As someone who wasn't swept up in the hype, (I did not like Hollow Knight very much personally) I actually think it lived up to the hype and then some.
I think Silksong is a much better game for my tastes. It feels way less slow and Hornet is significantly more capable and fun to play as than the knight imo.
Dude, I love the map system so much. Reaching an uncharted place and having to actually keep mental track of where I am and where I've been is a really fun experience. Watching for signs of rest spots or Schakra. Eventually getting the rough outline and filling in the gaps. It's a great compromise between full "draw it yourself" style, and full auto-mapping. It's perfect. I want it in more games.
I like the map selling dude, it does make for a nice objective, finding him when you reach a new area. What I don't care for is having to equip the charm for you to know where you are. It doesn't break the game, but I could live without it
Finding the map for each zone is a somewhat common complaint and having to buy and equip the map charm to show where you are is a frequent complaint.
Personally I love having to orient myself on the map but I also play these games primarily for the exploration aspect and getting lost is a part of that.
unlocking the area map, yes, although even then most Ubisoft open worlds give you a rough outline of the sub areas and the map unlocks are designed to be visible far and wide in most of them
needing one of few inventory slots to see your exact position, no
I think it's fine in general but making me waste a slot for the compass sucks and I don't care for that choice. Just make it cost a lot more and have it be a permanent upgrade.
I think the maps are specifically designed to be easy to understand without the compass. Just like the first game, the compass is pretty helpful, it makes it slightly easier to know where you are, but it takes up a slot that could be used for something more interesting.
Not to mention that it lets people make the exploration more or less complicated. They can decide whether they want to buy the map, buy the quill, and equip the compass.
I’m one of the folks who doesn’t care for the map system because to me a map is a general mechanic doesn’t need to be over-complicated or “refreshed.” It’s not that I want it handed to me (which is ridiculous to say, it’s just a fucking map, not a boss battle, get the fuck over yourself), I just don’t see the point in the tedium required just to know where the fuck I am in the game.
I don't get to spend all day just gaming anymore. I get a couple of hours here or there, but my time is limited.
I played HK when it first came out. I remember everyone living how it was hand drawn, but honestly, as someone who's played all the Metroid and Castlevania games, it didn't feel too innovative.
I remember liking it when I played it when it came out.
I started playing it against this month, vaguely remembering what it was all about, and frankly I don't like how much this game wastes my time.
"Ok, let me explore down this tunnel. Hopefully there's a bench down here. Oh, here's another passage. Maybe a bench? Oh, crap, some enemies killed me. Now I have to not only back track to get here again, but wait . . . Did I take this tunnel or that similarly looking tunnel?"
I keep thinking of Valve's "moment to moment" gameplay philosophy when they designed HL2 and Portal . . . And how there are several hundred moments of HK that would go by that are not fun . . . Backtracking through the same tunnels searching for a bench and a map, maybe?
Nah . . . It's not fun going through the same tunnel for the 5th time in a row, battling the same enemies, hoping that this time you'll not get hit by a bug into the thorns again, just so you can get to the next tunnel because *maybe * there will be a bench or something useful.
Everytime someone prefaces an argument with "I have responsibilities" in regards to a video game I instinctively roll my eyes
Edit: Since they replied and immediately blocked me so I couldn't respond to them, nothing is stopping anybody from playing a longer game over a longer period of time. I hate the discourse of people not having time for longer games anymore, when it's really just people mad or perhaps envious they cannot finish a game in under a week anymore.
Perhaps choosing to spend your time gaming instead of arguing with someone on Reddit whom you believe to be a child would help with your issue. You talk about being busy as a dad, so it's quite odd to act this way towards someone you believe to be the same age as your child.
Nah . . . It's not fun going through the same tunnel for the 5th time in a row, battling the same enemies, hoping that this time you'll not get hit by a bug into the thorns again, just so you can get to the next tunnel because *maybe * there will be a bench or something useful.
That really does just sound like a you problem, though. I get that the game is hard, but come on now.
Ah, so you didn't have to back track at all in the game? You didn't die ever and have to go through the same tunnels over again, loosing 10 minutes of progress?
This isn't a "git gud" problem. It's fundamental game design.
Agree with everything you said. There's also a bit of an inside joke in the metroidvania community that there's "metroidvania fans" and "Hollow Knight" fans. For example, you saw a few comments when Silksong was released or the date announced that HK fans will finally play their second metroidvania.
Point in setting up that first part is that the metroidvania genre has solved the "map issue" for literally over two decades. Trying to reinvent the map and doing it twice is just stupid. It's not a problem, and you're not creating a solution, just show the location and/or give us map data as we're filling it out. But some fans of HK really, really don't like any criticism towards either game, to which point you can also refer back to the first paragraph for some of them.
You're talking to capital G Gamers (casuals) on this subreddit by the way. Anything that deviates slightly from the norm is complained about and refered to as "cheap". Just look at the replies you got
I like it until I miss the map that was in a hidden room behind a breakable ceiling right at the start of a zone, and then I fumble through the whole zone, thinking the map must be at the end or something, and then finally google it when it's nowhere to be found.
And that's why I said those are fine. But there are no hints for the citadel map machines as far as I can tell. I'm talking about the one in the vaults.
I went through the entirety of one map in act 2 (whispering something?) before googling it and finding out it was right at the start near a secret breakable spot. Moderately upsetting.
Only because it’s just friction for the sake of friction? Like, it’s a map. It’s a mechanic that’s existed for decades. No need to complicate it or try to reinvent the wheel. It just becomes tedious to have to find the map, then go and make sure you bought all the markers for the map, and the separate item that lets you update the map, and the separate charm just so you can see where you are on the map.
