Milos reviewed Hollow Knight

I played this almost entirely wrong. I wandered, I missed things, I fought bosses badly underpowered because I'd skipped three charm notches, and I had a wonderful time.

The game is remarkably tolerant of that. There's a critical path in here somewhere and I don't think I ever found it — I stumbled into the City of Tears from a direction that made no sense and spent six hours in Deepnest far earlier than anyone should. Deepnest at low health with no map is one of the most genuinely frightening things I've played and I'd have missed it entirely if the game had been more careful with me.

An A rather than an S only because the backtracking cost is real. Dying far from a bench and losing twenty minutes of progress is a tax on exactly the exploratory play the game otherwise encourages, and I never fully squared that.