The Hypnotizing Simplicity of Hollow Knight's Combat

[@rorothedrago]

Using NKG at the end there was brilliant, not only because I believe that a fight like that, one that’s easily predictable when you’ve mastered it well, is indeed an excellent way to blow off steam, but also because that is what the Grimm fights are in game when you think about it. They’re a dance, a dance to test your skill, a dance to see if you’re ready to take on what the world of Hallownest has to offer. Awesome video all around

[@RoryAych]

Thank you! The NKG fight sort of inspired this whole video - I just love how *focused* it is

[@harleyhollis]

1:29 you can have sword beams if you equip the Grubberfly's Elegy charm while at full health, and can be reactivated with Fury of the Fallen at 1 health

[@RoryAych]

Almost forgot about that! It's very endgame content though, not really useful during a playthrough

[@harleyhollis]

true, just thought I'd give new players a heads up

[@kayleennilsson5542]

@@RoryAych So very endgame.

[@MumboJ]

You also do have different moves with different animation times by using nail arts.

[@harleyhollis]

@@MumboJ indeed

[@TomatoMan90]

Wait.. 1k views? I thought this had 1M or more considering the quality, this is so absurdly underrated! Keep it up man!

[@RoryAych]

Thank you! This is the first of my videos to get this many views, I'm glad people like it so much!

[@slidemguy]

true that! someone post this on the hollow knight subreddit

[@gramm-0]

Awesome video!! Awesome analisys off of a brilliant aspect of hollow Knight.

[@RoryAych]

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed :)

[@MumboJ]

Ironically, the complex expression of simplicity reminds me of Ants and similar bugs.

[@BenjaminAlternate]

Very good quality video, thanks!

[@Fade_NB]

Dude you’re so underrated this stuff is peak

[@RoryAych]

Thank you!!

[@mhm77887]

You did a great job of explaining why the movement in hollow knight is so fun. I hope that Silksong keeps that simplicity.

[@RoryAych]

I hope so too! I'm a little worried about all the gadgets they seem to be adding lol

[@YeinVZ]

oh my god. HOW DO YOU ONLY HAVE 30 SUBS? you're so underrated like damn

[@RoryAych]

Thank you!! I only just started making videos, so this is my first one to hit the algorithm in any way. I'm glad people are liking my stuff :)

[@jeffwpatton]

Very insightful and articulate analysis! Subbed!

[@THEYuYama]

50 subs?? unacceptable! great video, the editing and pacing you manage to carry makes it seem like this is your 50th video essay. I hope your proud of your work cause its really stellar EDIT TALUS BATTLE BEST SONG LETS GOOOOO

[@RoryAych]

Thank you!!! It means a lot that people like my work so much :)

[@DonnchaMcC]

If you close your eyes, chubbyemu is telling you about hollowknight.

[@UzuMaki-v1m]

the word dance perfectly describes the boss fights, just like how madara said "do you wanna dance?".

[@DSGhost17]

I'm your 89th subscriber. I can't wait until you have 8900000. Quality is great. Hope more gaming content coming!

[@ielm_io]

man you said exactly what i've been thinking but way better than i could have

[@ethangranillo6632]

Amazing video 👏👏

[@star_str3m63]

babe wake up new Rory video

[@georgwilliamfriedrichhegel5744]

When you have 500k subs pls remember that I was your 44th.

[@RoryAych]

Thank god my work is doing well with the 17th-century philosopher crowd

[@Proletarius87]

Man, great video, awesome speech. The way you speak reminds that of a wise scholar, but one that can keep his listeners engaged. Truly feast for the ears. Subscribed

[@RoryAych]

Thank you! My speech and debate experience finally comes in handy haha

[@jonaseinhorn3423]

Really great video

[@SumiYokai]

Great video!

[@Slothian0]

he looks half way between young sheldon and regular sheldon, not that it takes away anything its just something i noticed

[@RoryAych]

My friends have been saying this for years

[@drpanda57]

You can lean a Heavy attack tho. There a different npcs spreaded thru Hollownest, that will teach you „nail Arts“.

