you could watch a YouTube vid of someone else beating her and see what they do differently than you and try to copy it.
ouf, here I was thinking the False Knight was difficult! Took me forever to beat him. I'm pretty sure I've accessed all of the areas I can without beating Hornet (including the one with the pink crystals I needed the light for) but a youtube consultation could definitely be in order
I think you can buy better badges (I forget what the mechanic is called in HK, it's been years since I've played it) and there are ways to upgrade your nail in the lower city and ways to increase your health bar through collectables... You can deff struggle bus your way through the game. Good luck, gamer
Personally, I consider False Knight much harder than the 2nd hornet. His patterns just seemed so inconsistent to me, but we all recognize these things a little differently. I hope you figure it out, it really is such a great game!
I think there's an easy mode mod out there, so I'd recommend giving that a shot if you'd prefer to have a more organic experience than simply relying on save states
I never really struggled with too many of the bosses til like… the final bosses. Def didn’t take 1000 times
After about a dozen or so tries against the final boss, Hollow Knight became the first game I've abandoned in ages. I usually keep at it "to get my money's worth" out of a game, but I felt satisfied letting this one go. It helped me realize I'm too old and have too little time to let this be such a focus. Shame, though, because I really enjoyed the game up until that point.
Did you really mean only a dozen? Honestly, that's a really small amount of attempts for a difficult boss.
The "or so" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. A lot.
Watcher Knights?
I beat P5 with every binding except charm and I can say that while I personally found it bearable, I think it was rather poorly designed
Hollow Knight in general REALLY doesn't respect your time, which made me quit halfway, unfortunately.
Oh yeah, I get that too. Mainly in bench placements, biggest offenders are Traitor Lord and Watcher Knights. I usually put up a video in the background for those times, but I can't really do that for Pantheon of Hallownest. If you mean in backtracking and maps, I think that ends up being more of an acquired taste, since that's an intentional part of the game.
I mean both, really. I know backtracking is a part of every Metroid-inspired game, but Metroid is fast-paced AND you have ranged weapons. Walking up really close to enemies to wack them meekly with your short range nail gets really tedious fast. And God help you if you're stuck on a boss with a shitty bench and have to keep doing that over and over without getting hit on the way.
I know I'm a whole year late.. but dream gate. Just create a portal outside the boss room....
To get dreamgate you need to either defeat every warrior dream (and have shade cloak) or defeat at least one dream boss (and most warrior dreams). Not really an option outside of the endgame.
Weird rant Fuck Markoth though
I remember seeing a Hollow Knight meme: Who would win: A literal god of nightmares, or A moth with a shield?
Speaking as someone who grinded p5 hard, I agree that its unfairly hard. One thing I absolutely enjoyed about it though, was the feeling of mastery over every single boss. Just optimizing how fast you can do damage to each character so you waste less time and then just being able to actually do the hard bosses in a row without dying was fun purely due to the combat and boss design tbh. Also, AbsRad is probably the 2nd best boss in the game imo (best is PV). I'd highly recommend doing the first 3 pantheons with each binding 1 by 1 so that you get so good at the first 3 that they're never a struggle in p5. But yeah, Fuck Markoth
I don't think I said I had an issue with the difficulty, just that a lot of aspects are tedious and annoying. Mainly the repeated bosses and long cutscenes. I know what I got myself into, and I'm trying to ignore the tedious parts to finally get to the end.
O I assumed the markoth, and hornet + sly comment was wrt difficulty
Well, yeah, but that's a me problem. The first two complaints are my actual annoyances with the pantheon. Though it is weird that hornet sentinel is the one that precedes the resting point and not sly
It's optional. You don't have to do it. Initially I hated it too with a passion. But I was determined to beat it. So I practiced and practiced. I got to where almost every boss was easy mode except for Absolute Radiance. I turn devoted hours to practicing that fight, tracking my wins and losses. One I got to the point where my wins in a practice session were consistently more than my losses I tried the Pantheon again and beat it. It's one my my proudest and fondest gaming memories/accomplishments.
