Curse of the Dead Gods (As "haunting of the dead, unoriginal games")

 After the surprising success of the darkest dungeon, the creators decided to launch this thing out in the market to pack a few more dollars, but that's it. (edit 2024: It wasn't the creators of DD, aparently there's a bunch of other devs that plagarized the DD aesthetics and put 'em into their own games)

 The lack of variety in this game is astonishing, there are three types of temples with three types of traps and three types of enemies each, the rooms are always the same and the temple's layout is more or less indistinct.

 Not to mention there are only eight weapons, out of which two are useless (Hammer, broadsword, too slow!) and two are minimal variations of other weapons (daggers, claws: throwing axes, throwing daggers, really?), and one (the bow) is clearly better than the other three making it the default choice and thus reducing the effective number of weapons to one. 

Now, normally this would be a huge problem, but solvable in the long run. They could, hypothetically, add new content. But in addition to this, there's the "corruption" system, which is a countdown to get a curse, that annoys you to the end of the run. 

 Everything corrupts you; getting new gear, using certain gear, getting hit by enemies, hell, even passing through a door corrupts you for some reason. It's not like I'm crossing Red Hook's studio doorway (Passtech Games, it was passtech).

 The combat mechanics themselves are very simplistic, hooked from similar games, but poorly implemented. Parries in particular are mostly undoable without a great extent of effort not worthwhile.

 There's no story to talk about, and there is no feeling of progression. There are no mind-blowing relics, no overpowering weapons, and no incredible buffs or debuffs for that matter. 

There's no permanent increment of attack power, health, or stamina, and with no story to talk about the game reduces itself to some dude whom we know nothing about stumbling his way through rooms fighting the same monsters in some pseudo-Mayan setting in an attrition battle against boredom.

 1/10

Notes on Hollow Knight (Hollow game?)

 The reason why I downloaded this game was the exquisite graphics and indisputably beautiful art design. 

Regardless, many problems have surged not from the fastidious and overrated "soul-like" gameplay (that, for those not familiar with it, means that the game goes in an ever-increasing difficulty and, even if the game started with entertaining and balanced fights, it quickly degenerates into a timing hell where the slightest mistake takes you to re-do the same fights over and over until you defeat the foe supposedly filling you with enormous satisfaction, or so they say) but rather from the amorphous, child-like background that you have to deduce out of loose NPC commentaries and "lore tables" whose content was written in a non-methodic sort of prophetic verse.

I think that even the "Creepypastas" have more consistency than this.  (edit 11/24 they do)

Plot reminder (chronologically);

Some insects created by a bug goddess "Radiance" decided to change their worship target to "The Pale King" who we have to assume is a marvelous king just because he sent people to build a subway station, like Stalin.

Like all gods, when she started to feel left aside she got angry and chose to kill them all, but instead of casting a flood or making fire and sulfur rain from the sky she creates and sends some kind of zombie virus.

Meanwhile, pale Stalin thought that his current frame was inappropriate for a bug king, so he changed his wyrm form for a bug one leaving his rotting ex-body just outside the bug's town, bringing even more disease to his beloved kingdom and showing us his deep insight and a hint of his proclaimed divining ability. When the taxes were no longer cashing in, the king realizes that something was wrong, that all his subjects were dying because of this god-sent infection.

 Instead of negotiating with Radiance, he comes up with the great idea of creating a "hollow" living vessel to trap the goddess in, to do so he kills a bunch of people until he finds out that to strip the person of all sapience it has to be born in a place called "the abyss" that resemblance a lot to the inside of a well, much to my displeasure. Two of the children of the abyss, Hornet and Ghost, are discarded and thrown trapped into the abyss while one of them, "The Hollow Knight", is sacrificed as planned: chained within a black egg-like prison sealed somehow. Of course, this plan fails spectacularly, because the hollow guy turns out not to be hollow enough, go figures.

The infection leaks out the egg and spreads killing and turning everyone in its path, except for the manticores who are immune for some reason, the king dies as well, and the fate of the world, or at least of Hollownest, falls in the hand of Ghost (the protagonist) who manage to escape the abyss with magic or something. None of this is told, I had to read it in the wiki. The only thing the game mentions is the magnificent plan of the king. 

There are five "different" endings, one more disappointing than the other. I'll list them. 

1 - You take the place of the hollow guy.

2 - You take the place of the hollow guy.

3 - You kill the goddess, dying in the process.  

4 - You kill the goddess, dying in the process.  

5 - You kill the goddess, dying and destroying Hollownest in the process.  

The plot seemed so preposterous, so absurdly banal that I thought the characters were a representation of something else, for example, that the pale king was a neglecting father, that the infection was hatred, or that the void was childhood traumas (hence the "embrace the void inside of you") but we always had several parts of the story that simply didn't match; Who's "Ghost", where was he all this time, why would he take the place of his brother and not simply leave the place, how do the nail masters fit in all this, what the heck are the dreamers, etc. In the end, I feel like a carping critic. always pointing to the negative side of things, but this game had such great reviews that I couldn't stand it.

So that's it, that's the Hollow Knight's true nature; a plotless soul-like game with charming art.  4/10