In this thread: people complaining who are apparently bad at game mechanics and can’t or won’t learn to improve.
Just beat Widow second attempt.
The run back has you start on one screen, traverse two screens, and done. I got as high as 12 Mississippi counting during it.
If you’re not able to commit to learning new strategies and using game mechanics to adapt to a game’s difficulty, and experience it as the developers intended, maybe it’s not for you. You can always watch a lore video or let’s play by other gamers to get the story if that’s the goal. This is Dark Souls 2 all over again, and I will personally say as someone who initially hated it, then gave it another chance; When you persist and triumph through grit, the game leaves a lasting impression and sense of accomplishment that you cheat yourself out of with a difficulty slider. That’s my favorite game in the series now, which is a deeply unpopular opinion, unsurprisingly.
This debate pops up every now and then and my opinion remains the same, there are plenty of games that aren’t meant to be a challenge to choose from. Part of games that are built to be a challenge is being able to reflect on how far you grew in the process, and people hate to hear it but ‘git gud’ is a real thing for those who believe things worth doing are hard.
Yeah I think as long as the devs are forward about it no problem. I have plenty of ‘hard things’ in my day to day life and I’m not looking for more of that in a videogame. Give me a Stardew or Factorio everytime - I want to relax and design things. Different games are for different people and that’s a good thing. Any game made to satisfy everyone will almost certainly satisfy no one.
Absolutely, it’s important to know what you like and want. Hell, lots of people work off vibes and go through phases where certain game types stimulate them, then fall off of those. Like MMOs and online FPS used to be my main thing, now I stick to single player story driven games. I’m not about to go loudly pout about how Stellaris doesn’t work for me and should be changed to appeal specifically to my wants, too busy with other games (and life).
I personally think Outer Wilds should give you the whole lore as an audiobook, not everyone wants to go hunting for clues and reading a bunch of old conversations between dead people in order to figure out what’s going on…
I mean, an audio book of Outer Wilds would be dope.
Sigh this shit again, if it’s the creators decision to have a game with finely tuned hard difficulty, so be it, that’s the creators creative decision and it should be respected
“death of the author” suggests some of the author’s intent is lost when a work is consumed by the audience.
To a degree I guess as the audiences own experiences will determine there own interpretation of the work, but in this situation I don’t think someone’s own experiences is going to impact too much the fact that silksong is hard as nails at points
I can accept stupid decisions. I don’t have to respect them.
No you don’t, so you can either mod the game or not play the game right?
Respect is a weird word. It seems to have 2 nearly opposite meanings (kind of like literally):
- Deep admiration for someone or something for their abilities, qualities, or achievements
- Due regard for the feelings, wishes, or rights of others
So the first one implies that respect must be earned. The second implies that everyone must be respected by default (their due regard), thus respect is unearned.
I’ve always heard:
Respect is given, not earned.
Trust is earned and easy to lose.
Don’t confuse politeness with respect.
Don’t like it, don’t buy it. I’m happy for team cherry and their success. It’s not for me but I don’t resent them that it isn’t. This nothing burger discussion is yet another herring designed to drive clicks and traffic off of the work of people who ACTUALLY create something of worth. Modern parasitism at its best.
In my opinion, the game is not particularly difficult. That is, if you’ve played through the original Hollow Knight. Which most people haven’t. In fact, it looks to me like a lot of people jumping on the hype don’t have too much experience with metroidvanias and soulslikes.
It’s a sequel, so intended to be played after the original. Why do we care what people who haven’t played the first game think?
It’s difficult for me and I like it. I played Hollow Knight but didn’t finish it because it was too frustrating late game. Silksong to me is not frustrating because difficulty is mainly in figuring out how to pass the challenge, not doing reflexes which I don’t have. Most of the things I heard people complain about are solved by not rushing around with failing strategy but by thinking what the game recently suggested you to do for this particular encounter.
I actually think bringing in Hollow Knight experience aka “I already know everything” might be the reason why some people are frustrated. Like I heard a person who claimed to get all the achievements in HK complain that the second phase of one boss is terrible because they spent a hundred tries to dodge all the projectiles while you can just stand at the corner of the arena where non of them will hit you and use the tools this game gives you to win the fight.
My biggest complaint is the sheer lack of rewards when I finish a fight. Give me any currency.
I have spent so much of this game broke, unable to buy the things I need to advance any side plots.
