Everything else feels off or try-hard, as in super hard platform segments
This is why I love Hollow Knight. I'm tired of trivial games. Every time I killed a boss past the first third of the game or when I went past the White Palace I felt like it was earned. The level design is very thoughtful too and allows for a lot of freedom as to how you tackle challenges. Many areas and challenges have an "obvious" way to do it (go from platform to platform once the timing is right between obstacles like saws) or.. learn to consistently do down slashes and jump onto said dangerous obstacles regenerating your air jump by slashing at them. Once you fully understand the possibilities of the basic controls you realize you can actually access plenty of areas that were meant for specific power abilities which elevates freedom and ability to complete the game however you want on a second playthrough.
Still I wouldn't call any of that "super hard". Hollow Knight at its hardest platforming is more like baseline level difficulty of latter Super Meat Boy, and wouldn't compare to dark world (postgame) levels. Most of the game isn't even at the baseline of SMB, which is fine because it's a metroidvania and not a dedicated platformer.
It is easily the most interesting, well balanced (in that every element of the game supports the others well. It has good levels, good atmosphere, good combat, amazing abilities to gain, decent upgrade system that allows various builds to deal with the challenges of the game, amazing soundtrack, and what surprised me the most, even the platforming kept getting better and better by the end of the game) and fun game the genre has ever produced and the only weakness I see to it is the pacing of the first hour or two of the game.
I did have to force myself to play it at first, like deama it didn't do anything to me during the first bits of exploration. On a first blind playthrough it's hard to find the appeal because the character starts very barebones and the encounters too are very barebones. I was hooked once I encountered Hornet as a boss and gained dash.
Hollow Knight has become the bar by which I will judge any further game released in the genre. What makes it the most of a landmark in the genre is just how much exploration feels rewarded. So much of what you gain from exploring is useful and opens new possibilities.
Rabi Ribi: good level design and very good bosses (and a lot of them) but normal enemies are shit and it has a weird level scaling system that motivates either collecting absolutely every upgrade (completionist) or not touching a single one and going full sequence-breaker (if your in between your're fucked, at least in hard). If I remeber correcly it was patched latter so you can choose to desactivate it, I think.
Yes! Rabi Ribi at its core feels like a touhou game, despite not being set in the same world. Like most touhou and touhou doujins, the meat of the game is boss fights. Stages (in this case, world areas) are just a calm change of pace until you reach the next climax. Like Touhou games, it has very aesthetically built bullet hell patterns that show enough variety to keep you going until the end. It's not that great if you look at the game as a metroidvania, but for a bullet hell fan it's the most well thought implementation of the core mechanics in a game that replaces shmup controls for platformer controls. The closest there is to have achieved this without feeling like the patterns were really meant for a shmup (feeling like you're fighting against the platform controls) is the two Touhouvania games, Koumajou Densetsu, and even so Rabi Ribi features a lot more diversity and quality to the boss fights imho.
I wouldn't recommend Rabi Ribi to someone who's not already into that genre of game (bullet hell), because the metroidvania bits aren't that interesting despite the sequence breaking stuff and the latter boss fights will make a lot of people ragequit. And let's be honest, the game world is garbage, there is no atmosphere to it, the writing is typical weaboo shit and the cast of characters is cute girls. The art is also very mehhh. If you're not already deep enough into this to the point of being able to put blinders to that stuff..
Iconoclasts - Kodex Konsensus seems to be that this one is average.
Below average. Game reads like final fantasy fanfic that takes itself too seriously (the game tries very hard to go for tragedy and fails so hard because the characters are such terrible fanfic material of borderline disorder style personalities and over the top idealism) and the gameplay is made around very simple puzzles. There's not much finesse in the platforming, the character doesn't have much in the way of fun movement controls, the boss fights are essentially like QTE because they're mostly invulnerable until you understand what sequence of motion you need to go through to make them vulnerable, there's not much risk taking involved once you understand how the fight is supposed to go and there's only one way to do everything. Game is linear as fuck too, backtracking to collect things (the only thing that getting new powers unlocks, as you can't really sequence break, the only thing to do is gain access to chests you couldn't before) is pointless because the upgrades are mostly pointless and don't affect gameplay that much.