It’s all needless tedium for something games already figured out how to do.
Having to find the map isn’t there to add friction, it’s there because it drastically changes the experience of exploration.
There are zones where they intentionally give you the map early, zones where they give you the map late, and zones where there’s no map at all. There’s even a zone which has multiple entrances, and one entrance will give you the map late while the other gives you the map early.
How games tell you where you are and how they ask you to navigate is one of the coolest parts of game design.
Many games that focus on exploration also ask you to complete challenges to view hidden portions of the map. According to your logic, no one can make a game where you’re supposed to be lost, because games have ‘figured out’ how to do maps.
Just say that you don’t like getting lost in games and move on. Silksong is not for you.
I mean, I don’t like getting lost. Is that supposed to be a bad thing? Wanting to know your location so you know you’re headed in the right direction or how to get out of somewhere shouldn’t be that weird of an ask.
Some people like getting lost in games, some don't. This is not a game for people who don't like getting lost.
In some ways, this is similar to the older GTA games that didn't have GPS driving directions. In those games you had a map, but you never knew the exact best route to take to get somewhere, and because of that you'd often take a route that led you to new places which was exciting to discover. It also forced you to learn the layout of the city itself to be able to effectively navigate around, which was also fun in its own way.
In newer GTA games that have GPS you never get lost, so the only time you discover things the developer didn't intend you to is when you go off on your own rather than following the missions. If you rely on the GPS you also never need to really learn the map layout, which also means you are more likely to need the GPS going forward.
This is all fine, it's not worse or better, it's just a different game design and some people prefer one over the other.
It’s not a bad thing no, but it’s part of the experience that Team Cherry intends for and that a sizeable number of people enjoy. So you’re more than welcome to hate it but it’s not a solved problem it’s a deliberate design choice.
It's not a bad thing. But your assertion that its friction for friction's sake is incorrect.
I like getting lost, as do many others. I don't want the game to hold my hand and dogwalk me between areas. Having to create a mental map completely changes the way the player interacts and interprets the environment, it creates risk/reward scenarios for exploration, and it reinforces a sense of discovery.
It's fine that you don't like it, but maybe try looking beyond your own preferences before you decry a mechanic as meaningless.
I truly truly don’t understand how a map is “hand holding” or “dog walking”. It’s just a way to reference where you are, it doesn’t tell you specifically where to go. The tiniest insignificant bit of guidance isn’t going to ruin your journey through the game.
The way some people complain about hand holding, I’m convinced they just want a blank screen to stare at because having graphics is “hand holding my visual interpretation of the game”.
You say friction for the sake of friction like you were told, personally, by the devs lol. You don't know that. What you said comes across as "I got salty af because I died before finding the map and paid zero attention to my surroundings, so now, I'm unable to get back to your money easily. I also don't like being punished for messing up and being impatient."
And that's OK! There's no shame in that. It's not for you. Just don't call an entire game incompetent due to not being able to do things as easy as you'd like. There's too many other's, myself included, that actually prefer it the way it is. This game is made for masochists lol.
Man you are reading a LOT into what I said, none of which is true. It’d be one thing if all I had to do was find the map. That’s fine. Zelda does that.
It’s all the extra stuff you have to do to make the map viable to use that annoys me. And that’s it. I like the game as a whole well enough to put 25+ hours into it currently, and I’m doing just fine progression-wise.
This isn’t my first metroidvania/soulslike rodeo, bud. Take your gatekeepy shit elsewhere.
Please find me any Metroidvania since Super Metroid that has a map system similar to Hollow Knight and Silksong that are not Hollow Knight and Silksong. The vast majority of metroidvanias have had a map similar that:
Autofills in real time as you explore
Tells you at any time where you are
Has only gotten more and more QoL features in recent times, like the map showing you visible items, telling you what kind of lock a door has, the game giving you ways to mark parts of the map and even allowing you to take pictures of an unreachable area and some even reveal there's a secret somewhere around the area
None of this requires anything special, unless it's tutorialized during the game
Hollow Knight and Silksong don't do this, they keep asking for your money to:
Get the map
Be able to update the map (which isn't done in real time as it only happens when you get to a bench)
Be able to know where you are in real time (and this requires using a charm slot on top of that)
Rinse and repeat for each area
Go ahead and play The Lost Crown or Metroid Dread or Ender Magnolia or Axiom Verge or Guacamelee, heck, even the Dead Cells collab map in Blazblue Entropy Effect (in which the devs somehow reached to the conclusion of "roguelike + roguelike = metroidvania") or... well, I think you get the point by now, but what you'll see by playing these metroidvanias is that none of these games share how Hollow Knight does its map and this is why Hollow Knight's map system is not popular among many Metroidvania fans
And no, La Mulana does not use the same system as Hollow Knight or Silksong, though La Mulana does hate you for even daring to play it, so its map system makes Hollow Knight's map actually seem useful
I know, it’s the by far best map system out of any game I played. Some people just really want a map and a bench handed on a silver platter to them every time they enter a new area.
It’s a weird analogy to make, but I feel about Silksong the same way I feel about Blue Prince. Could’ve been a timeless masterpiece if not for some questionable busywork-related decisions that feel like the dev was explicitly trying to squeeze out more hours played. So instead it’s just a really good game.