I’m currently stuck on the fight for the Music in the top left of the citadel. The double boss at the end is brutal. But because no enemy in that fight drops monster parts, I have to quit to grinding it to go grind more materials to build equipment, despite having slain 20+ enemies each run.
I’m about 10 hours into silksong and it’s amazing, don’t get me wrong. But the majority of the boss fights seem… cheap?
Like, their difficulty doesn’t come from their various attacks, or their environment. Instead, it usually comes from the fact that they do double damage, or the fact that they spam the same two attacks over and over way too quickly, or the fact that they can do the same add summon three times in a row and make what was a controllable situation practically impossible
Now, I’ve 112% the OG hollow knight and beaten true radiance, so I’m not against difficult boss fights. In fact I relish the feeling of learning their moves and patterns after every single death
But when the moves are “ram into wall. Then ram into wall again” it becomes incredibly annoying
Some of the boss fights felt amazing once you start learning their attack patterns, but then others were just… lacking. The savage fly one comes to mind. It wasn’t particularly a difficult boss itself. But when it summoned ads, it became a fight around rng. It wasn’t a fun fight at all. Felt like the devs realised it was too easy and chucked in ads then left it there.
Separately, why on earth the boss doesn’t receive damage for slamming down on the spiky enemy when its spikes are deployed… Missed opportunity!
I disagree about the fly that they just wanted to make you die more.
The boss itself is super easy, it has two attacks which are not only easily dodged but also leave a lot of opportunities to attack and move around.
So in essence the boss is a bag with silk to heal or use magic attacks while the real problem you face is using those resources to control the minions it summons.
So yeah if you go with the strategy to kill the boss fast you will suffer but if you act as a hunter to control the fight you will win.
Just my take on this boss after 100+ tries, and do consider it a good and interesting boss fight.
Or you can just rely on luck and brute force.
The Beastfly in the Chapel isn’t too bad, since you can leverage its slam to take out any ads, however there is another arena where you fight it again and it spawns flying ads who shoot projectiles which deal double damage AND the boss breaks the platforms you’re standing on.
Feels like bullshit fighting against it.
Runbacks are a lame attempt at artificially increasing difficulty. I’ll happily die on that hill. I love difficult games, but there is a fine line between frustration and difficult.
Elden Ring (at least all the bits I played through) and Sekiro absolutely nailed it. None of the run backs were particularly egregious, and it let me really focus on experimenting and learning to feel out the difficult fights. Celeste is another good example. I have dropped hours on some of the later levels trying to master them, but never once got frustrated.
Hollow Knight I never finished because I got stuck on a boss and the runback was just way too long and annoying. I loved everything else about the game and want to finish it eventually.
Edit: I think they have their place as “mods” that you could enable to increase difficulty, and i’d actually probably enjoy it that way. Just designing the game around them is where i draw the line.
Unpopular opinion but I like boss runbacks.
To me it feels like “if you don’t survive the journey, you’re too weak for the boss itself” it brings me down and makes me calmer until I reach the boss.
I like them because I will think what I did wrong, not just going to do that wrong thing again until I get lucky with my wrong strategy.
I like them because it forces you to try to salvage a fight instead of just conceding after a bad start. The time spent getting to the boss is investment you don’t want to waste.
I think this is really just an issue of the tools and abilities not being inherently linked to the related bosses.
FYI quickhop attacking is faster than ground combos and you can weave in the trio dagger throws when you are dodging away from close attacks. Also your attack will negate enemy attacks weapon hitbox(but you still have to dodge bodily contact). The poison tool upgrade is overbalanced and makes a lot of fights a joke.
This is a really good point.
I’ve also found myself messing up the run back but committing to the fight anyway with a few masks down. You can either heal back up by breaking the cocoon, or practice starting the fight low and keep the silk for later (one of the best changes from the first game IMO is making the cocoon an asset in contrast to the ghost that would harass you).
Another aspect is the run back itself. When you struggle a lot with a boss (as I often do), you will have to do the run back so many times that you passively start getting better at traversing the map. And even if the specific combos you used on the boss itself don’t necessarily translate to other bosses, the movement skills likely will keep being useful.
To be fair, From has like many games to learn from that while Cherry only has HK. I’ll never forget the sheer pain of the Frigid Outskirts from Dark Souls 2.
At least that’s an optional area. Now, the run back from pre-SotFS No Man’s Wharf? That was a pain.
The run to Blue Smelter nearly gave me a coronary.
Although DS2 gave us a reprieve with despawning enemies eventually, making runbacks feel rather poignant when you’re walking an empty world.
