The game drove me nuts, I kept running around trying to figure out what's next and spent at least 7hrs on the game total (not all at once) before I had to take a step back and that was 2 months ago.
I'm now 19 hours into my game, I'd say it's my favourite 'Metroidvania' game since Super Metroid and the above is one of the reasons I really appreciate it. That's the experience some people are going to have and it can drive away customers, but the way to correct that is to build in conveniences so typically these games will always tell you "you are here and you next objective is right here".
But for me that just degrades the experience. Occasionally being lost and not always having a clear objective improves the experience for me, as I'm good enough at these games not to reach the point of frustration, and Hollow Knight is designed brilliantly around this concept. Very much like the level design in Dark Souls, where there's a lot of 'you're not supposed to be here yet but if you want to try have fun!' going on. It's also great how after you get the wall jump and dash it opens up so there's no specific order to play through or what you get next, which really opens it up. Also how well it spreads them out rather than keeping you on a constant drip feed of upgrades. 18 hours in and I just found the acid resistant trait, so I think I have all 'abilities' except for the double jump and whatever is needed to clear those black lines.
Also love just how massive the game is. Most of these take their queue from Super Metroid and make up to but no bigger and usually a smaller world map. I don't know how it compares 1 to 1 but I feel like Hollow Knight went much bigger than Super Metroid, or at the very least it feels that way with how many 'zones' there are.