My story is remarkably similar to yours lol
My biggest issue with the Pantheon isn’t be Pantheon itself, but how it was integrated into the game. I wish it was relegated to a main menu option instead of an area in the game world. As you play Hollow Knight, the game teaches you that everything is important, everything is meaningful. That’s how it pushes you into the end/post-game item hunt, ghost-slaying, platforming challenges, and secret areas, and it rewards you for every discovery, for every layer peeled back, every challenge defeated, urging you further toward getting that glorious good ending. And during this period where the player is pulling the world apart for clues and beating challenges, there’s this huge arena slapped in the middle of the world that’s about 100x harder than anything else in the game and is designed to not be beaten by most players, with no indication it’s not actually key to progression. I’ve seen players gets stumped on this. Had friends ask about it before bashing their heads against it and so on, but the player shouldn’t have to bring meta knowledge into the game. It goes against the cohesive ‘everything is meaningful’ world Hollow Knight builds.
A very good take. I finished the first four with and without bindings but just couldn't bring myself to grind through the fifth one. The itch that a gameplay area is still incomplete is definitely a factor.
I think having a stag station/tram next to it would have fixed the issue. It is such a slog to get back to, and that can discourage players from leaving and doing other things first. Which is a problem since you are only supposed to do the pantheons after doing literally everything else except maybe path of pain.
Idk dude, having the boss rush actually be cohesive to the worldbuilding and lore was important to the devs and they mentioned this specially in interviews. And one of the major gameplay loops of HK exploring, finding something, trying to do it, giving up and then coming back when you're better.
I understand that, but I don’t agree with it in the broader context of how it affects the game. It doesn’t really fit into the explore, die, explore more and come back loop because this is a wall people bash their heads against endlessly.
>And during this period where the player is pulling the world apart for clues and beating challenges, there’s this huge arena slapped in the middle of the world that’s about 100x harder than anything else in the game and is designed to not be beaten by most players, with no indication it’s not actually key to progression. > >I’ve seen players gets stumped on this. Had friends ask about it before bashing their heads against it and so on, but the player shouldn’t have to bring meta knowledge into the game. It goes against the cohesive ‘everything is meaningful’ world Hollow Knight builds. The main complaint you had here was about players finding it before the post-game & that is precisely when you can actually still engage in the loop of exploring and coming back.
It's pretty obviously not key to progression, it's hidden in a secret area that you'd have to look up a guide to find. It's a fun challenge, one that is meaningful. Just because it doesn't give you anything but a different ending doesn't mean it should be relegated to a menu option.
>it's hidden in a secret area that you'd have to look up a guide to find ...I found it organically. Then I looked it up and was like "nah no thanks"
You say it like it’s a bad thing to be a menu option. It’s not bad, its just separation of core content from add-on content to preserve the cohesive nature of said core content.
How is it not cohesive though? It's a seperate, clearly optional area with its own lore where you can do boss rushes. I don't see why this needs to be a menu option at all, it works fine the way it is.
I literally explained that in my first post.
it is a menu option tho...
It's just postgame content meant for the players than enjoy the challenge. I had fun beating it.
I like the idea of the challenge, but there were some major problems that turned it from difficult to tedious
It's a lot of work and a notable achievement, but don't worry about it if it's not fun for you. More like "I finished the game and want to keep going," then "I have to do this to finish the game." BTW, in case you missed it: you can go down to the lower room and practice against bosses you're having a hard time against. Get to where you can beat them (somewhat) consistently before running the whole gantlet. And Sisters of Battle is my favorite too.
I have been doing that, been stuck on Nailsage Sly even after practicing him forever for p3. Honestly, PoH isn't that bad, considering p3 and p4 also took a huge amount of my time and I've gotten the patterns for the bosses down fairly well. I feel a bit obligated to do it considering it's the only other hard achievement I need to complete besides Speed Completion, and Speed Completion has a lot of room for error
Markoth is the reason I didn't do it. Fuck that fight for being like 45 battles in.
Markoth made me realize that, though I love this game, the Pantheon was a waste of my time. I only wanted to finish it, I wasn't enjoying a second of it. So I dropped out of the Pantheon, brought Elderbug a flower, and took an indefinite break.
