After running a number of errands all around Pharloom, it was now time to reach Hornet's initial goal: the Citadel. There are two major options for you to get there, the path of the pilgrim and the path of the sinner, where I've been trying my luck with both, starting with the former on the Blasted Steps. But eventually I also ended up in the Bilewaters and the Mist. Spoilers for all these areas ahead!
First I climbed the Blasted Steps, where I had been before, but I eventually returned, because things got too hairy and I wanted to focus on Bellhart instead. And if there is a contest for who's going to be the Aspid of Silksong, the Driznit is certainly up there in terms of annoyance. That ricocheting projectile gets me more often than I'm willing to admit...
Curiously, you would think that turning this enemy into a boss becomes a special kind of hell, even more so when there's two of them at one, but the "Great Conchflies" weren't that bad, actually. Though, you certainly want to grab the bench up ahead first, or else you're in for a bench-to-boss nightmare.
And it looks like this boss fight is going to get a revenge, because once you've defeated one of them, the other will bail. I got my first "Needle Art" as a reward, the Neelde Strike, but I have yet to make real use of it, so it wasn't exactly worth the trouble so far. To be fair, I never was a big fan of the Nail Arts in Hollow Knight either.
In any case, I was stuck in this area for a moment. There is a Bellway Station right next to the bench, which is great, but I was out of money again. And this can sometimes be frustrating, because now I had to grind Rosaries from the nearby Judges just to get a proper exit out of this corner of the world. But Team Cherry has actually reduced the prices for benches and stations during the midgame in the first patch, so maybe that helps (in a second playthrough).
I love how Sherma, the pilgrim who Hornet encounters multiple time, potentially represents the state of mind of the player while going through the game. At first she is super enthusiastic, doing that catchy tune all day long, even though it might put her in danger.
"Yay, there is a new Hollow Knight game, let's do this!"
Once you meet her in Bellhart, she is getting some much needed rest. And when you find her on the Blasted Steps, she looks broken, like she wants this to be over. I hope she is not going to be the next Mira, but I'm mentally prepared for that scenario. I also hope that my upcoming choices haven't put her in danger... Because there is still one deadly roadblock ahead that might bring Sherma's lucky journey to an unlucky end.
Well, first you find a locked gate, where it appears that you need to activate the giant bells all over Pharloom, but I had already done that. And as a reward for your devotion to faith, you get a flaming ball & chain knocked right into your head by the "Last Judge", the big bad boss of the area and the final obstacle before the Citadel. It looks like the Judge has tears of void on his face, which is again reminiscent of the Godseeker, but it could also be just oil. Or blood.
He (or she, I think most bosses in this game are female, but it sounds male) trashed me and this didn't appear to be such a methodical boss fight as the Great Conchflies before. What's worse is the way back. The last bench isn't that far off, but without a double jump you have to pass at least one of those annoying Driznits and they do follow you.
The roads to the Moorwing and Sister Splinter were also quite long, but there you could just easily dash back and even jump over the enemies on your path, so I didn't really mind. But here I did, so I wasn't eager to get my teeth into this boss battle yet, not as long as there was another option.
That option was the Sinner's Road, which I previously despised quite a lot and which also had a big bench problem, but here I had an epiphany over night. I noticed that there is still a bench symbol on the map, it's just greyed out, like a bench that you have yet to pay for. This means that it wasn't just a prank, but that you maybe could unjam the mechanism by going under the bench.
And indeed, that was it... It's just the secret passage wasn't so easy to find. So far, the breakable walls always have been very obvious to spot or I couldn't find any at all, where at some point I must have stopped being thorough. But not anymore!
But this bench is also ridiculously evil. The last bench is somewhere down in Greymoor and there's lots to overcome until you can first reach this point, but then it asks you to go through what might be a foretaste of this game's Path of Pain. At least there is a shortcut that you can open before the bench... But it's similar level to the trapped bench at the end of the Hunter's March, where in that case I luckily had enough masks left to survive its trickery. Twice.
And this has only shifted the problem. Once you have the bench in the Sinner's Road, it's more motivating to continue from there, where the path forks in two directions. One takes you into the "Mist", an area best described as the Hollow Knight version of the Lost Woods. Though, I did not understand this at first and wandered through it aimlessly until I eventually died to the Wraiths there, evil spirits that chase you and can't be attacked. Again, it's a bit of an annoying climb to return there, so I wasn't really willing to lean into it.
The other direction forces you to avoid those annoying Muckroaches again, the enemies that act like hounds, but also face some big brutes, who are swinging chains at you. The last one eventually gets taken out permanently by an old friend, Garmond, where I was happy to see him again. But this encounter felt really random, because he was not there the first time I went through the tunnel.
You will eventually arrive at a vertical tunnel, where at its bottom you have to fight two Muckroaches at once in the next room. Spamming your tools in panic helps and this scores you another bench already. On top of that, you will make a new "friend", who provides you with a Silkeater, which lets you retrieve your cocoon without having to go back to it. So, it's like Confessor Jiji, just a lot more practical, because you can do it right out of your inventory.
In addition, you can find another Simple Key, which was my second one, and the access to the next area: Bilewater. Though, it's really not that different from the Sinner's Road, since there are still the murky maggot waters everywhere...
