Fun fact i actually have Japanese friends on discord.
Its a Kemono server so we have things in common and i am not a complete weabo so i dont ask them retarded anime related questions even if i do enjoy anime.
So i have some first hand experience whit what Japanese gamers want or like.
Here are the 2 impressions i got.

A) Its is true that Japanese people dont like grim-dark games most of my discord friends from japan for instance have complained that Wilds lacks most of the charm of older monster hunter games and blame capcom wanting to appeal to westerners. At no point did i hear any complaints about the games difficulty surprisingly which brings me to point B.
B) Most Japanese gamers like easy games. While more hardcore gamers do exist in japan majority of gamers in japan want games to be easy. Like the exact opposite of Western gamers. I had a friend quit FFIX because he complained that FFXIVs normal difficulty content was getting to hard (Compared to people in EU and EU mostly complaining that normal content is brain-dead easy). Main reason i imagine is that Japanese people have an extremely stressed life in Japans economy so they dont want to experience any friction in games because there entire life is more or less friction.
C) Hollow knight actually does have a decently big fan-base in japan. So the negative revue's OP has posted is mostly just tourists who got the game because they heard its popular its not an actual reflection of the games popularity among actual Japanese gamers.

Anyone went from an active anime watcher to a passive fan like me.
I am 40 btw. I used to watch at lest 5 or more shows a month. Nowadays i watch like 1-3 at best occasionally i might not even watch an Aime one month and its usually only stuff that is ether critically praised or seams interesting specifically to me.
I dont even watch stuff right as it airs anymore. I only started watching Beastars yesterday for instance. And the anime i watched last month and a half was Onepice Vano country arc. And bore that i watched Isekai Uncle and Freiren in a single month but nothing else.
And ironically its not that i dont have the time i think in general i started caring just as much about other forms of media like movies or TV shows.

>>715528936
I cam here to say i did the same thing.
If a game cant get me to care about the games world and characters in the first 30 minutes and the game-play is automated ass i dont care how cute the anime girls are.
This looks like the kind of game deigned for people who literally dont even like actual game and just want to feel like they own anime girls.