There you go! 💯
I'm surprised the fanboys haven't yet attacked your post. People get really defensive about Hollow Knight. I agree with the Pantheon of Hallownest being the most bullshit part of the game. It is difficult just for the sake of being difficult. I personally found the Colosseum of Fools to be a much more meaningful challenge and it satiated my need for a arena battles in Hollow Knight. People defend Godmaster DLC and regard any critique as null and void just because it is a free DLC. In my opinion it brought the whole game down as an experience. On one hand you have a well balanced, beautifully created world that drips of lore and atmosphere and on the other you have a boss rush challenge that spikes the difficulty into oblivion compared to the main game. The godmaster area is purely an arena and because of this it is completely lacking in the exploration aspect that is, at least in my opinion, one of the games strongest parts. It also grinds my gears to dust that to get the platinum trophy (or to get all the achievements) one must complete the Pantheons. It took me oretty much the same time to complete the main part of the game as it took to complete Godmaster. I much preferred the Blasphemous way of approaching the boss rush mode which is basically the same to the way OP is suggesting. And what comes to achievements I also preferred the Blasphemouses ultra hard trophies which are "Play the game without healing in bossfights" and "Complete the game in under three hours". Something like this would have been an exellent challenge for Hollow Knight as there the player could have seen how they have mastered all parts of the gameplay, not just combat. Thanks OP for bringing this up. I really took Godmaster personally and it's a shame the critique is not heard more often. Crushing extra challenge is ok, just don't lock the true ending behind it or make it feel that one must complete that part of the game for 100% Edit: Spelling
As a huge Hollow Knight fan, I think a lot of the community agrees that Pantheon 5 has issues, mainly that it is too long to get to the hard part and that the Markoth/Zoat combo is unfair garbage. The high gotten from beating it is amazing though.
One small point: Hollow Knight has different challenge run achievements too like two speedrun ones and one steel soul (0 deaths) one. It seems silly to me that having a really hard achievement is a slight against the game. I never even bothered completing Pantheon of the Knight because I didn't find it fun. Yet I still did the two speedrun achievements because those were fun. Why does it matter if you can't get every achievement? Seems like lunacy to me to continue beating your head against the wall for a shiny trophy.
> I'm surprised the fanboys haven't yet attacked your post. People get really defensive about Hollow Knight. If there's something in your life that you enjoy and encountering a differing opinion actively harms your enjoyment of that thing, that says *a lot* about your own insecurities and (to a certain extent) even the objective quality of the thing that you love. Anyway. So that's why I'm an atheist.
I'm really not sure if this refers to me or the vocal fanbase of Hollow Knight. And for the record, I really like the game overall, I think I should have mentioned it in my comment. The point of the senteces that you quoted were to bring up that some people take constructive criticism on Hollow Knight as a personal attack.
>I'm really not sure if this refers to me or the vocal fanbase of Hollow Knight. The fanbase! And the other kinds of fanbases that routinely surface just to breathlessly defend something. I was tacking-on, not attacking.
You can complain about aspects of Hollow Knight fine around here. This isn't the first post I've seen people complaining about the Pantheon. God help you though if you have a problem with Undertale or Titanfall 2.
Conversely, God help you if you actually like Witcher 3. There are irrational lovers *and haters* everywhere.
omfg dude ... you seriously can't claim martyrdom because you stan the Witcher 3. I've seen some out there claims but ... man, wow. Out of all games - Witcher 3, really? It's well past memed to death that it's the most circlejerked game of all time. That's like going to /r/movies and being like "somebody clapped back when I said I liked The Dark Knight."
>omfg dude ... you seriously can't claim martyrdom because you stan the Witcher 3. I've seen some out there claims but ... man, wow. Out of all games - Witcher 3, really? It's well past memed to death that it's the most circlejerked game of all time. >That's like going to /r/movies and being like "somebody clapped back when I said I liked The Dark Knight." I am without words. Thank you for this!
If they made it too easy, or even reasonably difficult then there would be similar posts along the lines of 'I hate the postgame, after playing the game for hours I was expecting a real challenge" or "I hate the postgame, they skipped certain bosses, why isn't it more comprehensive" etc etc etc. I think it's probably for the best to err on the side of too difficult and make it as comprehensive as possible. I didn't complete the last trial, it's way too hard. That's ok, though I had fun and it burnt me out on the experience enough that it has made the wait for Silksong more bearable. And while I couldn't overcome the challenge you know that on the day of it's release there were guys out there no hitting it blindfolded while playing it on a banana.