I spent 3 hours stuck on one boss fight.
In most games, finally beating it would have me saying “thank fuck its over”.
In silksong, I’m saying “fuck yeah that was a good boss”. It’s a very different feeling, and one that I haven’t had the pleasure of enjoying in quite some time.
That said.
I think both hollow knight and silksong should have easy modes. It would be fine. It doesn’t hurt me any that someone else can have an easier time. People need to remember that video games are entertainment, and the sweaty “hardcore gamers” can fuck off with their usual judgemental elitism.
This is exactly it. I think the game is a goddamn masterpiece. The most infuriating fights feel like huge accomplishments, not just relief. Phenomenal game all around, but that difficulty curve isn’t for everyone. I can say the same about any Soulsborne game, love them to death but it’s definitely too much for some folks. Difficulty options are a good thing, if a compromise has to be made just have it disable achievements or w/e.
A lot of comments tying runbacks to difficulty, when they have nothing to do with each other. I haven’t playing silksong but I played about half of the original and uninstalled it, despite the fact it is so many people’s favorite metroidvania and metroidvania is one of my favorite genres.
Not putting checkpoints close to boss fights is not difficulty. It is disrespectful of the player’s time, which is a problem hollow Knight was full of.
I disagree, runbacks are as much difficulty as having to recover your currency after death, or even having to recover your items after dying in Minecraft. It’s a punishment for dying, and a way to make you treat it seriously.
It can incentivise the wrong things, punish experimentation and make players stick with what they know, even if better options exist. You’re free to dislike it, and it has downsides, but dismissing it as “not difficulty” is just dishonest.
The crystal boss that you first encounter sitting on the save bench though, that’s was just evil 😆
I liked Hollow Knight, but yes, it kind of was. Frequent destinations were far away from fast travel, and there was a low level area that they transformed into a high level area later in the game specifically so that crossing the map wouldn’t be a cake walk. I’d argue that earning the power to make an area like that into a cake walk is a core part of the fun.
Hollow knight had a custom fast travel option in late game. You could place a dreamgate almost anywhere and just zwoop to it.
It’s been a few years, but mostly I just remember needing to go to the shop over and over again from various points in the map and it being a long trek. I don’t remember a custom fast travel point, so either I never got it, or it came so late that I didn’t remember its utility.
Agreed, the highly specific gate locations were what ultimately made me abandon the game, in combination with various other factors (sheer difficulty, etc.).
Not putting checkpoints close to boss fights is not difficulty.
You’re pointing a finger at the Soulslike genre here, not only HK. Some games may abandon it, but this is common enough to be called a genre stable.
Just like the “hit hit, dodge/parry, hit hit” combat pattern, losing/recovering currency, enemies respawning on bonfire use… etc.
I think this whole genre is wack, TBH. I don’t even find it difficult, I just think what they test is perseverance in the face of misery and tediousness, which’s a bizarre thing to test in a video game. It’s almost as if it’s straight up telling you: this is a serious video game, no room for fun here.
Meanwhile, Ninja Gaiden proved you can simultaneously have extreme difficulty AND fun like one million years ago.
You’re pointing a finger at the Soulslike genre here, not only HK
I played some Elden Ring and as I recall there were check points next to the bosses.
Ender’s Lilies is a metroidvania listed as a soulslike and always has a check point next to the boss room (highly recommend it btw).
You’re pointing a finger at the Soulslike genre here, not only HK. Some games may abandon it, but this is common enough to be called a genre stable.
You should try Salt and Sanctuary, Sekiro, Bloodborne, The Surge, Lords of the Fallen, or Lies of P—all had boss runbacks, and that’s ignoring HK, Silksong, and the original Souls games.
Apparently I shouldn’t. But if there’s a list of soulslike games that do it, and a list of soulslike games that don’t, then it is not in fact true for the genre and is instead true for specific games.
It’s true that I’d prefer it in no games, but it’s also less frustrating in straight soulslikes. The problem with HK is that it is a synthesis of metroidvania and soulslikes in the most time-disrespecting ways possible. Really most of my frustrations are with map design, and then they add not getting maps until you find the map guy (in samey environments I can’t remember well enough without a map).
What made me put it down was playing for an hour going through multiple zones without finding either a map guy or a bench somehow then dying. I’m pretty sure just being able to see the map would have been enough to keep me playing.
