Hollow Knight is an absolutely fantastic game and while it seems everyone is talking about the latest and greatest games including and especially Cyberpunk 2077 I am still going through all of the PS plus games that I have acquired over the past few months.
Hollow Knight was a real delight to receive for "free" and I think it is likely one of my favorite games of all time. I am an old-school gamer so revisiting the platforming and metroid-vania styles of gaming appeals to me immensely. I would say that I actually prefer it to many of the more advanced and more beautiful 3-D games of modern times.
That being said, this game is not easy by any means.
I am not a hardcore gamer and for the most part once games become too difficult I tend to give up and then not return to them. This is a game-ender for me as far as some of the more popular and very difficult games of late are concerned that are, for many people, collectively referred to as Dark Souls games. I lump Bloodbourne and Nioh into the same category and I'll tell you this: When a game is so difficult that the very first boss you encounter cleans the floor with you 20 times in a row and you really haven't learned anything about defeating it, this is likely not going to be a game for me.
Hollow Knight isn't terribly difficult at first, but if you stray off the path that you are supposed to be on it will kick the crap out of you very quickly. There were many instances in playing this game that I felt as though I was going to have to put the game down permanently because it was just getting to be too taxing going through the same zones over and over again and not really making any progress. However, unlike Dark Souls type games, there is a more achievable learning curve and eventually I was able to make it to the "final boss."
Just like most of the boss fights in this game I got my ass handed to me the first couple of times that I fought this guy and I never even got to see his 2nd or 3rd form. This is to be expected I think of most mortals because you don't yet know the attack patterns or tells or even when and how you can hurt your enemy.
One of the extreme limitations of fighting any boss in HK is that fact that the range of your main attack is very limited and this sets you up to take damage if you get too close, which is something you have to do if you are ever going to deal any damage for the most part.
I had already resigned myself to not being able to defeat this guy after I dunno, a dozen attempts and not really making any real progress as far as having a plan was concerned. So therefore I decided to wander about and see if I could get any other charms or upgrades that would make the fight a bit easier for me.
Eventually I found what I consider to be one of the best charms in the game and it is called Weaversong. There are a lot of Twitch users that bash on this charm saying that it is useless but I couldn't disagree more, especially if your enemies are primarily ground-based, which is the case with "The Final Boss" in the Hollow Knight.
When Weaversong is equipped you will spawn 3 spiders or I guess they are weavers and they attack anything on the screen on your behalf. They don't do near as much damage as you do with your own attacks but they do something and this works out very nicely for me because while I am pretty damn good at avoiding getting damaged with dodges, something happens when I try to combine this with an attack and it results in me committing suicide more than it is a case of the boss actually hitting me.
Like in many games simply making contact with any enemy results in your taking damage and not the other way around.
So even though I had been drinking, I equipped Weaversong and combined it with Grubsong which resulted in their strikes returning soul to me allowing me to heal more frequently. Also, the focus of the boss wasn't always on me but rather it seemed at least that his targeting was thrown off by the fact that he was now being attacked from all sides.
I defeated him on the very first try.
This charm is actually very easy to acquire once you find the hidden wall that isn't terribly evident when you first get there and just seems to be a dead end in the Deepnest. However, once I got it this charm turned out to be a real game-changer. I no longer needed to focus on doing direct damage but instead could just stand back and allow my Weaver-pals to do most of the damage for me.
I know have what I consider to be something that is definitely going to turn the tide of battle for me in most encounters unless the enemy is airborne. I'm afraid I am still going to be a bit screwed as far as that is concerned.
It is worth nothing that unless it is a boss fight, having weaversong equipped can actually be counterproductive especially in areas where hitting certain things make them explode. The weavers attack indiscriminately and this can result in you taking a lot of damage because of them. I normally wont even equip them unless I am heading specifically to a boss fight because they are too problematic otherwise.
By the way I refer to The Hollow Knight as being the "final boss" in quotes because apparently this is just one of several endings to the game. From what I have heard / seen the "real ending" is actually much much much more difficult to accomplish.