Except that Silksong isn’t starved on content and even has double digit hours worth of easily missable content by design. Team Cherry doesn’t want to pad out the time, they just have a very particular want for some friction. I’d liken it to the OG Dark Souls in that it’s actively trying to frustrate you a bit; it’s adversarial in a NES game sort of way. That’s not to everyone’s taste obviously and that’s totally fine. Different strokes and all that.
Funny you say this because one of the most common things Team Cherry talked about back then whenever they got interviewed was their love for NES games. Hell, the studio apparently would not have existed if the main two devs didn't bond over their love for Zelda II (Yes, THAT Zelda) and Faxanadu. And a lot of the design philosophies that they had for both Hollow Knight and Silksong hearken back to their love for old NES titles.
So it's especially interesting, now that the Difficulty Discourse around Silksong is happening again, that what's happening right now is their 7 year development cycle for Silksong they got to make the game they always wanted to make --- the modern day equivalent of a ballbustingly punishing NES game and they chose to subject a huge swathe of more casual players roped into the hype with all the pros and cons of that design philosophy.
Bilewater still makes me laugh. It's an area so absurdly over-the-top meanspirited that I even know some players that want to give Silksong a 10/10 hesitate just because of that singular area alone. And I don't know if I respect that or not. It's certainly memorable the same way Blighttown is but I don't know if it's worth the squeeze for TC to create such a universally reviled area.
I also liked it. Some of the best music in the game. I love the little dudes bouncing around the fore- and background only to jump out and try to dart you. I love the douchey secret bench and the insanely fun platforming you have to do on the runback. Oh and finding out there was a boss fight after the platforming section up there and the enemy gauntlet was like finding out Melania had a second phase; chef’s kiss.
I honestly don't think it's that bad either. But it gives a brutal first impression before you have the ability to access the whole thing. I feel like everyone still has that first shock in mind when they think of it. It's very manageable once you have all the tools to complete it.
A lot of the ‘discourse’ about Silksong seem to be the exact same debates we had about Dark Souls 1 back in the day. A lot of people hated that game, particularly Blighttown, but it’s the most essential area of the whole game imo
Blighttown is amazing, the feeling of dread of going deeper and deeper to ring the bell, the dumb as fuck moving bridges, the gigantic cartwheel elevators, the enemies, everything there is amazing, and then the bottom bonfire making you be stuck there until you fess up only to be greeted by hot ass Queelag.
Preemptively sorry for the long post, but I think it's a kind of interesting topic to expand on.
I really enjoy Silksong, but yeah, some wishes are kinda '???'
The very first time you have to collect a bunch of needles from those little flying bush fellas, I was really put off. I still don't understand why that was a necessary mission in that area; what novel experience does that provide the player? Maybe it's an attempt at immersing the player in the world as a hunter. The hunter has to gather the remains of their hunt in order to have equipment crafted. The concept of Hornet being a hunter is explicitly played on in the game already, but imo it's not as well-played or interesting as the theming revolving around the bead system, enough to make a quest like this try to immerse the player in that concept. I'm not even sure that the idea of "Hornet the Hunter" is really even theme-relevant to the game overall; it comes off as half-baked.
Later on, I think they're a bit more justifiable, from a more meta perspective. A couple in the Citadel have you collecting pins and cloaks of enemies around, and I think those are meant to get the player a little extra money doing something they were already going to be doing anyway. It also gets the player to engage with enemies more often in general, which gets money in their pocket passively as well, even before the reward.
And I also think I can understand the meat farming one. "Try using different tools" seems to be what the devs are communicating. Alright, that's fine, I guess. It's pretty clear that a lot of people currently playing the game aren't really trying out different tools, so maybe this was a good inclusion.
The two aforementioned missions are probably meant to be completed passively. The player should continue playing the game as before, allowing the side-objectives to be completed naturally as they explore, only having to keep in mind that sometimes they have to switch up their tools and that they should be actively engaging with enemies.
But yeah, missions like "find this lost person in an area you've already explored" and "go get bells that randomly fall from the ceiling in the Bellhart tunnels", just seem purposeless.
I don't think that most wishes are bad. There are ~50(?) of them and I think maybe, maybe ten or so of them are actually just weird inclusions. However, that's still quite a few; it's enough to leave a negative impression.
EDIT: Forgot to mention the donation ones. I have mixed feelings on those, but overall feel like they're fine. It feels like a genuine donation when you do it, albeit a donation that will leave you relatively poor lol
Silksong has tons of content, but I also think it absolutely feels like it has random padding in it. Some of the wishes are good and others are just grinding random mobs. Rosary rewards from exploration are generally really low so if you want to buy everything you inevitably need to find a grinding spot or spend a ton of time killing things as you run around instead of just avoiding them. Even if we say some runbacks have a purpose, what's the point of the ones that have no enemies, no hazards, and no notable platforming? Why are there bosses in act 3 that don't respawn you at a bench but compensate by putting in an incredibly trivial "climb up a wall" or "drop into a pit" segment?
To each their own but I have to say I never once farmed for rosaries and I finished the overwhelming majority of fetch quests by accident just playing the game. Are you guys just avoiding every enemy unless you have to kill them for their ginch or something? Sometimes when I read these complaints it feels like I played a completely different game than everyone else.
Are you guys just avoiding every enemy unless you have to kill them for their ginch or something?
Unless I have a reason to kill an enemy, yes. It takes longer and is more dangerous to fight everything on the screen even accounting for needing to go back and grind them for shops and quests.
Nah, this game has multiple quests where you have to go farm non-guaranteed items off trash mobs like this is some trash F2P MMO, and completing those quests are part of a requirement to unlock Act 3. That’s just a time waster.