For this new fangled soulsvania genre there are numerous better entries that I thoroughly enjoyed. Ender Lilies and Blasphemus are the first 2 that come to mind.
Personally I think we’d all be better off not even calling them Soulslikes, for this very reason. Full-blown Soulslikes have so many more nuances and systems that add to the experience.
Yeah, huh, apparently HK is tagged on Steam as a Souls-like, but I disagree… just brutal difficulty in a melee-heavy game isn’t enough to merit that badge, but oh, well.
I think this whole genre is wack, TBH.
Agreed. I’m not sure why I would waste my time with shit like this when it’s just objectively not fun for me to play.
Different strokes for different folks, so if you like it more power to you, but I’d rather play games that are fun to play for me.
I only have a certain amount of time to play video games, and if I can’t make any progress at all in an hour or two, why would I bother continuing when an hour or two is usually all I have in a day to play your game?
I’ve decided not to bother picking up silksong because I found HK tedious, frustrating, and unrewarding.
People who enjoy such games are clearly masochist who don’t know what a good game is if it hit them in the face. Idk why these sorts of “gamers” even exist. I long for the halcyon era where good stuff like Mario, Zelda and Sonic were the staples of hardcore gamers.
You can make the case that it’s not a fun use of our time but how is it not tied to difficulty? Being able to get to the boss with enough health or consummables is certainly part of the intended challenge.
I haven’t played silksong, but most games like Dark Souls and the like, getting back to the boss without taking damage is pretty easy. It’s not difficulty, it’s just time.
Also in Fromsoft games runbacks are a deliberate design choice that forces the player to take a quick break after dying to a boss.
I’ll admit I don’t even remember doing runbacks in hollow Knight (or even having to fight any boss in the part of the game I played more than one or twice), but in other games where you have to run to the boss you normally just run past everything without fighting it and go into the boss with full resources. No challenge - just running past everything, which not only wastes time but also totally breaks immersion for me.
In any case, my overall discontent is with all the time wasting added together than any specific thing.
I will say the run backs in Silksong/HK are better than, for example, DS1 for the reason you give. In DS you just run past enemies and it’s trivial. In the HK games running past enemies becomes a platforming challenge. Yeah, you can still do it, but you still have to engage with the enemy even if that’s just jumping over them. DS you just run past them and they almost always too slow to engage with you if you’re sprinting.
I’m not really used to metroidvanias having runbacks honestly. Most I’ve played either have save points close to the bosses or just drop you outside the boss room if you die.
I wouldn’t mind checkpoints before the boss even if it’s not a bench and more of a “retry” option.
But the annoyance of run backs raises the stakes of the fight a bit. Like, “Please let me win this time so I don’t have to do another run back.”
But I was annoyed at a particular fight that started without warning and I had not really explored the new area yet, so I didn’t have a chance to find a closer bench.
I never actually liked FromSoft’s themselves, but several Soulslikes I really enjoyed did away with runbacks, or always had checkpoints right before bosses.
I really just want people to start evaluating each design decision Dark Souls made on its own - stop worshipping the whole as being perfect, because it most definitely is not. So many of the knowledge checks (poise, anyone?) are just there for experienced players to lord over confused shrubs.
My partner loved that aspect of the game. Each to their own, that’s why it’s good games have differences.
disagree. they are related and absolutely add to the difficulty of learning how to beat a new boss. it’s way easier to develop a strategy and muscle memory if you can retry the boss fight as soon as possible without having to redo other sections of the game first.
I disagree. Having a slight forced intermission between attempts both gives me pause to reflect on what I needed to do better, and presents a risk of not making it back to my death point, which keeps me mindful.
I like Silksong’s runbacks a lot more than I’ve liked the ones in 3d soulslikes though. In Dark Souls for example the risk of losing your corpse felt really high, whereas in Silksong you very often have either a gate that unlocks a quicker route back, or a clever acrobatic solution that reliably avoids all the enemies.
Have you considered that the run back is trying to tell you something? The game doesn’t want you to bash your face against the same enemy the same way. It may not even want you to fight that boss yet at all.
The run back is meant to be an incentive to think about your options. Do I have other areas to explore? What do I keep dying to? Am I overlooking an obvious weakness during a particular boss mechanic, or am I not using an ability as effectively as I could be to stay alive?
If you let the player immediately run back into a boss, they will veg out and do just that until they eventually get lucky and barely down a boss by the skin of their teeth. But that’s not how you should be approaching these fights.