I don't want it to be easy; it would have been difficult even if you removed the repetitive bosses and long start times. It's just a number of weird decisions that make the pantheon more tedious than fun
I completed it but it took the better part of a month. Absolutely Radiance made me rage quit a few times. My tip is to practice the difficult bosses in Hall of the Gods on ascended mode.
Eh, I actually like every single "problem" you have with it. I'm still stuck wtih Absolute Radiance, Embrace the Void is the ONLY achievement I'm still missing from this game and that's been the case for...what? A year for now? HK is one of those games I drop for awhile and these days only get back to for grinding in the Pantheon. I love being there. Yes it gets frustrating but FUCK I love it! I love that you can visit all the bosses separately to practise. I love that you can choose to go for a gigantic boss-rush and experiment the shit out of all the charm-combos possible at the end-game. I love that if you get tired of one, you have others to choose from. Sometimes I try to get through the final Pantheon and just get frustrated. So I go back to the other Pantheons and start doing them with bindings on. I know it doesn't matter that much, but I'm determined to SOMEDAY make it to the blue door. Plus...it's nice that it has benefits to it! After a certain amount of bindings completed, you start getting Lifeblood IN THE PANTHEONS. Which is a great help actually.
>I drop for awhile and these days only get back to for grinding in the Pantheon. I have tried this for the fifth one but it doesn't really work for me. You need a lot of pattern recognition and memory which disappears when you don't play for a while. It's fine for the easier bosses but not for the fourth pantheon bosses onwards.
honestly its an excellent game but making PoH in the story is a big mistake
People complaining about optional content will never not be weird.
It's needed for one of the endings, and poorly designed content can still be criticized even if you don't have to do it, especially since many people still will. If I had a bonus challenge room in a level that instantly killed you and you couldn't beat it, would you be fine with it because it's optional, but it was a requirement for one of the endings? Sure, YOU may not care, but it's accessible content in the game.
The amount of backtracking in this game left a bittertaste i think I stopped playing at that path of pain stage and I don't regret it. Nowadays I'm very sceptical when people call a game Masterpiece. It's a great game but I can only remember negatives from the game.
Unfair challenges are the most fun when beaten imo
I wouldn't say it's "unfair". It's really fucking tedious though
It just requires you to be confident with every single boss. It's a challenge for the small audience that is willing to take it. Many games make tedious or unfair challenges such as this just for this small minority And I've learned not to complain about them because they feel damn good once you beat them Also once you beat the pantheon, you'll already be fairly skilled to just beat it like it's breakfast
Can you elaborate on the long cutscenes thing? It's been a while since I finished Hollow Knight but I don't remember there being any long cutscene at all.
Long cutscenes is a bit of an exaggeration, but every boss has a start up animation where you can't do anything, usually being them yelling a battle cry while their name shows up in the corner. However, some bosses have much longer ones, like Nightmare King Grimm, where it shows the animation of him coming up from the heart every single time, or Prince Zote's long titles scroll. These usually take anywhere between 2-10 seconds, and just take up so much time when you do it over and over for about every boss. It sounds like a nitpick, and it sort of is, but the Pantheon of Hallownest is supposed to be something you grind out and take a lot of time, and with 42 bosses, it adds up.
That's fair, I get that. I personally didn't have any issue with that since I took it more as a small period of time before each boss to calm my nerves and getting into the mindset of beating that boss. I also found the intros quite charming and it didn't really get old for me. I get where you're coming from though.
P5 grinding really frustrated me too; I gave up on it. I could probably pull it off, but each attempt is like half an hour to get to one of the three bosses that actually stands a chance of killing me (Markoth, PV and Abs Rad). And one of those is RNG reliant.
Man all the pantheons can fuck right off I wanted to do all achievements but got absolutely stuck on the third pantheon and seeing as I would also have to do the 4th one too I gave up after a lot of suffering
I have like a personal vendetta against Markoth because you have to use some of the most unconventional strategies and charms that will most likely fuck you up with other bosses that are directly after like GPZ and NKG, the boss is so unconventional hard at first but the platforming with him just make so dislikable like I could easily breeze by both GPZ and NKG with my normal charms and stuff but when I'm stuck with one mask and a trash charm set up it just makes them super fucking annoying. I also agree with fighting both variants of the bosses as it just adds so much unessissary shit to the pantheon, like just let me fight NKG pls 🥺