Uh, I played a lot of
Hollow Knight 
Great game, definitely extremely dark souls inspired. For some reason I find the treks over and over again to bosses kinda tedious whereas I don't mind it at all in DS. Maybe because in DS you can usually just speedrun and avoid every enemy and get back in like 30-60 seconds whereas I feel here it takes a couple mins each time and sometimes a couple annoying enemies in your path you can't really avoid.
But the exploration is fantastic, art is great, combat is pretty good for 2d. I like the boss fights so far and the upgrades and the writing.
I wish the map was a little better since even putting your own markers down it's hard to remember what they stand for (I'm trying to keep consistent), but I guess it goes hand in hand that by making the mapping more work there's a greater sense of exploration. Tracking down the map guy each new area is high priority along with a bench and avoiding any boss fights if I can until I've at least got those two in an area.
I am also having the worst luck ever at finding the fast travel spots in new areas. I'll spend like 30-40 mins and explore them out, fight bosses, get benches, get new powers and somehow miss wherever the fast travel spot is and not finding any signage when I do. Like I've done Crossroads, Green area, Fungus, City of Tears to a point (beat Soul Master which was a paaaaain in butt fight just because he's got a ton of HP and I didn't expect part 2 and died on it first when I pulled my map out after the crash down :'( ), The cliffs in the upper left, crystals in the upper right and sewers below City of Tears.
I just spent the last 90 mins doing the Crystal Peaks and never finding a fast travel spot but finding the connector back to the village so thought maybe it doesn't have one and that's it. Then I checked out the sewers and spent the rest of the 90 mins exploring them out and never finding a fast travel spot there either. I found the arena and figured there must be a fast travel spot near it but couldn't find one and just ended up in a new part of City of Tears and got to King's Station. When I went to the station at king's station and it was broken and didn't work after being 90 mins since the last fast travel spot (and therefore 90 mins since last time I banked any of my souls at Queen Station) I was pretty
but then I thought maybe there's a working one as well so I went up and found the working one and banked my souls and saved and was good for the night.
Fast travel is big for me because when I find what looks like boss rooms I like to go back and bank all my souls so there's no risk. I mean yeah I can just keep dying/getting my souls back during the fight until I eventually beat it (had to do that with Soul Master, so between the 2-3 min run from the nearest bench and maybe 5-6 tries to take him down that was like 30+ mins; hate the fucking teleport guys on the way), but sometimes I fight a boss and I'm like "nah, I'm good" and figure I'll come back later when I'm stronger. I beat some decently challenging boss in the first area after a few tries and found out it was optional and all I got was a piece of mask.
Anyhow, this map is freaking huge. Lots of stuff to do and lots of secrets. I'm still at just +1 with my weapon (blacksmith says I need some type of ore for +2) and I should probably buy that fragile strength charm that increases strength as well. I haven't sold any of my books stuff to the guy in City of Tears because I'm not sure if I'll need it and I haven't been hard up for money yet. Bought the lantern, the small key, a few charm notches, handful of charms, and still doing ok. I figure if I get to the point where I suddenly need like 3,000-4,000 I'll go sell all my book stuff.
Right now I have lantern, flight, ground break, wall jump, dash abilities and looking around at places I can't get to it looks like I'm missing a double jump for areas too high, a way to be in acid water without instant dying, a way to break hard stone statues blocking things and a way to get past that damn wall of black beam in the gas place to the upper left of queen's station. Can't get a map there because I can't get past the black beam yet. I've still got a bunch of bosses left to fight in different spots and like half of this rightmost area of City of Tears to explore so I'll find the stuff. Game feels very non-linear, which is good but also can get kinda lost.
I do wish there were more fast travel stations though. Some of the game feels a bit re-running through the same areas over and over while exploring because fast travel spots are far between and not necessarily near where you want to go when you get a new ability and are going back to an old area. I get that Souls is sorta similar but Souls is actually a lot more player friendly, there's fast travel bonfires after every boss kill and really plenty of them. Souls would be like every bench in Hollow Knight being a fast travel spot. This is definitely more tedious than Souls (which is actually a pretty player friendly series imo).