Sometimes the most productive run back even involves a good night’s rest.
I agree with this argument in Dark Souls. It isn’t quite the same in Silksong though. Upgrades are very limited. You can’t just swap weapons and go farm upgrades for it. You have one weapon and can’t upgrade until a few hours into the game, and after the one you can’t upgrade again until some future point. Health and silk upgrades are also incredibly limited, and you ability upgrade slots are equally limited.
In DS/Elden Ring, you’re supposed to go explore and spend your souls on upgrades. I’m Silksong there are very few real combat upgrades to be purchased. You can’t just level up or upgrade weapons to get more powerful.
I will need to play more of silksong to be able to comment fully, but I felt that, even though you could understandably say all the same stuff about Hollow Knight, I still do think that the only times I struggled in HK (on required content) I later found out about an upgrade that was available if i had looked that would have made the fight much easier (nail upgrade, ability, charm, more hp, etc).
No, not to the same degree as Elden Ring, i agree, but I do think HK’s exploration played a very similar role as it did in Elden Ring. In both games i would tell people to only bash your head against a boss if you want to hurt yourself, otherwise go explore.
Yeah, I just recently unlocked wall clinging. It feels like now there are several directions to go, but before there was largely just one. Also, because of the way charms are limited (only having two slots for each of three types) finding charms feels much less meaningful. You can only ever have two main combat charms, so you can never find something that’ll let you totally change things like you may in HK1.
Maybe it’s only the beginning (I’m about 12h in, so not that early) of the game that feels this way, but yeah so far it doesn’t feel like extra exploration will bail you out if you’re stuck.
Have you considered that the run back is trying to tell you something? The game doesn’t want you to bash your face against the same enemy the same way. It may not even want you to fight that boss yet at all.
The run back is meant to be an incentive to think about your options. Do I have other areas to explore?
Would be a lot more effective if I didn’t have to go pick up my shade. Which often can’t be accessed without locking yourself into the fight again.
The other day, I fought the boss of the abyss in the dark souls 1 dlc. It took me 5ish attempts, and I changed my gear to have more magic resist after I got further in the fight and got merked by magic attacks. All spending 2 minutes between each attempt running back to the fog gate did was make me zone out and wish I could just get right back to it.
Btw, the original runback was mega man, where you get to try the boss until you run out of lives then you have to do the entire level again. Still way more interesting than running past everything in souls games.
Do you believe DS and Megaman could have been even more iconic if they had listened to players and made their runs back shorter?
My point is, it’s not like the designers didn’t know what they were doing, this is a very obvious aspect of their gameplay. And regardless of how minor inconveniences like this make us feel as players, we don’t know that it’s not precisely those lows that contrast with the highs to create the intended experiences which made those games cult hits to begin with. You wouldn’t look at a Rembrandt and say, “look how much of the painting is just black! You’re wasting all this space! You could add so much detail and context in there!”
I’m a firm believer that “given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”. If players weren’t complaining about the run back, then they would be complaining about the empty flask drinking animation. Inconvenience is not a convincing argument to me. Just like any art, games are free to evoke any and all emotions. It only becomes a problem if the emotion they keep evoking is boredom lol. But even then, boredom is a valid tool on the artist’s palette; sometimes the only ones who are getting bored are the boring people.
I loved Ender’s Lilies and it had save points outside the boss rooms. I do not believe the game would have been more iconic if I had to run through several rooms of enemies before fighting a boss again.
The joy of victory came from overcoming a difficult fight, not from avoiding a tedious repeat.I actually said I like the mega man version. I think the dark souls version is boring and doesn’t do anything of what you’re saying. I don’t even remember run backs from when I played half of hollow Knight because I didn’t even think the game was hard. It just wasted time in so many ways that I decided I’d rather play a different game that didn’t, but if people had to deal with the time wasting design that I remember and also do dark souls boss run backs then I’m not surprised they’re irritated.
Edit: and no I don’t think DS would be less iconic if you didn’t have to do boring runs between boss attempts…
We should definitely talk about how levying criticism, especially thoughtful criticism, is treated as a personal attack by other people playing the same game. It’s a bizarre form of tribalism.
We should also talk about how “Difficulty is part of the game and if you find it too difficult then this game is not for you” is not a personal attack, but a perfectly valid response to said criticism.
This excuse stopped working the day I opened a tough-as-nails game like Furi, saw it had a difficulty menu, said “That’s nice”, and went back to challenging myself against the bosses on default settings.