[@RoryAych]

Yeah but I've never met anyone that seriously uses it. It's a lot different than like Dark Souls, where you're constantly switching between the two

[@ihopeyouandicanbefriends]

they're really good for maximizing damage when you can only get one or two hits in. in the Grimm fight I use them frequently, mostly great slash and dash slash. cyclone slash is meeeh way more situational ​@@RoryAych

[@RoryAych]

@@ihopeyouandicanbefriends Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure I used them for my first NKG win. Still pretty situational though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@Gastro-enterite-en-imax]

FINALLY SOMEONE UNDERSTANDS ME ABOUT ELDEN RING!!!

[@InfluxB]

cool thumbnail i like it :)

[@RoryAych]

Thanks!

[@minespatch]

Well, there is a upgrade system. The pure ore.

[@sachacourtet1695]

Pure ore doesn't exist. It's the pale ores that can upgrade the nail, to its better version, the pure nail. And he did talk about how you can upgrade the nail, at 1:30

[@skyberlux8110]

and at 14:32 too

[@Exo-Eilte]

I mean Gruz Mother is a boss I expect to be easy

[@sterman0]

imma buy hollow knight, is it hard?

[@gramm-0]

Quite hard, specially on the first playthrough. But the experience is totally worth it. From the characters to the wordbuilding, from the mechanics to the aesthetic, everything is near perfect.

[@sterman0]

@@gramm-0 thanks gangalang, i can’t wait to play it

[@gramm-0]

@@sterman0 Enjoy it as much as possible!! has great replayability

[@WCircuit7224]

Y. E. S.

[@AngusPuck5672]

BUY IT IT IS HARD I DROPPED IT PICKED IT BACK UP A FEW YEARS LATER AND THE GAME IS SUDDENLY EASY TAKE SOME TIME TO LEARN THE COMBAT, MOVEMENT, AND THE WORLD THIS GAME IS DAMN NEAR PERFECT

[@ChosenOne2524]

no button mashing through your enemies? no abilities you can spam over and over again??? someone hasn't heard of quick Slash + steady body and descending dark

[@thehelpfulwalnut7440]

Great Video! I kinda disagree with your description of Elden Ring bosses unpredictability. They are almost completely predictable if you pay attention to 1) Spacing and 2) Combo chains. For example Margit will do his dagger swipe you mentioned if and ONLY if you are in front of him at close range either in neutral or after he uses a vertical cane slam. Learning what moves can follow up after what other moves at what spacing is the core of Elden Ring's combat. If you don't enjoy that, that's fine. But the movesets are completely predictable if you learn to pay attention to those two key factors.

[@RoryAych]

Those combo chains were so confusing to me haha. I agree that ER bosses are readable, but its a very different (and to me less intuitive) readability than HK. Thanks for explaining-I had no idea it was so spacing-based!

[@MumboJ]

This is exactly why i hate exp/level based progression. It's not skill based if i can just outlevel it. When i first played Kingdom Hearts 2, i grinded 100% completion before doing the final boss, because it felt like a good way to give the game a big climax (and also the end-of-game rewards kind of incentivize you to do this). But as part of that 100% completion, i was max level with the most powerful weapons and armor in the game. The final boss fight was a joke, i barely had to do anything, it only lasted a few minutes, and i did not enjoy it. Just earlier today i was playing WoW and doing really badly in a fight. It was a class i hadn't played in a while so i thought maybe i was rusty, maybe i was doing something wrong. I checked my talents, and there were some recent changes that i hadn't fixed, but not enough to justify how badly i was doing. Turns out, i had levelled up too quickly so my gear was just bad... Also i was using the wrong weapon. :P

[@Twisted_Logic]

I think game design trends have started to lean too far into customization. It can be fun and all, but games built around mastery of a single tightly designed set of simple tools are few and far between these days and they offer such a satisfying experience

[@RoryAych]

If you haven't played them, I can highly recommend Furi and Sifu as other super focused games!

