Sounds similar to something I wrote a long time ago. It's punishing, it's frustrating and there does not seem to be a story at all. Why should I spend my time with this? Meanwhile I played about 80 hours and have reached 93% and all those thoughts are ancient history now. The game focuses on combat, skills and discovering the story through cryptic dialogues, signs and details (alonf with some very few cutscenes late in the game). It's up to you to puzzle together what happened there a long time ago and what your purpose in all this might be.Not having a map in the beginning is really odd (even more since you need to get a new one every time you reach a new area) but there is a time when it's normal for you to go blind into a new area just to search for the map. It's like an additional achievement. There is no real obvious goal for quite some time. It's all about getting farther and discovering every detail. Also getting additional charms and raising your abilities is part of the game. If you want to have a goal: reach every area and secret in the game - as I said: it's all about exploration. Regarding the punishment when failing a boss battle (having to backtrack the way back) this has been discussed over and over. Nearly always there will be a bench nearby but sometimes you have to find it first. Secrets, secrets, secrets. The more secrets, abilities and charms you will find the easier it will be to play the game. At the beginning you'll need to fight quite good to beat some boss battles but later when you have enough charms it's up to you if you want to fight perfect or simply try some good charms to make your life a lot easier. With this new update there is also a way to prevent the walt to the boss completely but again: you'll have to work for it before being able to use it. You'll need a special item (which you cannot miss) and a special amount of "collectibles". This is not a narrative driven game in the usual sense of the way even though it has some great lore which can be found when discovering everything the game has to offer. It's also not a game that you play just to get it finished - take your time and play it whenever you feel like it. To make it short: you might enjoy it the moment you realize what kind of a game this is. I was about to uninstall it before I even had finished it and now I am playing it again and again to maybe also be one of those few who managed to finish this 100% (A special jump and run area and a final boss might destroy those plans but I'll try .... I take my time and I'll enjoy the world for as long as I can).

I'm not saying you're wrong for feeling that way, but to me those are all virtues of the game :) Not really knowing where to go and just exploring for the sake of it is to me a big part of what makes the genre appealing and I'm pretty impressed with how Hollow Knight doesn't hold your hand as much as a lot of similar modern games do.

There is however a difference between hand holding (which I don't like either) and having the passage to the next area a forgettable little side shoot from a very large room (i.e. Forsaken Crossroads to the forest bit) I spent ages looking around, going round and round the area (as its a circle more or less), even brough the key of the seller which opened one room to an NPC who just said I can't help you, 950 for nothing. Maybe the design gets better, I don't have time for it.
I didn't think it was that punishing, just not very well laid out, maybe there is a bench nearby the bad guy, I wouldn't know as I spent half the time looking for a flipping map and the other half going over the same tiles trying to work out where to go next, its that really small almost hidden passage off to the side of a really big room by the way, no indicators or anything, and looking at the map you probably wouldn't even know its there.

There are often several ways into different areas and the ones you usually find first are pretty obvious. Maybe you found a way which you weren't even supposed to find yet. In example to get from the first area there is one path to the next (greenpath) but to be able to go there you obviously need to have a special ability because the enemy which is blocking the way cannot be passed with what you have in the beginning. So yo search all other parts of the quite small area until you get to a certain boss battle and after it you simply follow the way to get your first ability with which you will be able to defeat the enemy mentioned above to enter the next area greenpath. I never had any difficulties to find my way to another area. Problem for me was that in some parts of the game you accidentally open up many areas at the same time. It's unavoidable if you see the coplete map in the end which is gigantic.

But I just read what you wrote here:

"Maybe the design gets better, I don't have time for it. "

If you don't have time this game is just ot made for you. This game requires time to actually be enjoyable at all.

Yeah I'm with you on this. 30 hours in and I'm just taking it off my hard drive.

Wow, I have been necro'd! To be fair to the game I did have another play through and got a lot further into it, and quite enjoyed it. It isn't a bad game by any means, just needs a lot of time put into it. There is lots to like and I don't regret buying it,, just maybe I am getting old and don't have the time I once did for things like metroid.