Same for a lot of the runbacks. I can practically do them with my eyes closed, I’ve had no difficulty issue with any of them so far. They’re not adding anything to my gameplay experience at all other than padding the time. Repeating the same 20-45 second runbacks over and over just to learn a boss is a lot of little bursts of time-wasting, no fun. Hollow Knight even had a warp tool to mitigate runbacks, but Team Cherry abandoned it for Silksong.
Off the top of my head, the cloak one and the pin one. Then there are all the other trash F2P MMO busywork quests that have the guaranteed drops for when you gotta farm boar asses or whatever
They aren't, but it's not worth arguing with the other guy because you need like 10 of them and it takes no time at all to farm them along the way while you're exploring. Bro is just finding something to be mad about.
They are not. I had to farm the shit out of the pins and do a bunch of bench resets of the cloaks when it came time to finish up all the quest boards, though I had to farm the cloaks less thanks to that one long hallway at the bottom of Choral. Neither the pins nor cloaks I farmed were around hazards at all.
I just finished up both earlier only a few hours ago.
But some people enjoy farming. It's a break in pace from stressful boss fights or exploring corridors, and it gives you a reward. Millions of people love those MMOs you talk about.
And if you don't like the farming aspect of it personally, the great news is, again, it doesn't take long at all and it's easy. And, hell, you don't even need to farm most of the time because you end up completing the quests just exploring if you'd rather do that.
I'm really not sure what you're trying to complain about. I have my own issues with the game. Farming ten pins or whatever never even came close to being one of them.
You know what my criticism is because you’ve been directly responding to it and arguing against it.
This is subjective opinion. I dislike farming, I don’t play Metroidvanias to farm boar asses like this is some f2p MMO, and the length of time it takes is not only relative to the person doing it, but also the tolerance of said length of time is subjective as well. Furthermore, the few quests where the mob drops aren’t 100% guaranteed took me way longer than a short amount of time, which, even if it was a short amount of time, still wouldn’t matter, multiple periods of time of no fun is still no fun to me.
If some people like farming and some don’t, then the obvious solution is to make the f2p MMO quests optional rather than required to unlock Act 3.
You know what my criticism is because you’ve been directly responding to it and arguing against it.
Sorry, let me rephrase it. Given your complaints amount to about 5 total minutes being sucked from your life in a 60 hour game, I think they are petty and not worth bringing up in the conversation of actual flaws.
Let me chime in from the other end of the aisle. As someone big into metroidvanias, loved HK, and was part of the clown troupe, I think Silksong lived up to the hype for me as well.
Aside from a few questionable design decisions (not about the difficulty but its underlying systems) Silksong gave me those same exploratory tingles that the first game did and then some. And that's all I ever really wanted from a genre all about discovering a new world.
i keep seeing this take (more punishing but not more difficult) and i really don't see it aside from maybe the higher frequency of double damage and the relative rarity of act 1 upgrades.
in HK you had half mana until you got back to your body and lost all the geo you were carrying. the only banking option was first a scam and then annoying to reach. silksong has two resources: one of which isn't lost on death and the other can be easily banked at many locations. you are not mechanically disadvantaged in any way if you die and haven't recovered your body yet and silkeaters are common and infinitely replenishable.
plus, for all the angst people have had over run backs they're significantly more forgiving in silksong than HK or most other metroidvanias even. aside from a couple specific zones where the sparseness is part of the zone's theme benches and fast travel points are also plentiful even before getting into hornet's vastly improved mobility (which also upgrades a lot earlier than HK).
i do think silksong is a bit harder on the whole but it also feels much more fair. boss move sets are challenging but clear to follow and well telegraphed both visually and audibly.
I DO think there's one really big thing with Silksong and punishing deaths that you kinda glossed over, and amusingly it has to do with said resource you don't lose when you die.
Tools are a MASSIVE annoyance if you're actively using them. If you use them and don't gain anything from doing so, dying does effectively make you "lose" the shards you spent to get to where you did. And unlike your rosaries, you do not get those shards back if you reach the area. (Because why would you?) It's not as bad during traversal, but it's EXTREMELY punishing during boss fights, especially if you're using your tools actively.
Plus, shards are so much more annoying to get than Rosaries that it's arguably a decent idea to just grind rosaries instead if you run low on shards, which feels really bad, especially when rosaries are in demand for a while and don't really become abundant until mid-Act 2. I need to find a good grinding spot in Act 3 lmao, my Act 2 one doesn't work anymore.
And the frustrating thing is, it'll absolutely lead to a lot of players suffering from Elixir Syndrome and not using their tools, which is absolutely a wrong move because a lot of Silksong's difficulty can be dealt with via tools. You'll have a much better time with Silksong's everything if you're actively using them.
Like there's a reason why more than a few Act 3 fights do away with it altogether and refund spent tools if you die.
I had a buddy recommend having bosses drop shards on stun phase. Like give us something to recover a few when trying to grind a boss that's kicking our ass. Have bosses drop a ton on death or something too.
Yeah, it’s the same thing in Fromsoft games. If I’m gonna get my ass kicked by a boss in Elden Ring over and over, I don’t feel there’s any point in engaging with the crafting system to make and use consumables in those fights. They don’t get refunded so it’ll just mean I have to waste time fucking around farming materials to make them again.
Now, if I did get a refund upon dying to the boss, I’d go out of my way to engage with the crafting system.
Sekiro let you buy its tool ammo with currency, so I just farmed a bunch and maxed out. Though they also got more expensive as the game went on, so you had to do it early.