It’s such a huge cop-out of self control, and especially falls to acknowledge that the forms of difficulty in a game are often varied - and someone might suck at only one of them.
If the criticism is limited to “It’s too hard.” then I would agree. But that’s not a valid response to criticisms about specific design elements like “these power ups feel like they do nothing”, even if it’s a perception issue at hand you need to address the actual observation and not jump on with ‘git gud’.
I was learning a game a few months ago and struggling with understanding a specific character, so I went to the official discord and asked for advice, not complaining it was too hard, just asking for what kinds of strategies work and I was met with endless ‘try harder, scrub’ responses and literally no actual advice. I quit playing the game because the community was so up it’s own asshole.
And for sake of clarity. I don’t play HK, it’s not my preferred genre and my favorite game (that I can replay) is Noita so I am familiar with reviews that complain about difficulty. It’s fine for games to be hard and it’s also fine for people who find the games too hard to leave a review saying they found it too hard. That is part of informing buyers so people can only pick it up if they desire that kind of challenge.
It’s just a trend that is all too common in gaming. People like a game or a developer and become incapable of seeing an opinion that they disagree without taking it as a personal slight. It’s weird.
Part of that is definitely gatekeeping.
But a lot of it speaks to… people are REALLY stupid these days. You notice it a lot when buildcrafting comes up. If it is more complicated than “raise strength to the soft cap” then people start making up massive excuses on how it is too complicated to explain and you are a fool for asking and MAYBE to go watch their favorite youtuber and so forth. When I feel particularly trollish I make a “like bags of sand” joke but the reality is that they just do not have the ability to actually learn what they are talking about. They can barely even regurgitate what an influencer told them.
And that has more or less broken fighting game discourse online. Because it is no longer “oh yeah, so and so has a super easy 20 hit combo” and inherently has to be “your crouching light jab is a +4 but your crouching light kick is -2” because EVERYONE is an expert in frame counting and so forth.
Souls gamers more or less broke with Elden Ring. The base game is probably the most accessible any Souls game has ever been and most people learned fast they can just beat Malenia by doing an arcane bleed build or getting a big fricking hammer to stunlock her, but they felt like they were super cool for it (which is the point of a Souls game). Then the DLC came out. And people felt the need to shit on the games media folk saying “So… this shit is kinda hard?” before rapidly getting their poopy pushed in by silver knight equivalents.
And it very much broke people. The discourse went from “Git gud. But in all seriousness, Capra is a boss that is designed to make sure you know when to block and when to dodge” into “Git gud you fucking loser. I beat it with no problems”. And we are seeing similar discourse with Silksong as a lot of us talk about how some of the runbacks are REAL bad and get responded to with “That is just what Hollow Knight is”… even though there was like one bad runback in the entirety of that game (Mantis Lord… and Radiance is just a different kind of fuckery).
thanks. I hear a lot about this game and was wondering about it but Im a relaxagamer though so its good to know.
I think it’s a great game for veterans who like challenges like myself.
But I have to call out team Cherry for their interviews: They said they wanted anyone to be able to pick up this as their first Hollow Knight game and just start playing… Sorry, but, bullshit. the difficulty ramp is too quick, double damage comes out to early and the boss fights get more challenging quickly. See the weaver for instance, a fight I’d place around the difficulty of Grimm, but there’s double damage and you probably only have 5 health.
Also they mentioned part of the game’s difficulty was due to Hornet’s competence and utility… Ghost is canonically a better fighter than Hornet, so by that logic they should have made the game easier (yes I’m being silly about this part).
Didn’t personally watch the interview in question (or forgot by now) so I don’t know what they meant, but it definitely feels like lore wise Silksong can stand as an independent game with what I’ve discovered so far.
Regarding difficulty, Hollow Knight isn’t the only game that could have prepared you for Silksong I think.
I think what it helps a lot with is familiarity and mindset. The overall game loop is very similar.That said, I think it’s wise to give HK a try before buying Silksong. It’s a cheaper game, worth playing through if you’re into these kinds of experiences and if you don’t enjoy it, chances are Silksong will not be much fun for you either.
I think its fine for a player new to the series but you’ve got to the type of person that is willing to learn and willing to die over and over. For people who play these kinds of games its not insane to expect them to pick it up.
