I'm Done With Hollow Knight · 2:38am Jul 15th, 2018
I hate saying that. It's a pretty great game, for the most part. Here's my problem though: Everyone is going on about how great and slick the controls are, but for reasons known only to the game, it repeatedly ignores my controller input at critical moments, and one of those moments during the fight with the Traitor Lord, and another while I was trying to make my way to a bench so I wouldn't have to make such a long trek every time I died permanently cost me over 10,000 Geo.
And no, it isn't the controller, I've checked: It has no problem on other games. It's just that Hollow Knight hates me, and wants to make me so angry that I murder everyone in the tri-state area in a psychotic rage. I literally spent close to five minutes trying to crush my controller from pure rage. My hands are still sore. The only reason my laptop is still intact is because I'm still making payments on it. I still came within two heartbeats of chucking it through a wall.
Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the game, I'll put this in perspective: Most of the stuff you need in the game doesn't get more expensive than, say, 1000-2000 Geo, but there's several late game items that cost 8000-15000 Geo. I've gotten all the other stuff that can be bought for a reasonable price, so I was storing that stuff away for late game goodies. But then I ran into the stone wall known as the Traitor Lord. He was buffed within the last couple of months, granting him significantly boosted attack speed, and if any of his attacks connect, he does two damage (Nearly all bosses in the game do only one, save for a few later ones). So of course, you need an opportunity to heal during this battle. The problem is, you will not get one, and trying will end with him getting in a hit either just before or just after you've healed, so there's no point in bothering.
"So go and farm for more Geo," some of you are saying. That Geo was from several bosses, something like a hundred Geo stashes through multiple areas, and enough dead enemies to make my character a one man extinction level event. Getting that much Geo together takes an immense amount of effort, even with intensive farming. I've looked up all kinds of stuff about farming Geo on Youtube and other sites, and people talk about getting 600 Geo in 2 minutes. Doing some math, that's 40 minutes of non-stop farming to get back what was taken from me. So, the game, due to some kind of bug with the controls that makes it decide to screw me over, has robbed me of close to an hour of my life, and the only way to get it back is to give it nearly another hour of my life.
I hope you can understand why I feel that's BS.
I've beaten every Dark Souls, most Souls-Likes, and I've beaten Mega Man games while pondering why people think that they're hard. I thrive on a challenge. But what I've just been through? No. Just no. I've never experienced this kind of frustration in a game, and it isn't even anything I did wrong. This game just hates me to the point that it will repeatedly screw me over, and I'm not putting up with it anymore.
Buggy games are like that. Hope it goes better for you.
Didn’t that game have a way to retrieve your Geo after death?
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Only if you don't die on your way to retrieve it.
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I’m pretty sure their was a priest guy in a building in the graveyard who will summon your shade or something if you give him a rotten egg or whatever if I’m remembering the play through I saw correctly. There was also a big guy in the sewers or somewhere with pipes that would sell you the things the bug priest eats and a banker that set up shop pretty close to one of the 1st stag ways you unlock. SPOILER ALERT: The banker will betray you eventually.
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Again, it only works if that particular Shade exists. If you die, then die again before you can reclaim the Shade, it's gone forever.
I know exactly what you mean with the control gripes, I am right there with you. My DS4 has about a full 3/4 of a second of lag, and I just couldn't deal with it. It didn't feel good to play, and that's the worst. I don't play platformer on keyboard either, but even then there was some kind of input delay for me.
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I know of it, and I know what happens you you put enough Geo in it.
Sounds to me like engineered bugs, designed to force the player to either loose loads of time OR perform micro transactions.
The last pay - to - win game I've gotten hooked on was Magic The Gathering, except for the fact that I got hooked some fifteen years ago, when it was still possible to play for fun while investing less than twenty dollars a month. Last time I checked (months ago), you needed to cough up a hundred bucks per month just to avoid getting trampled too badly...
I don’t know, I feel like a lot of the games people gush about are over-rated. And any game that causes me to fly into a rage is not one I spend time on. Frustration? Fine. Anger? Okay. Rage that burns and causes me undue stress because of issues in the game? No thanks. I’ll stick with things like Vermintide on champion and Warframe. Maybe some Oxygen not Included or Rimworld if I’m feeling particularly masochistic.