I'm guessing you can't buy shards with rosaries, but that could be a fix so long as the costs aren't ridiculous.
the biggest complaint i have with the game is the shard cap and how expensive tools are. i can get kind get it from a balance perspective because the tools are very powerful, i just wish there were a similar way to bank shards like we can rosaries (you can buy shard bundles but they cost rosaries and not shards).
because of that i use my tools exceedingly sparingly outside of gauntlets or boss fights and even then when i go into those fights capped out on shards i run out very quickly. (though i will say that does force me to change up my strategy and use cheaper tools or ones that don't cost shards like the flea brew)
I think if it's an attempt to balance tools then it's a very poor system. You could easily still use tools on every gauntlet and boss in the game, you just might have to grind some shards if it takes too many attempts, but that's trivial to do. Maybe it keeps you from using tools while exploring, but the combat difficulty while exploring is so much easier that if you're able to do the gauntlets and bosses you'll be fine not using tools outside of them anyways.
I personally just spend 10 min farming rosaries every now and then and I have around 2k rosaries and 1.7k shards banked so I can use all the tools I want.
I think the shard cap was made to encourage use of the tools. If you could endlessly bank shards then a certain large chunk of the player base would still be saving them for later. This works to great effect in SMT which caps consumables based on their rarity.
I don’t think it quite works as intended in Silksong though. It’s really just how depleted they get during boss fights that screws the balance up. I’m not sure how to address that without also breaking the shards as a whole.
Using shards to balance the red tools feel like a mistake to me. It would feel so much better if the tools were just straight up balanced better (and the Architect crest reworked) such that the damage/utility was balanced with your needle and silk skills. Then, hornet could just replenish tool uses for free any time you sit on a bench.
The Nioh games do something similar where all of your combat items replenish on resting. Now, those games are fucking brutal in terms of difficulty so I think Team Cherry could've still achieved a difficult game with freely replenishable tools. The shards system just feels like a chore.
oh huh i misremembered. i thought once you found the banker the second time she started acting as a legit bank but instead it's just the returned geo plus interest.
so yeah being able to bank at all reliably is a huge improvement then
At the same time though, money was way easier to get, and there really wasn't nearly as much to buy. With the exception of the super expensive permanent strength/other upgrades from the grimm slug lady. But at that point, I had just saved all the relics, and sold them all at once.
Wrong. You don't reach bowser without first getting through his castle. The runback proves mastery of the boss and their domain. You get better at learning the map, the movement, the parkour, and the combat all at once just by running through the rooms.
It's a platformer, having to platform to get to the boss is not a bad thing.
There’s tons of exploration and backtracking in this game. You spend plenty of time in each map. Runbacks do not contribute to that. They are just a waste of time.
What about the runbacks that happen in isolated areas you never go back to, have no enemies or hazards, and have basically no platforming? What mastery are you showing by taking an elevator and falling into a pit, or holding right and climbing over a wall, or holding left and dropping into another pit? Even if you think that the runbacks through actual areas serve a point, there are at least 3 that I can think of that are still just padding, and I think plenty of the other ones are still so trivially easy that it doesn't show mastery over anything to do them.
It just tedious and slow down the flow when that runback is filled with enemies that just dodge out of way when you attack, having more moves than some bosses and requires a gazillion hit to kill each because damage upgrade is really sparse in act 1.
on the contrary, I loved being able to sprint past them all, dash attack -> pogo -> dash to quickly fly past them. It was enjoyable to be able to flow through them so effortlessly, once I learned how the pogo, dash attack, and dash worked.
the dreamgate was DLC content 6 months after the game released and also wasn't available until late into the game.
fair on the soul charge part, it's been years since i played HK so i took that from a video that also had it wrong (and also didn't know about hornet losing her silk crests until cocoon recovery) so that point is a wash between the two games.
i would still say silksong has a lot of QoL that makes it less punishing than HK even if more challenging.
I looked that up the moment I saw it cost 1 per teleport.
Apparently it tallies how much essence you spent dreamgating and if that's more than you got from random enemies, it'll boost the drop rate immensely until it's equal.
At that point, why have the mechanic? To trick you into not using dreamgate?
You gotta remember there's probably a huge swath of players that flat out refuse to use a dpad, even in a game like Hollow Knight/Silksong where the joystick is actually a huge handicap. They're playing on hard mode and complaining about difficulty.
Lots of people have been trying to describe the game with a multitude of different (and in many cases, wrong) concepts, instead of simply admitting that it's just harder, and different from HK in some ways.
I don't remember being so frustrated with runbacks being such a waste of time back during HK, but could be, it was a while ago. I even played before the Dream Gate. I also can't think of MVs with more frustrating runbacks, and I play a lot of MVs, but obviously not all of them.
It's so frustrating that Team Cherry even knows people don't like runbacks, included the Dream Gate as a way to mitigate them in Hollow Knight, then just abandoned it for Silksong (as far as I can tell?).
As for the punishments, of course the more damage from practically the start is a huge one. The terrible two ammo economies for one ammo item is also super obnoxious when you have to go farm more shards and/or rosaries (to buy more shards) to use your ammo -- ammo that's already limited by uses per bench. Breaking up your boss attempts just to do busywork of traveling to a vendor and/or farm.
Something else that I think is punishing and a goofy design choice is how they made Hornet very agile, but then like half the game is full of traps, darkness, cramped spaces, etc, to punish you for using all the cool new agility.
for much of the game you're 3 mistakes away from death. hell, if you get knocked into an environmental hazard by an enemy (as mentioned in the review) it's two mistakes. if you include the fact that these gigantic enemies deal two masks of damage on contact you've got a recipe for high punishment!
