The sense of discovery and the pacing is very fluent and remains engaging throughout.ĭead Cells is very good and I appreciate that the developers have managed to avoid any sense of grind in journey. Hollow Knight is vastly epic with the scale of the world and how you discover each area makes you feel like a true adventurer.
Plus is it vastly more linear than Hollow Knight.
Players will chip away at the game through each retry and by developing their skills and gear, players will get through levels much more quickly and avoid any real grind that could’ve easily been there if the designers/developers were lacking in their craft.īut the trial and error, rinse and repeat format does restrict how you explore and repeating the levels over and over (even if randomly generated) does mean you’ll feel like you’ve been there, done that a little too much. However Dead Cells decides to shake things up massively and have you pretty much live out Ground-Hog day in a Metrovania game! It’s a great way to get players to advance their skills and gather pieces of the story through exploring multiple paths.ĭead Cells handles the live, die and repeat aspect very well. Hollow Knight does this efficiently and while there are multiple paths and areas you can visit without following the main path, you often are without knowing it. Classic Metroidvania games were actual pretty linear yet cleverly laid out items and keys in certain ways that meant backtracking felt more like natural exploration. Hollow Knight allows players to figure it out for themselves and be reasonable for tracking points of interest. Instead of spelling things out clearly as older games would label what items you had to use to progress into new areas. Hollow Knight takes the classic Metroidvania format yet changes around a few things to make it much more captivating. Each game though has its own approach to the structure of the game world and the overall pacing. There’s only one way to found out, Clash!! Dead Cells (2018) vs Hollow Knight (2017) Pacingīoth games have the Souls vibe that harshly tests the skills and patience of the player yet rewards them highly with loot and self-esteem (and also brutally destroys it). Both games are great but which one is better?
Hollow Knight is regarded as one of the best games ever made with its slower pacing yet highly engaging gameplay.Įlements such as exploration is engrossing, the mystery is fascinating, the visual style beautiful and the combat while very simply is gripping.
This makes Dead Cells an intense and captivating experience which has a Metroidvania heart but an outer layer of something much more aggressive. Dead Cells has fast paced action and thoughtful RPG elements that allow you to live, die, repeat and become stronger much like a Souls games. Both games are an enthralling combination of the Metroidvania formula and Souls-Bourne gameplay but each game as their own unique features.