I got Hollow Knight but ive only just started it and am not very good at it. I'm playing it with a steam controller. I'm just going back and forth along the rooms that lead back to the town. I missed a bunch of geo spots in the beginning and keep getting my ass kicked cause i fall off the platforms trying to attack the flying things. Which hurt me when i do jump.
I can live with bad controls, but not with unresponsive ones.
I too enjoy a challenge, but there is a difference between a game being challenging while not holding your hand and being outright unfair.
This seems to fall in the 2nd category, and that always sucks.
Here's to hoping that they'll patch it in due time and that you remember it a few weeks or months from now, huh?
Is it a single player game? No online-multiplayer, right?
This is, why I used to just hack games when they pulled nonsense like that. What's the fun in playing a game that's... well, no longer fun due to some arbitrary reason like "not enough money"? Really, "infinite money" was always by far the easiest thing to hack. Nothing creative about it.
Of course, these days game developers want to charge you real world money for entirely worthless fictional gold, giving them every incentive to prevent "cheating" in single player games. Yeah, no.
Had quite a bit of trouble getting Hollow Knight to actually accept that, yes, my PS4 controller actually exists as well.
You had to turn off the settings for PS4 support in Steam Big-Picture Mode, or something counter-intuitive like that.
Honestly, though, I switched to using my Switch Pro controller a while back on a whim, and I have not looked back. I'm not sure if quite why, but all the PC games that used to give me a ton of trouble just work now and it is such a relief. Think it uses the same sort of inputs as an XBox controller, or something but I'll admit that's a whee bit over my head.
Not sure if that's an option for you or anybody else reading, but thought I'd mention it since it caught me by surprise.
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Dude, people are asking team cherry to charge more for their 15$ dollar game with three free dlc packs. They don't do engineered bugs, and there are no microtransactions. This is an indie game, not EA.
It most likely IS a problem with the controller. I had the same problem with my mouse, and when I replaced it, the contrast was so great, I realized that the mouse I was using was much worse than it originally seemed. PC is optimized for Xbox controllers, and steam controllers emulate this. Sony is not playing nice with other companies, (just look at fortnite). To get a Sony controller working on a PC, you need extra, third party controller emulation software, and that creates a lot of input lag.
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Afterthought. There were two bosses that I could neither dodge nor heal during. Traitor lord, and Failed champion. However, I also found that their health is low. So I equipped a facetanknig set. Joni's blessing, stalwart shell, unbreakable strength, thorns of agony. I didn't even have quickslash yet, but I was still able to simply outdo the damage was taking.
I have accepted that I will not be healing against Nightmare King Grimm but I AM learning how to dodge him. Timing in Hollow Knight boss battles is pinpoint. If your controls are lagging, it's not the game's fault.
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“Sony is not playing nice with others”
Understatement of the year, they’ve been downright hostile lately.
Sounds like the game left you feeling... Hollow.
I'll see myself out.
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not that kind of game, you buy it you get the whole game plus several free dlc packs. The only way to give the producers more money through the game is to buy multiple copies, no microtransactions whatsoever. As for engineered bugs, I doubt it. the controls in this game are very clean and precise. Platforming feels natural and satisfying as you get used to it. Any glitch that changes it therefore is immediately noticeable and crippling. If the issue was a common one it would be one of the first things you read about when you read or watch reviews of the game. Traitor Lord is very difficult, it took me several hours to beat it with a functioning controller. I can imagine how frustrating it could be to play it when the controls aren't doing what you want them to.
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did you make up that pun on the fly?
That's unfortunate, I love Hollow Knight and would be happy if everyone who played it had a good experience. Have you looked up the issue and seen if it's a common one? Either way, Traitor Lord is a bitch to beat even with functional controls.
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Yup. Just netted it out of the air .
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Technically it's a net plus in cash, but yeah, bank go bye bye.
Odd... the only bug I've had was the control stick pulling to the left and down at times, which I know for a fact IS my controller. Only really been an issue with Hat in Time's Mafia Boss EX though... I hate that smarmy chef SO much...