The runbacks don’t bother me too much so far. I do think there’s some skills in the runback, but it relies heavily on the level designer as well. An ideal runback:
- is relatively short, you should have time to reflect on the boss, but not get sidetracked
- has enemies that drop currency, so repeated runs slowly build you up (assuming you always collect your shade)
- has enemies that train you on the bosses timings or counters (if the boss is parry heavy, put a tricky-to-parry enemy enroute back)
- has a “speed route” that let’s you bypass most or all of the run once you’ve figured it out
These factors make a run both interesting game play and still a form of progression. A badly designed run lacks these factors, being just a slow slog to get back into the boss fight.
My biggest complaint so far is the double damage. Every boss and so many common enemies do nothing but double damage. Why even have 5 HP instead of 3? And it being 5 (and bind healing 3) have compounding effects with this problem. Taking a single hit on the way to a boss actually costs you an entire “boss hit” so runbacks are worse all around. Trying to heal mid boss only gets you “one and a half” hits back which takes a lot of silk to build up and probably is a worse deal for you than just using the silk to power more attacks.
Double damage would suck a lot less (and be a better mechanic) if you had 6 HP to start, or if you healed 4 at a time, or if bosses didnt always do 2 damage. There’s no tension to avoiding punishing hits because every move is equally punishing. It makes fights feel very conservative which is maybe intentionally meant to evoke Hornet as a careful hunter, using traps and plans to take down big foes.
I find the opposite though, she feels fragile and reactive. I wish starting damage was higher too. I had this issue in Hollow Knight as well, everything takes too many hits. Common enemies are spongy, bosses take at least 33% too long across the board. Especially it gets annoying since a lot of bosses so far get spammier and faster towards their final phases, so you spend so much time dodging the same attacks and looking for openings to chip hits in. Skills and traps don’t do enough damage to feel especially useful either.
I also hate, and this is another compounding factor, the complete lack of enemy HP bars. On regular enemies this is annoying (gotta count my hits) but on bosses it feels negligent. Bosses have multiple phases and take so long to kill, it would be nice to know if my last run was just a hit or 2 away from the end or if I still had a 3rd phase to plan for. It adds to the poor perception of skills and traps as well. Sting Shard and Thread Storm both seem to hit several times, around a half-dozen, but neither seems to do much more damage than a couple of regular hits.
Overall I’m really loving Silksong, the art and music are top notch. The DLC for HK convinced me that Team Cherry and I disagree about some fundamental ideas in game design, and HKSS bears that out.
Feels like healing in micro transactions form where you want to buy a thing that cost 3 currency but the shop only sells at five currency.
Skills and traps don’t do enough damage to feel especially useful either.
There’s one trap that actually is pretty strong if you know how to abuse it.
I’m not going to spoil where or how to get it, but flying beetles that home in on the enemy and repeatedly bump into it to deal damage can be pretty busted… especially when they still attack during phase change animations that stop the player from moving.
I also especially like a particular early game trap for this:
trap spoiler
the cluster spike trap, because if you throw it well just before initiating a boss cutscene, it can activate and hit them 6-7 times while they are doing their initial taunt.
“Fragile and reactive” IMO is a fair take, but I think what the game is pushing you to do is become comfortable enough with your mobility to be aggressive while still avoiding hits. I don’t know exactly where you are in progression, but you continue to tack on new capabilities to your kit that make it easier and easier to avoid things while still laying out damage.
I am sure there is enough room in the game design for people to take totally different approaches here, though. If you know a given enemy’s movement well, you can absolutely be confident in using your silk for attacks instead of healing.
I also hate, and this is another compounding factor, the complete lack of enemy HP bars.
IIRC, HK1 had a badge that turns these on. I’m not far enough into the new game to have found this yet, though.
I’m pretty early into the game as well, so I almost didn’t say anything. But even if theres a charm that adds HP bars later, I would be annoyed about it. Why wait so long? I’m over 10 hours in. Why take a slot with it? I get similar annoyances about the compass, but at least that one I can understand because maybe some people like the challenge of landmark navigation using just the maps. There is a skill there, and it is part of the skillset of Exploration (a major pillar of design in any metroidvania).
The yellow tools, in general, I’m iffy about the design of. So far I only have 3: compass, more shards, and auto-collect beads. Of these, auto-beads is the most obviously useful. You need many beads, and they get lost pretty easy. Shards are super common and don’t have many uses. But none of these are essential, and all of them get less useful the later into the game you get. The tradeoff is only meaningful early game, and seems to encourage a balance between memorizing the levels and grinding, neither are amazing activities.
