The appeal is that it‘s a great game with beautiful art that runs on just about anything for an affordable price with no modern fuckery attached.
But if metroidvanias aren‘t your thing, it‘s just not your thing. I‘m also not super obsessed with them and played the first game a fair amount but not that much; I do, however, get why people just want to be hyped for something that doesn‘t spit in their face in return for once.
But it’s not hard to find examples of similar games that don’t reach server-crashing levels of popularity. Axiom Verge, for one. Beautiful art, runs on anything, affordable, no modern fuckery. It’s also a metroidvania. Not to imply it’s a better game, but I personally enjoyed it way more than Hollow Knight.
It’s also plays very differently even if both are still Metroidvanias. Axiom is more of traditional Metroidvania while Hollow Knight/Silk Song are modern “Soulsvanias” that include Souls-like mechanics, such as precision combat with a high skill ceiling and corpse runs. I also prefer Axiom over Hollow Knight as well and wish more retro styled games were more popular.
Hollow Knight gained popularity so rapidly and widely explicitly because of it kinda, and I mean no offense by this, riding the coattails of the Souls genre and doing a better job of it than Salt and Sanctuary, which is also a great game, with great art, runs on a potato, and is also in the “Soulsvania” genre yet didn’t receive nearly the same level of recognition.
Hollow Knight just got lucky going viral. That’s just how markets be sometimes.
The appeal is that it‘s a great game with beautiful art that runs on just about anything for an affordable price with no modern fuckery attached.
But if metroidvanias aren‘t your thing, it‘s just not your thing. I‘m also not super obsessed with them and played the first game a fair amount but not that much; I do, however, get why people just want to be hyped for something that doesn‘t spit in their face in return for once.
But it’s not hard to find examples of similar games that don’t reach server-crashing levels of popularity. Axiom Verge, for one. Beautiful art, runs on anything, affordable, no modern fuckery. It’s also a metroidvania. Not to imply it’s a better game, but I personally enjoyed it way more than Hollow Knight.
It’s also plays very differently even if both are still Metroidvanias. Axiom is more of traditional Metroidvania while Hollow Knight/Silk Song are modern “Soulsvanias” that include Souls-like mechanics, such as precision combat with a high skill ceiling and corpse runs. I also prefer Axiom over Hollow Knight as well and wish more retro styled games were more popular.
Hollow Knight gained popularity so rapidly and widely explicitly because of it kinda, and I mean no offense by this, riding the coattails of the Souls genre and doing a better job of it than Salt and Sanctuary, which is also a great game, with great art, runs on a potato, and is also in the “Soulsvania” genre yet didn’t receive nearly the same level of recognition.
Hollow Knight just got lucky going viral. That’s just how markets be sometimes.