And I've been thinking about those. In Hollow Knight the lore of why it's always raining in the City of Tears is that it's located right beneath the Blue Lake. These whole worlds are underground anyway, for the most part, so you don't actually have a sky above. And this raises the question where the rain in Greymoor is actually coming from... It's not that piss water, isn't it? Please tell me it's not that piss water. Well, there was also an aquatic area featured in the final trailer, so maybe that's further above.
Again, the whole bench situation shifts. So, at the Bilewaters there is no bench in sight for miles and you have to return from the Sinner's Road in case of an emergency. You can also find a Weaverdent there, "Murglin", but this one was not in a good shape. I also only got a broken tool and no crest upgrade this time. Though, in order to upgrade a crest other than the Hunter, the game would have to make sure that you have the crest in question, so there is probably something else for that.
But before fighting through the Bilewaters I made another tour back to the Deep Docks, because I could bring the tool there to receive the "Silkshot", a gun that shoots silk. Funny. And there was another locked door there, which I wanted to investigate. Well, I also had another option for the Simple Key, right at the Sinner's Road:
There is a guy locked in one of the cages and this time you can't just break it open by force, you really need a Simple Key for it. He is called the "Green Prince", not to be confused with the Grey Prince, and looks like a locust. However, he wants to remain in this cell and I'm going to respect his wish for now.
This could lead to a defining choice eventually. Maybe later on I will only find his corpse in his cell and I will be missing out on an interesting boss fight. I don't know, but it's funny how knowing Hollow Knight makes you so much more aware of how your actions will have consequences and you keep thinking about every possible choice. When I first played Hollow Knight I simply did things and only found out later that I could have done things differently. Like, leaving a certain other "prince" to die.
As for opening the door at the Deep Docks, I was mainly hoping that it will let me access the vault at the very bottom. And maybe it does, but I wasn't able to figure this out so far. The enemies there are also very annoying – there is a new type of miner who recklessly throws bombs around that have a huge blast radius. I'm actually happy that I took the door into the Wormways first.
I was able to find another tool, one that temporarily imbues your needle with flame, which is pretty awesome, but so brief that it doesn't seem worth the slot. Additionally, you can forge a path into the Far Fields, which was even foreshadowed there by the corpse of a miner. I think you can use this route to bypass the first Lace battle, where I'm not sure what implications this could have on the rest of the game. Unlike the Moorwing, this boss battle felt like it was quite essential to the game's story, similar to first meeting Hornet in Hollow Knight.
Back to Bilewater, I had to use the bench at the bottom right of the Sinner's Road and always return from there, where it's a long way filled with indigenous people shooting darts at you, lots of traps, and annoying flies that explode and keep respawning. Nice. At least the bank that you can reach at the very end wasn't booby-trapped or defended by some boss... There is even a Bellway station right next to it, how unusually nice!
And that bench really was a milestone, because it gives you a much more convenient shot at the Mist. That spooky area has two entrances, one from the left at the Sinner's Road and one from the right at Bilewater. And the latter has its bench right next to it. So, I could now try to find out what this was all about, without any annoying detours.
As already mentioned, this is essentially Team Cherry's version of the Lost Woods. Whenever you leave the current area, the next one gets randomly chosen. And when you fall down into the mist, it will teleport you back to the entrance. Throughout it all you will keep running into Wraiths, who will hug you to death and who can't be fought. And there are also the little glowing butterflies (or whatever they are) that you know from the intro and from Lace.
Now, maybe there is a clue in the game of how to solve this, but I hadn't found (or understood) it and wasn't really sure what to do here. But I was sure that this could bring me into the Citadel, so I didn't want to give up. And after another night's epiphany I finally realized the obvious...
With that solved, you arrive at a mysterious building in the middle of the bog, which has a bench inside (luckily) and lots of pipes with hot steam shooting through them. By playing the Needolin in a certain spot you can also uncover the "trails" of Lace and someone else, with some talk about how "she spun us to break". Mysterious...
Eventually, you meet that other person, called the Phantom, playing a giant pipe organ (which is causing the steam elsewhere). This is obviously referring to the Phantom of the Opera, which is even emphasized by how the mask is first lying next to her and then she puts it on before the battle. And this is another Weaver sister, very similar to the Widow. It also felt equally doable. It's not exactly an easy fight, but it's choreographed very well, so you can easily learn how to dance with her. And most of her attacks only do single damage, which is fair.
I picked the Reaper to fight the Phantom, because she is very quick to parry. If you land one hit, she will immediately try to counter, so there is not point in having quick attacks. And before you know it, you can dance around her, while delivering heavy blows. The second phase will throw you out of the rhythm, however, because then she starts teleporting, making the fight less predictable.
Beating her earned me my third silk skill, the "Cross Stitch", which puts silk around your needle to deflect attacks. I haven't really tried this one yet, so let's see how useful this will be...
But more importantly... it finally let me reach my goal. This truly turned out to be an alternative way into the Citadel, where I was arriving at the Grand Bellway. This is where the second act begins, the "Citadel of Song". Well, all good plays have three acts, but this is looking to be the largest area in the game and like I still have a lot ahead of me in any case. It almost feels like my journey is only beginning...
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