I rewatched GMTK's video on Hollow Knight a few days ago for a thing I'm working on, and Mark mentions the corpse run as one of the things that doesn't work in the game. Specifically he mentions how it prevents you from exploring new areas if you lose interest or feel unprepared for in the area where you died. It's a good point, and one that I also felt playing Hollow Knight. It made me want to dig a bit deeper into it since I really don't mind it so much in Souls games and I think it falls primarily on how punishing a corpse run is.
In Souls games, you eventually learn that losing your souls/blood/exp whatever isn't really a big deal, even a large amount of them. You'll always be able to get it back. This is really important for Elden Ring, where like Hollow Knight there are a lot of branching paths and other areas you can explore as opposed to the earlier Souls games which encourage you to finish the current area that you're exploring. Hollow Knight doesn't have a leveling system (nor should it), so instead you have to go back for your money and half your magic meter. It's really the latter that's the problem since magic is both amazing for offense and your main resource for healing.
If it had just been money, I don't think it would have been as big of a deal. Money is much less important in the latter half of the game and very easy to come by. It's so non-essential and wouldn't have the same psychological impact that losing souls does that honestly the best decision probably would have been to cut the mechanic altogether. Ultimately I think its less that corpse runs = bad* then that in Hollow Knight it feels like the mechanic is there because Team Cherry leaned a little too hard on the Dark Souls inspiration in this instance.
*EDIT: Just wanted to add the probably obvious addendum that this is meant more as a clarifying statement and less than an indictment of anyone's taste. There's also mechanics as well as whole genres that do not work for me even in their best form. Not liking corpse runs in general is fine, but also Hollow Knight's implementation isn't particularly great either, at least in my view.
In Souls games, you eventually learn that losing your souls/blood/exp whatever isn't really a big deal, even a large amount of them. You'll always be able to get it back. This is really important for Elden Ring, where like Hollow Knight there are a lot of branching paths and other areas you can explore as opposed to the earlier Souls games which encourage you to finish the current area that you're exploring. Hollow Knight doesn't have a leveling system (nor should it), so instead you have to go back for your money and half your magic meter. It's really the latter that's the problem since magic is both amazing for offense and your main resource for healing.
If it had just been money, I don't think it would have been as big of a deal. Money is much less important in the latter half of the game and very easy to come by. It's so non-essential and wouldn't have the same psychological impact that losing souls does that honestly the best decision probably would have been to cut the mechanic altogether. Ultimately I think its less that corpse runs = bad* then that in Hollow Knight it feels like the mechanic is there because Team Cherry leaned a little too hard on the Dark Souls inspiration in this instance.
*EDIT: Just wanted to add the probably obvious addendum that this is meant more as a clarifying statement and less than an indictment of anyone's taste. There's also mechanics as well as whole genres that do not work for me even in their best form. Not liking corpse runs in general is fine, but also Hollow Knight's implementation isn't particularly great either, at least in my view.
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