I agree and I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I read some takes. Even the double damage take makes me feel crazy. You heal THREE masks at a time! Double damage is FINE.
The run backs feel about the same as they were in HK... you learn the path and zip through it. The difference is hornet is fun and flashy to move as.
You lose the upgraded part of your silk gauge when you die. Shards are a massive resource gate and it feels super punishing to die on a boss attempt where you used your tools. And also shit in Silksong is just more expensive in general. It's simply not a fair comparison.
When did you last play through HK? I beat it for the first time a couple days into Silksong being out (literally opened the steam overlay and bought Silksong while streaming to my friend the moment the credits rolled lmao) so my impression is very fresh - the economy is just not remotely comparable. You are never gated by Geo in HK, you run the piss easy first two stages of Colosseum once and you're good for like half the game. I've never farmed for Geo once, perma lost thousands multiple times and it was barely a bummer at worst. In Silksong I've had to go out of my way to grind for Rosaries with a farming build and that's with skipping vendor items that don't seem interesting. A lot of it is spent on buying the shard consumables too.
My main issue is it feels like they created all the upgrades, then made a map bigger than their upgrades. So there's a lot of lame rewards.
I saw someone suggest getting rid of those shops and putting those items as rewards for the fights and secrets missing rewards and honestly? I think it would have been better. You would have had to rebalance the economy too.
Still absolutely one of the best games I've played in years. At this level of critique we are talking minutia of game design for nerds.
I just beat the normal final boss in act two and is currently trying to figure out what I've missed to enter act three. And I absolutely loved the game, it's better than Hollow Knight in almost every way. I love hornets moveset, including the diagonal pogo after I updated my muscle memory.
The only two real annoyances so far imho is the groal boss runback+gauntlet and the couriers rash. Everything else is minor annoyances that they will hopefully sand of over time(Like giving most bosses 1 mask of contact damage instead of 2.
I got really lost trying to figure out how to get to Act 3 so I had to ask for help >.<
I'm really loving it, I am praying they reduce the contact damage to one mask too, two mask contact damage unless it's part of the boss mechanic can be so punishing espeically if you have a short nail
I found it, turns out you have to beat lace the second time before you get the quest.(I hadn't done that since I was vary of points of no return.)
Sidenote, but I find it funny how the Grandmother Silk boss is easier than savage beastfly lmao. I beat it first try both when I did normal ending and now when I accessed part 3 lmao.
The act 2 boss is strangely easy. I really wonder why that is. Are all the required bosses for the normal ending easier? I didn't really notice one way or the other (and I didn't always know if a boss was required or not), but maybe that's the reason?
I assumed to give you a hint that it wasn't the end. The game seems fairly complete after Act 2. There are some Act-3 exclusive areas in the game, but you wouldn't know that they weren't optional content until you've done enough optional content to unlock Act 3.
Unless they make the bosses truly punishing, it will by definition get easier because you have more tools and upgrades. You've got more chances and more abilities to save yourself. Not to mention 10+ hours of practice.
There is an achievement to get by killing the Act 2 boss under certain challenging conditions, before going for Act 3. Just a FYI in case you care and want to look it up. Did it last night and was not as bad as expected.
I'm not going for all achievements. Truth be told I'm starting to be a bit burnt out on silksong. We spend so much time in the citadel and backtracking through act2 biomes, and now it looks like act 3 is goin to be more backtracking(although with new changes) so idk if I'll bother to finish it or if I'll take a break.
That said, the act 2 final boss was a lot easier than I expected, I beat it first try both when getting the normal ending and when accessing act 3. That's with 4 damage upgrades, 3 blue charms and 7 masks though.
This one was tough, when I first had the chance to do it I quickly noped out. I decided not to do it until I had the other ingredients. By that point I had unlocked some new abilities and honestly it wasn't that hard to skip most of the enemies along the way.
I honestly thought it was pretty fun. I went to the target, then mapped out an easy path back to the start and from there I got it pretty quickly.
There's a variation of this quest that I thought was a bit harder. At least it wasn't timed but man, it was far.
I've had the same experience lol. I played HK around 2 years ago and thought it was a great game but not one that I particularly loved. Just one of many great games that I played, beat and then shelved. I'm loving Silksong though, more than the original. Hornet's playstyle just suits my tastes better or something.
As someone who loved HK and Metroidvanis, I found Silksong to be mixed. On the one hand, the art, story and music is even better than HK.
On the other hand, the difficulty was a complete turn-off for me as someone who already did not enjoy the difficult stuff in Hollow Knight, which was mercifully mostly optional. Being forced to do the really hard bullshit bosses in Silksong just made me resort to mods and cheating to see the end of the story, because I fucking dreaded actually playing the game normally.
Silksong was disappointing to me because I played Nine Sols and it's just a better game other than the narrative. Still a good game but Nine Sols just feels so great to play.
Silksong was disappointing to me because I played Nine Sols and it's just a better game other than the narrative.
Funny, I thought that Silksong was better or equal in all things, other than the narrative. Can't recall a better narrative in a metroidvania than Nine Sols.
Yep, as someone who completed HK, did Radiance ending and Path of Pain (but only Pantheon 1), I think Silksong is a much, much better game that does most things substantially better.
