I recently decided to go back and play one of my favorite indie games: Hollow Knight. Unsurprisingly, it was just as incredible this time around as when I first reviewed it three years ago (read that here if you’re curious). I even managed to beat it without getting my teeth kicked in repeatedly by every single boss this time around!
Speaking of: I forgot how good the bosses were in this game! From Hornet to the Mantis Lords to the Crystal Guardian and the Traitor Lord, there’s no shortage of exciting battles in this game! They’re some of the best in the Metroidvania genre! No wonder they made an entire DLC that was just a series of boss rushes!
What I find especially interesting is how this game combines gameplay with narrative in these battles. They’re not just cool showdowns against ultra-powerful enemies. Many of them have their own little stories to tell.
None more powerful or interesting than the titular Hollow Knight himself.
Hollow Knight tells its story in much the same way as Dark Souls. If you just play the game, ignoring NPC dialogue, item descriptions, and the Hunter Log (like I did the first time around), then you probably won’t know why you’re fighting any of these bugs, much less the Hollow Knight. So why are we killing this imprisoned bug?
Long story short: a disgruntled god unleashed a plague upon Hallownest that left the kingdom in ruins. To combat the threat, the Pale King, leader of Hallownest, aimed to imprison said god within an empty, incorruptible vessel. Using the dangerous darkness of the Void to do so, the king created many vessels, one of which is your player character, making the Hollow Knight your brother.
Out of all these children, only one emerged from the Void. The Pale King raised this child, training him in swordsmanship, preparing him for the ritual. It’s implied that the two became close, and the supposedly empty Vessel came to love his father. The Hollow Knight sealed the angry god in his dream, got chained up, and sealed away by the three Dreamers. Now that seal is fading and the plague is leaking into Hallownest once again, and it’s up to your bug, the Knight, to do something about it.
Depending on your chosen ending, ‘something’ can mean a lot. Will you take your brother’s place and imprison the Radiance within yourself? Will you harness the power of the Void and destroy the god forever? Will you intentionally screw over your sister? The choice is yours.
Or you could go do the Godmaster DLC, become an all-powerful shadow god, and devour the whole world. You know. Standard video game endings.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First, we need to talk about the boss itself.
When you enter the arena, you find the Hollow Knight dangling in the background, enveloped in chains. To start the fight, you’ll need to set him free by snapping said chains. As you do so, however, the Knight’s head turns to watch you, orange eyes glowing, expression inscrutable.
Imagine walking into a bear’s cave with a stick and the bear is already awake, watching you, waiting for you to poke it. It’s like that. But with cartoon bugs.
This battle itself is divided into three segments, each divided by a deafening shriek from the Hollow Knight. Phase one is a simple duel of swordsmanship. Or I guess… nailsmanship. The Hollow Knight parries your strikes and counters with supposedly-deadly force, swings wildly, and charges you from across the screen. As you’d expect, this is the easiest phase in the fight. The Hollow Knight is fairly slow, giving you plenty of room to heal if you made a mistake.
In phase two, the corruption contained within the Hollow Knight begins to spill forth. On top of his nail abilities, he’ll now spit globs of orange goo at you from a distance, closing some of those recovery opportunities from phase one. While a bit more hectic, it’s still not especially difficult.
Phase three takes a dramatic turn. The infection explodes from the Hollow Knight, threatening to consume him both mentally and physically. How does the would-be hero of Hallownest respond?
By stabbing himself multiple times in the chest.
This is where the fight stops being an exciting final boss battle and becomes a tragedy. With the Radiance threatening to break free, the Hollow Knight stops fighting you and begins fighting himself. His stabbing himself isn’t just really sad; it’s the boss giving you a free opportunity to heal or attack! Even the music changes to fit the tone!
*Said music is one of the best tracks in the game, by the way. Christopher Larkin did not miss. Link to that here.
Now consumed by the plague, the Hollow Knight’s moveset changes once again. Forgoing the nail duel, the boss now bounces up and down like a rubber ball in an attempt to smash you to bits. Now and then, he’ll slam his nail into the ground, causing orange and black flames to erupt around the battlefield. It sounds a lot worse than it is to deal with. And with how often the Hollow Knight attacks himself, you’ll have plenty of time to heal if needed.
Once the third phase has been conquered, the fight with the Hollow Knight is over. If you’re going for the easiest ending, all you need to do now is deal the killing blow and absorb the Radiance’s corruption into yourself. But if you went and got the Void Heart, the fight is only just beginning. With Hornet’s help, you enter the dream of the Hollow Knight and confront the Radiance itself to put an end to it once and for all.
But that’s a boss fight for another day.
This is not a hardy fight. By the time you unlock the Hollow Knight’s prison, you’ll be more than skilled and powerful enough to take the titular boss down with little difficulty. If you’ve fully upgraded your nail and spells, you can beat the guy in less than five minutes without breaking a sweat! He’s not even the true final boss; he’s just the precursor to the Radiance!
However, that is the whole point of this battle. You’re not fighting the Hollow Knight at full strength; you’ll need to head to the Godmaster DLC and fight the Pure Vessel if that’s what you want (another amazing boss, by the way). The bug you face here is a shell of his former self, a hero on the verge of losing the battle he’d spent his whole life fighting. He wants to lose.
All of this is communicated purely through gameplay and music. This is how storytelling in video games should be! It’s brilliant!
Unfortunately, we do have one problem. See, in order to fight the Radiance, the true final boss, you need to defeat the Hollow Knight. If the Radiance kills you, however, then you’ll have to fight the Hollow Knight again to get back to him. Yes, it’s not the worst thing in the world because at least it’s an easy fight. But the emotional weight of the narrative only fades further and further with each subsequent attempt.
Though to be fair, the ending of the Radiance fight may help alleviate this frustration for some people. But again: a topic for another day. One day soon, probably.
I admit that there are plenty of bosses more enjoyable to fight than the Hollow Knight. He’s far from the best boss in the game. In terms of narrative significance, however, none of them were as powerful and intriguing than he was! If anyone deserved to be in the title, it was him!
Although that probably has to do more with how cool the name is. Something makes me doubt a game called ‘The Dung Defender’ would have done so well.
I’d play that, I’m not gonna lie.
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