Recent reviews by SeanErren

Beautiful and unique journey and art style.
Greatly crafted challenges and progression.
Plenty of secrets to discover.
10/10, excels at the uniqueness that indie games bring to the table with a very high level of polish.

A game with a lot of random things that seem like a bunch of non-fitting puzzle pieces but this game has a way of putting them together that creates a very unique experience. Well worth jumping into if you are looking for something new and different :)

A very unique, great and horrifying experience. I recommend going into it without knowing anything about it (well except that it's a card game in case that's not for you)
I also haven't finished it at the time of writing this.

When I went into this game I thought it was going to be a good Roguelike game but I didn't think it was going to stick in my head as very unique.
When I started - the gameplay was fun and well balanced, you unlock stuff as you go along even when you fail and every run feels a little different. From that alone - I can already recommend the game as a well made Roguelike.
The thing that really caught my attention though was the story. When you progress through the game and interact with characters you get bits and pieces of information about certain events and characters and it starts effecting the game too by unlocking challenges and giving you new items to play with in your runs. While the story is told in bits and pieces - its not hard to understand and its very good which made my experience with this game much more special and I highly recommend it :)

Exploration
The world of this game is amazing. You are thrown into this otherworldly place with its unique architecture and strange inhabitants being all sorts of weird bugs. You start (or at list I started) by thinking that its not going to be a very big game (especially because of how cheap it is) but the more I went through it the more I realized how wrong I was. This game is BIG, the more you explore the world - the more areas you will find until you are not sure if it will ever end. Every area offers its own unique challenges and the progression is done very gradually and very well while at the same time allowing you to choose where to go and what to do next (to an extent at list).

Secrets
I am a person that loves secrets. In many games the secrets are there for some collectible to give you an achievement but ultimately don't open new things to do in the actual game. There is nothing wrong with secrets for collectibles but this game does more with them. Sometimes you will find a collectible but other times a secret will open a whole new area for you to explore and I love it. It means that if you spend a while just looking around for secrets you will be rewarded for it and more than that - In a way it makes the game feel endless as if there is always another wall to break to find a whole new world behind.


Combat
The combat of this game divides into two different parts - sword fighting (your "Nail") and ability fighting (your "soul").
Through the entire game you have a sword (That is referred to as "nail") that you can swing up, down, left or right to hit things with.
You also have a soul which is a bar that fills by killing creatures or entering "soul wells" which you can then use to either heal or attack with - with abilities you gain throughout the game.
I personally like the sword fighting better because it feels more skillful and doesn't deplete - though both forms of fighting are well made and feel balanced.
The best part about the fighting is the enemies. From the basic enemies to the hardest bosses every enemy feels like a unique challenge and there are a LOT of them. The enemies can get really difficult and force you to use at list most if not all of your tools (your fighting skills with the nail, your abilities, your platforming skills, your charms...) in order to beat.

Platforming
You start with basic movements (left, right, up, down and jump). The movement feels good, it feels precise and you unlock other movement mechanics later on in the game (like dash, double jump etc) which make it more interesting.
The platforming doesn't get as difficult as in games like - "The end is nigh" or "Celeste" (Which I highly recommend you to play if you like hard platformers) but that makes sense since hollow knight is more of an adventure-fighting-platformer rather than strictly a platformer. The game does have a few hard platforming sections if you want to challenge yourself and its important to control your movement well for fighting. Overall the platforming is not crazy hard so it doesn't halt your progress and not very easy so you still have a challenge.

Some more stuff
The game has a "charms" system which are items you collect / buy with the game's currency which you use to upgrade your character in different ways and you can only use a set amount of charms at a time based on your available slots.
There is also a fast travel system as you would expect from a game like this and a money system with a currency called "goo" which allows you to unlock the fast travel stations as well as buy charms and a few other items.

There is a story - though its very vague and hard to understand, that's the only "downside" if you can even call it that - that I can truly say about the game. I am saying if you can even call it a downside because I don't think this game tried to be a game that pushes you through a story of a character but rather a mysterious world for you to explore and discover or at list that's how I choose to look at it. That said if you are looking for a story driven game this may not be what you are looking for.

If you couldn't tell - I love this game, in fact its my favorite game. I wasn't going to make this long of a review and I doubt that many people are going to read it let alone get this far (if you did - hi oh and thanks :)) but it was important to me to talk about what I think and what I felt playing this game and I hope I managed to describe it. I would recommend anyone that likes this type of game to give it a shot especially when the price is this low, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did :)

BUY THIS GAME

The game is set in a beautiful world that you are free to explore right from the start which gives you a choice of which areas you want to try the puzzles of first (though there are certain puzzles that are locked until other puzzles are completed), each area gives you a new set of puzzles with a new set of creative rules that you have to figure out.
When looking at the trailer of the game it seems as if the puzzles are on boards that are disconnected from the actual world as if the world is only there to look nice - but don't be fooled the world plays a big part in many puzzles in very creative and interesting ways let alone in the secret puzzles (no spoilers).
The puzzles themselves are very well made and have a wide range of difficulties.
The Witness is one of my favorite games and if you like puzzle games I HIGHLY recommend you to get it.
NOTE: it doesn't really have a story (or if it does its very vague) if that's something that matters to you.