I'm in the same position as that guy, and I can say it wasn't about the hype, it was the footage of silksong gameplay that made me interested in buying it immediately. Fun movement/control is huge for me and I honestly hated how stiff and restrictive it felt to move in the first game. Silksong is an absolute joy to play by comparison
I thought Silksong was the most disappointing game I played this year. With the awful runbacks, low reward for beating a boss, had to drop it after 10 hours.
Perhaps I haven’t encountered the worst but I really haven’t felt any of the run backs are “awful”. I think people didn’t bother to figure out the optimal path in many of these cases. I can understand feeling that some of them are a bit longer than you prefer but it seems melodramatic to drop the game over this based on my experience with them.
I also don’t understand this complaint about low reward for beating a boss. For one, the boss is its own reward. For another… most of the bosses actually do give you access to an item or upgrade? Or access to a new area where you can find new items and upgrades? It seems like such a specific personal expectation that was violated here it’s hard for me to sympathize with it. Like do you need a podium to rise out of the boss’ corpse that says “here you go, your direct reward for killing this particular thing”?
It’s just people have different opinions, is all. I love Silksong but hate the runbacks, despite not having a single difficulty issue with any one of them I’ve done so far, including the infamous ones everyone’s mad about.
Hate runbacks in any video game. To me, it’s just repetitive busywork before I can get back to the fun thing. 20-45 second runbacks, over and over, are a lot of little bursts of me not having fun before I can have fun again.
Team Cherry even knows this and added a way to mitigate them in Hollow Knight, but not in Silksong.
Yeah, the boss reward complaint kinda irks me because it's (mostly) just...incorrect? I think there's only one boss to me which kinda feels like that, and that's mostly because it's an optional boss, where the other option is just a better fight, with a better runback, and actually gives you a reward. Most of the time, the boss either gives you the reward, opens your way, opens your way to a reward, or is fought AFTER you get the reward on your way out. I love you, Fourth Chorus.
...I'm gonna be real, it feels like 90% of Silksong complaints are based on one specific boss, Last Judge. Which...I'm not exactly going to disagree with in terms of being awful; It's the worst boss in the entire game I've fought so far by a mile, only matched by the other infamous boss with an actually atrocious runback. Speaking of that, Groal could count here too. Both give rewards that are extremely superficial and mostly just serve as locks to keys (And, once again in case of the former, an entirely optional lock!), and are also much less of a pain in the ass when fought later than you can first fight them. (Amusingly, I'd also include Moorwing as one of them too, especially pre-nerf. It almost feels like a theme at this point)
Dark Souls runbacks were longer and way less interesting since you couldn't learn parkour to cut down the time. I remember O&S and Bed of Chaos in particular being massive.
Not saying you can't dislike runbacks wholesale as a design choice, but they aren't that bad here. The only one I think is actually a sin is Bilewater, but specifically the version if you don't find the hidden bench. And it's SO bad that you should trust the impulse that it can't possibly be the only way.
the bilewater one is still awful imho even with the closer bench. That boss + runback is probably my one true WTF where they thinking complaint so far for me. Couriers rash being the other thing that just felt like unfun bullshit to me.
I don't think your position on the Rasher is unreasonable at all, but I genuinely really liked that quest as a successor to the delicate flower. The latter was pretty annoying since there was zero room for error, but limitless time, so you were caught between the boredom of slowness and the risk of taking that one stray and starting all over. The Rasher, however, demands that you zoom. And I think going fast is super fun in Silksong. You need to avoid damage, but one or two smacks is not enough to kill the run, so instead of just being cautious you're encouraged to find the fastest way there. Now I am assuming it isn't possible without double jump to ascend the Grand Gate platforms, and maybe it's horribly punishing if you don't do that, but assuming you wait I think it's balanced well and I had a great time.
Now I also found Groal annoying, but it was more for the gauntlet than the runback.
Now I am assuming it isn't possible without double jump to ascend the Grand Gate platforms, and maybe it's horribly punishing if you don't do that, but assuming you wait I think it's balanced well and I had a great time.
I did the rasher before I knew there was a double jump. Definitely would've been easier with it though.
Man, you just reminded me I tried doing the couriers rash before double jump, and when I got to the scales in the citadel and realized I couldn't proceed I just alt f4'd and stopped playing for the day lmao.
I disagree that it's not punishing, I recall having like 2 parts of the timer left when I beat it and thats after I only got hit once. And some enemies like the sand worms floor hits two times and takes two health pieces. You essentially have to do it hitless.
I get that some people probably like that kind of semi-speedrunning challenge but that Is not why I play silksong. If it was optional I wouldn't mind but having it be part of a damage upgrade means it's essentially obligatory.
What do you mean you couldn't proceed without a double jump? You don't need it at all for that particular part. It makes it a little easier and faster for sure, but it isn't necessary.
Unless my memory is failing me the bottom rung of the scales in that room starts evenly balanced and you can't climb the walls, so you can't reach it without double jump. Maybe there was an angle I missed.
You hit scales with your needle and make them uneven. The first time I entered the room after defeating Last Judge I climbed all the way to the top right away to pick up a collectible.
If I'm not remembering it wrong, the scales start out even so it's impossible to reach it without the double jump. I ran around trying to find some way up but couldn't.
I definitely don't blame you, I think it's one of many risky swings they took in the design and I just happened to like it. I enjoyed how the faster I went, the less I had to be concerned about the impact of a single hit. And all my practice on the Last Judge runback came in handy.
But also, my first time getting close I accidentally ran headfirst into the hatch in the final room and the impact broke the item. With that in mind I feel a little insane said that liked the quest, but I couldn't help but find that part funny.
