When comparing Don't Starve Together vs Hollow Knight, the Slant community recommends Hollow Knight for most people. In the question“What are the best indie games on Steam?” Hollow Knight is ranked 12th while Don't Starve Together is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Hollow Knight is:
The visuals, music and sound effects are both quirky and charming. You may stay for the gameplay, but you come in for the lovable world.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Couch co-op makes the game even more fun as you all learn together
Getting together a group of friends to play Don't Starve Together adds a lot of enjoyment to the game. If you're all first timers, learning how to survive as you go along is amazing, since you get to share in the learning process and the experience together. As you craft and build your own forts, farms, and more, you find more and more ways to learn how to survive, making things less daunting than if you play the game alone.
Pro Pleasantly twisted sense of humor
There's a dark sense of humor that pervades the game. There's a humanoid spider boy who can grow a beard of silk. There's a living chest called Chester who acts like a dog. There's also silly info text, werepigs, trees that retaliate when you chop them, and many other things.
Pro Deep and varied crafting system
The crafting system has a lot of depth to it and there are tons of items to make. Starting with the recipe for a torch and a pickaxe. You can also make weapons, armor, and various laboratories that enable new technologies. Building new stuff and advancing is the key to surviving the coming winter.
Pro Tweak the gameplay settings to fit any skill level
The game gives you a lot of customization options. You can change the length of day, weather patterns, and spawn rates for resources and monsters. This allows you to adjust the difficulty level to suit your skill and preference.
Pro Unique mix of 2D and 3D art offers a change of pace
Don't Starve Together has a very unique art style that places two-dimensional characters in a three-dimensional setting. Even the waves in the sea look like cardboard cutouts used in a puppet show. This look and feel to the graphics is a nice change of pace from ultra-realistic games.
Pro The further you get, the more you will learn
Starting out you'll only be gathering twigs and grass, maybe chop a tree. You'll also gather basic food such as mushrooms and carrots. Then you'll start building your encampment, learning how the day/night cycle and the seasons work. Later on you'll start building massive farms, refridgerators, fortifications, and many other things. All of this is done for the sake of not starving.
As the game progresses, you will encounter mechanics such as drought, forest fires, the rainy, season, the cold and many others. To counteract these you need to plan properly and will probably die the first time around. Once your knowledge reaches a certain level, you'll be able to survive indefinitely.
Pro Great replay value
Don't Starve Together has randomly generated (customizable) levels, unlockable characters, a story mode, and you can also play it with up to 5 other friends. All of this helps keep subsequent attempts/playthroughs fresh.
Pro Has character
The visuals, music and sound effects are both quirky and charming. You may stay for the gameplay, but you come in for the lovable world.
Pro Rewarding exploration
The game world is enormous, with a massive amount of secret areas that really reward you for sniffing them out.
Pro Amazing art and soundtrack
Has a very dedicated aesthetic that works beautifully.
Pro Fun, challenging boss fights
With a couple exceptions, the boss fights are challenging in a way that does not feel cheap. If you die, it is because you screwed up and not because the game didn't feel like keeping you alive anymore.
Pro Amazing story and lore
Pro Large amount of content
Over 30 hours of gameplay.
Pro Tight and fluid movement
Every movement in the game makes you feel like you are in control.
Pro Has free DLC
Three DLCs have been released, adding additional quests for free.
Pro Mysterious story/lore
Makes you wanna explore more to find out whats going on and you may find secrets with NPCs that will tell you more or add to the mystery. This keeps things interesting.
Pro Forces you to learn attack patterns
You won't get far just going in swinging. Learning enemy behavior is much more important than in any other Metroidvania and that feels very rewarding.
Pro Interesting puzzles
Cons
Con Steep learning curve
The first few attempts will last only a couple of in-game days. This is because the game has various punishing mechanics, which you can only learn through trial and error. One such mechanic is the darkness, which will kill you in under a minute if you don't have a light source. Followed by packs of hounds that randomly spawn to kill you. In most cases preparation is key and you can't prepare without knowledge.
Con Can get repetitive
You'll have to repeatedly collect a lot of basic materials like twigs, grass, and ore. This is because most of the starting recipes share the same required materials. Even later in the game you'll be doing many repetitive tasks. Gathering enough firewood for winter is especially bad because you have to chop down dozens of trees. All of this is made worse by the limited inventory space, causing you to make the same trip multiple times.
Con Slow first 2 hours
Game feels slow until you acquire an important upgrade.
Con Choppy on certain hardware
A small percentage of users have issues with choppiness.
Con Too hard
Con Controller lag is an annoying issue
Deactivating VSync and lowering screen resolution did not resolve the problem. This issue has been widely reported by many players.
Con Map system
To get a map, you must find an NPC first for each area you visit. Map updates whenever you find a bench. You also get sent to your last-visited bench when you die. It does not update in real-time, but the map will update with wherever you have been when you find a bench. This is all assuming you have bought the base map from the NPC in that particular area.
Con Some glitches inside
Some speed runners use glitches to finish the game very fast, including glitches that cause you to go to some other area or glitches that make you fly, but you might find some by accident.
Con Hidden lore/story
The story and lore are revealed in a similar manner as Dark Souls. There is a lot of lore, but you have to piece it together on your own because they don't tell you much straight-up.
Con Unresolved crashing issues
A few users have reported that they get random crashes in between room loads and at startup.