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When I first wrote about Hollow Knight back in 2019 (see this page) I had not yet completed the game but since then I did, and a lot of my opinions have soured on it because at some point I completed every boss needed to complete the game, and later explored every corner of the map before finding out that all those optional bosses I passed (usually ghosts triggered by one of the later items) really weren't optional after all.
Before I get to that, and to expand on the 2019 review, I will say that I enjoyed Hollow Knight as I played it. Re-igniting the memory of games played it in the past without making you wish you were playing them instead? Check. Excellent "Metroidvania" world map and format? Check. Fantastic music? Check. Good story? Enh...but who really cares? It's fun, and hacking and slashing into the depths of Hallownest and getting your butt kicked repeatedly? Check.
The "sour" part comes with the bosses, in which everything basically ground to a complete halt, because most of them were just trouble, especially hiking back down/up to where you found them last. It's not that bosses are bad, but Cuphead's bosses had a certain "rhythm" to them that you were able to memorize and latch onto (notably, Cuphead showed you progress of the total hit points remaining of the boss when you die, and if you reached the last phase of the boss, a total victory was just 1-3 playthroughs away), whereas I never really got the half of the bosses, plus Cuphead had that great feature to just instantly restart a fight when things are going south.
So when I find out tracking and each every one of these bosses down and defeating them to get an ending that is any less than "congrats, you carry the Infection now" without really knowing anything about the story other than just bits and pieces, that's when I walked away from it. There was no more exploration to be done, all the fun had been drained out of the game for me.
I would've liked to get an official guidebook that described the maps in detail instead of having to resort to Fandom or something awful like that, the best we got was the Wanderer's Journal, which functions more like an art book than anything else. A guidebook would've more helpful as the way that maps are drawn, written, and presented in the game can be seen as extremely frustrating. When entering a new area, you're wandering blind until you find the friendly Cornifer, who's humming something to himself (audio cue), then you only get to see the map when you die or find a save point. Moreover, you can't see where you are in the map unless you use the "Wanderer's Compass" charm, and you have a very limited number of charms you can use at one time.
When I first started playing it in 2018, they were coming out with a series of free DLCs as part of stretch goals from Kickstarter, with the last one being "Godhand" (basically a boss rush mode). A promised DLC that involved the female deuteragonist Hornet, but it was cancelled and ended up becoming a full game (Hollow Knight: Silksong)...that is, if they finished it, as development was announced in February 2019 and has dragged on for five and a half years with no real completion in sight. While admittedly it is larger and more ambitious than Hollow Knight, it's vaporware.
Despite the glaring "bosses are more important than exploration" flaw I still greatly enjoyed Hollow Knight and will give it a "Good" nonetheless.
FINAL RATING: 