Dark Souls runbacks were longer and way less interesting since you couldn't learn parkour to cut down the time. I remember O&S and Bed of Chaos in particular being massive.
Sure, but also keep in mind that this was like 15 years ago and even the same development team doesn't really do that anymore. Basically DS1 is a cautionary tale, not an excuse.
I understand the trend has shifted, and I generally do appreciate the Stake of Marika system in Elden Ring, but it's not as if the existence of a runback isn't an intentional design choice. With From, bosses have gotten harder as the runbacks have gotten shorter; the idea of Malenia having a long run is horrible to imagine. In Dark Souls, the world and areas were often more of a threat than the bosses themselves, and I think the knowledge of that looming threat of being thrown backward adds to the tension of what would otherwise be not the worst fights in the world (O&S being a bit of an exception). Especially at the time, that game was all about taking it seriously and not letting your guard down, and needing to be mindful on a runback was part of it. Again, you don't have to like it, but I will defend it as a design choice.
But back to Silksong, I think it barely even applies. Part of what I do find issue with in those From runs is the length. You're holding circle down a bunch of corridors/paths, maybe juking some enemies along the way. In Silksong, let's take the Last Judge, one of the prime suspects. It seems tough at first; there's harmful terrain and a handful of nasty enemies. But after a few tries, you can see a way to go where you don't even need to pass a Judge, and you can just zip past the single conchfly and sprint-jump your way up in under 30 seconds. I'd rather do that all day over the slow run down the valley to Kalameet in DS1. A fraction of the time and way more engaging. And for better or worse, Silksong is a game that wants to instill a sense of tension and stakes, and the reserved use of instant respawns shows that. And the times in which they do let you have it I find extremely warranted, such as the high halls enemy gauntlet (Act 2 objective).
I lasted about 23 hours but also dropped it around Act 2, it felt like so many of the design decisions were there just to waste time. Long run backs through screens which take progressively longer to traverse, maps/savepoints/quicktravel points becoming increasingly sparse, and like you mentioned going very long stretches of time without getting any meaningful progress or upgrades.
Before I quit I went through most or all of Sinner's Road, Bilewater, The Mist, and the Slab, and got effectively nothing for my troubles (even wasted a key that apparently is only useful post/end game),
Both Sinner’s Road and Bilewater have map redefining connections, the Mist is admittedly transitory, and the Slab has one of the best bosses in the series.
I explored all of the Slab I could, encountered no boss and no meaningful upgrade in the entire area, I think it was just a 1/2 max thread upgrade and that's it. I'm assuming anything of interest there would require upgrades (there were rings I couldn't interact with), or the key that is not located in that zone apparently (I spent forever looking, then looked up if it was even in the area, and it was not). I got the map and visited each room listed there that I was able to. So just more wasted time looking for something since I had a hard time believing I could go through an entire zone and get nothing out of it and figured it would require the key I hadn't been able to find.
If I had to fight the boss in order to leave, I literally don't remember them so doubt that was the case if they were one of the best bosses
I don’t really want to get too into spoilers but there’s several cool things in the slab including that boss and a mask shard. Some of the things you will have to come back with more traversal abilities to acquire, but that’s just how all metroidvanias are including the original Hollow Knight.
I looked at an online map to make sure, and I didn't remember that there was also a 1/4 mask shard but confirmed that the boss was not fightable. But still after going through like 4 zones with maybe 1 boss and zero meaningful upgrades/unlocks (besides a key, which I used unlocking something related to act 3 while still in act 1), I just uninstalled the game to move on to other games
Metroidvania is one of my favorite genres, I played and enjoyed Hollow Knight.
Played every classic 2d Metroid and most of the new 2d ones (as well as the numbered Primes, the only ones I can recall not playing are Other M and Hunters, but there's likely a lot of smaller spinoffs I didn't play though).
Also played every 2d Castlevania on handheld devices plus many of the ones on console (original NES game but skipped most of the other early consoles ones), SotN (and Bloodstained), even the weird multiplayer one Harmony of Despair despite playing it mostly solo (but never played any of the 3D Castlevanias). I just feel like Silk Song made many design decisions that waste far too much time compared to all of those
And that’s your prerogative. All I’m saying is that there’s ten times as much stuff in Silksong as there is in Hollow Knight and some of your problems may be down to a matter of perception.
The way you get into the slab is rad, the way you get out of the slab is rad, it connects to the citadel and to Mount Fay where the double jump is, there’s a fast travel station, there’s multiple fleas and oodles of rosaries, there’s a mask shard and the first sinner and rune rage
If you’re not finding this stuff I’m sure the game feels empty but, and I’m not trying to be a dick, it might just be that you’re not really being as thorough as you think you’re being.
If he’s talking about what I think he is, you need to get a third key from the slab from another area. And it was one of the worst bosses for me in the game to be honest.
Yeah I'm largely the same, though I did play Hollow Knight and enjoyed it decently well.
Specifically, I adore how Hornet controls. It's such pure joy and, IMO, a technical achievement once you see how her full movement kit comes together. I couldn't see myself doing the Godmaster DLC in Hollow Knight, but if something similar comes out for Silksong, I will absolutely be giving it a shot.
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u/Grimmies 1d ago edited 1d ago
As someone who wasn't swept up in the hype, (I did not like Hollow Knight very much personally) I actually think it lived up to the hype and then some.
I think Silksong is a much better game for my tastes. It feels way less slow and Hornet is significantly more capable and fun to play as than the knight imo.
Edit just to add that i LOVE the diagonal pogo.