Great, but the backtracking wore me down

I understand why Hollow Knight is so beloved, and for most of my time with it I was right there with everyone else. The art, the music and the slow sense of discovery are all genuinely wonderful, and Hallownest is a world worth getting lost in. That last part eventually became my problem, though, because for a long early stretch there is no fast travel and the map fills in slowly and grudgingly. I spent more time than I would like retracing already-cleared corridors just to reach the one bench near the thing I actually wanted to do. The map system in particular asks for more patience than I had, withholding markers and forcing you to track down an out-of-the-way cartographer for each new area. None of this makes it a bad game, and the combat and the bosses absolutely earned the praise. But the fandom tends to gloss over how much busywork sits between the highlights, and I wish I had loved the journey as much as the destination.