Yeah the bosses are definitely my least favourite thing about Super Metroid, and the combat in SotN is extremely simple. I think the other elements of both games, such as exploration, story and whatever Hollow Knight does just as well if not better. SotN has a better soundtrack, and maybe a more interesting setting but the inverted castle always kills that game for me.
IDK, as a whole the soundtrack of all 3 games is stellar, SM is the weakest but that's just because of how limited the hardware can be at times.
I prefer HK but I feel like there's no real best answer.
SotN becomes a borefest with the inverted castle, all the good soundtracks are gone, the design is a not as interesting and the bosses are a bit meh.
If we're ignoring the 2nd half SotN is probably the best Castlevania out there by a long shot.
The fact that HK is the only one of the 3 with an actual postgame kinds of make it better even though that's kinda unfair to SM when postgame wasn't really a widespread thing (seriously out of the 3 SNES FF, only 1 had any postgame content at all).
That we're having this conversation at all is proof of how good HK is really.
People were hyping it up for an entire year. They were getting frustrated with us Switch holdouts. They turned out to be right!
I expected another Axiom Verge : a good game but nothing THAT spectacular.
Crows are avoiding me now.