Having the compass charm tied to ALL map markers would certainly up the utility of it, though it’s gating another feature behind both a purchase and a charm. I’ve also only found 1 semi useful trap\red-charm so far. Maybe having more traps and skills that required shell bits would put more pressure on needing them and make the charm that gives extras more appeal for a trap-heavy play style?
Again, I grant that maybe I’m too early in the game yet, but I feel like these systems should be coming together and cohering more after a half-dozen bosses and 10 hours of play.
The game is so much more massive than I ever expected. I can tell you that you’re still super early in the game based on what you’ve found. There are many, many red tools and while you’ll absolutely have favorites, there are definitely some that seem underwhelming until you find a specific situation or region where they excel.
There is a crazy huge amount of content and capability in the game, and if it seems like a slow burn for you now, IMHO that’s because the game does a pretty good job of pacing new things so that you have time to evaluate and master each new piece of kit as it comes up.
The other thing about shards is that you have to sort of learn to find a balance with how much trap usage you employ; what seems to me to be the intended design (based purely on vibes) is that you mostly only use them against certain bosses/arena rooms or in situations where your needle can’t easily work due to the terrain.
I thought similarly to you at first, with shards being a huge surplus and not necessary. I think this is an introduction period of sorts where you can get used to how the controls work and experiment freely. But then there were wide stretches of the game where I had a relative drought of them. Now that (I THINK??) I’m approaching the end, I’ve learned to use my shards reserve as a sort of measurement for whether I’m comfortable enough fighting in a certain situation. If it dips below half, I’m leaning too much on traps and need to take a step back and think harder about how to approach things with needle combat.
On the topic of yellow tools… I can definitely relate to the compass feeling mandatory, but there were several places for me where I had compelling reason to choose to forego it for something else. That was legitimately interesting and I don’t have many other examples of games where that’s possible. There are a bunch more yellow tools you’ll find with more interesting effects as well. And eventually (being deliberately vague) you will reach a point where you won’t feel like you’re sacrificing as much to keep the compass equipped if you want. (Though there is also a point where you will have seen enough of the world that you won’t need it, strictly speaking, because you either have the areas memorized or can navigate based on room shapes and major landmarks without your precise location.)
Godspeed, fellow hunter
I agree with a lot of your commentary. A couple times so far a “good run back” has been the grind that let me buy some of the higher-cost items from shops. Sometimes it’s frustrating but usually once you get used to the path it goes quickly. There have been a few times where I didn’t realize there was a closer bench until after I already beat the fight lol.
Double damage would suck a lot less (and be a better mechanic) if you had 6 HP to start, or if you healed 4 at a time, or if bosses didn’t always do 2 damage.
Most of the bosses have 1-damage and 2-damage attacks. Also 6HP and increased healing are available relatively early (still a good way into the game but it’s a long game).
Skills and traps don’t do enough damage to feel especially useful either.
I have to strongly disagree with this. Especially when you start getting more traps/tools and upgrades for them, they get very strong and don’t require you to get dangerously close to the enemy like the basic attacks. Some of the bosses and many of the arenas I’ve gotten through mainly thanks to the consumable traps.
Common enemies are spongy, bosses take at least 33% too long across the board.
Like in most metroidvanias, you start off struggling against common enemies but as you get upgrades they become weaker relative to you. However I do agree that the trash mobs are a bit too tanky. Maybe somewhere between 50% and 25% less health would be ideal. I’m not sure I would adjust the bosses though.
I definitely agree that the constant double damage just feels horrible. Hollow Knight was always about balancing heals versus punishes (one reason I loved Dark Souls 2 so much) but you basically need to heal if you get tapped once and… yeah.
I think a bigger issue is that upgrades feel so much rarer. Part of it is that you have MUCH fewer equipped charms at any given time… so there is much less point in just giving you a new one every 10 or so minutes. And I am not sure if max health is lower but it similarly feels like I find a mask shared maybe every 2 hours or so which further lends itself to feeling weak. And no idea what the deal is with silk but a single pip when it takes like five pips to even do a heavy attack feels pointless?
And while some vendors do sell upgrades, it always feels like a struggle to afford them unless you are actively grinding because of the constant need to buy maps and so forth (something I hated in 1 as well, but that at least had a single currency). Although I did get a nice stretch where I just mopped up and bought out most shops so that is at least nice.
And same with the attacks. Apparently I may have actually ran past Threadstorm while exploring and never even noticed it? And that is the power everyone says to use.
deleted by creator