[@ZomboidMania]

To me your critique of Elden Ring boils down to "I can't easily read the boss and thus the combat is bad", Elden Rings bosses are completely readable, to the point where just one slight change of direction, or the slight tilt of their weapon, can tell you exactly what they're going to do, even what their whole combo will be, it's not easy at all and I think you're just more used to the not simpler, but different way the more cartoonish games do it, love the video Edit: I should mention that I tried Hollow Knight once and I got my ASS BEAT by the common enemies, I just wasn't used to how the game looks or how it plays since I've grown up playing dark souls and now Elden Ring, we all struggle with new things

[@RoryAych]

Glad you like the video! I agree, Elden Ring is doing something *different* than Hollow Knight, and it succeeds at what it's trying to do. But a TON of people compare these games like their combat is equivalent and that is... not the case! So my point was both that these games have very different approaches to combat and that I just like HK's systems better. Interesting that you had the same experience but in the opposite direction lol

[@evanEPIC]

Great video, but I would like to briefly argue against your takeaway from Elden Ring's combat and what it encourages. As someone who has hundreds of hours in both games, I would argue that Elden Ring's bosses and Hollow Knight's bosses are remarkably similar in how one should approach them. In Hollow Knight, some bosses seemed like they were too hard or even unfair sometimes. I tried build after build for bosses I got stuck on until I finally decided to "get good" and really learn the move sets. Once I started approaching the game with that mindset, nothing was "too hard" or "unfair" anymore. A lot of that feeling from before was just me becoming frustrated and letting my laziness make me try to cheese the game. With Elden Ring, I knew what I was getting into as a souls game. I knew I'd have to learn movesets and be patient with progression or I'd just put the game down and not pick it back up (I tried ds1 on release, died 10 times, and returned it to GameStop lol). I knew from ds1, 2, and 3 that one can approach the game with any number of builds, but I went in with hollow knight strats: swing sword, dodge well, heal, don't die. I went through two entire playthroughs + dlc with the curved great sword and never once used magic. Even though the complex systems are available, that shit goes over my head. I had to be able to beat it by swinging the ol' sword around. I viewed it as 3D Hollow Knight, and it worked. Same as the charms getting as complex and broken as they can be (some being patched into oblivion), I only ever increased my nail distance, damage, or mobility. I hate the phrase "get good," but sometimes it's just what you have to do.

[@RoryAych]

@@evanEPIC Interesting perspective! I would agree that both games require a certain amount of just committing to learning the movesets. I think the big difference for me is really the leveling system. In ER, you can sort of choose how difficult the boss is by grinding boring enemies, which is unappealing to me. And sometimes you're expected to grind - you essentially can't beat Margit when you first reach him, as opposed to HK where you can beat bosses when you get to them as long as you're committed. Trying to beat Margit right away is actually giving yourself an unfair challenge lol I legit think I might like a linear souls game a lot more than ER, bc theoretically once you reach the boss, you can beat them. I'm planning on playing Bloodborne soon for that very reason!

[@thehelpfulwalnut7440]

@@RoryAych It depends on what you mean by grind. Elden ring does allow you to leave and do something else if you find a challenge just too overwhelming, but it never expects you to just go kill a couple giants or farm foot soldiers or something. The most effective form of "grinding" is just exploring the world in a different direction, and finding new tools or weapons. It will never ask you to repetitively redo content for the sake of XP, (well unless you count how some of the mini dungeons are overly samey and some bosses are reused too much, but that's a different topic) Once you have cleared something once, you should have no need of doing it again.

[@aerizakk]

you have a great speaking voice!

[@RoryAych]

Hey, thank you!

[@UzuMaki-v1m]

your video, it was good;the literature was great but sometimes i felt awkward when you say somethjng impactful. i think the problem was the delivery and the sound design maybe or the videography? not saying about the music of hollow knight. i think a good director and music designer will help with that and your channel. keep it up man, good video and nice infos.