Nine Sols
Nine Sols comes up often on lists of games for fans of Hollow Knight and Silksong to check out. It is indeed the same style of game (“Metroidvania”), and also shares an emphasis on combat and boss fights. Where it differs most is the mechanic of parrying. Whenever an enemy attacks, you can press a button to block it, and if you time it correctly, you charge up qi (essentially mana) that you can then use to counterattack. Mastering the rhythms of the boss fights is definitely fun and satisfying.
The player character belongs to an alien species called Solarians, who happen to look like cats, which leads to some cute character designs. But beneath the cartoony surface, there’s some pretty surreal and even disturbing imagery, like deformed meat monsters and bloody dismemberments.
It’s a cool aesthetic, but unfortunately, here’s where I’ll start (probably unfairly) comparing to Team Cherry’s masterpieces in the Hollow Knight series. HK’s art style is intricate and full of life, whereas the spaceship that Nine Sols takes place on seems flat and mechanical, and therefore boring, to my eye. Similarly, enemy animations feel stiff and rigid, not as alive as in HK.
As they say, the proof is in the pudding: as soon as I finished Nine Sols, even though I had fun with it, I immediately went back to replay Hollow Knight1, and haven’t looked back.