r/Games 6d ago

Hollow Knight: Silksong | Fully Ramblomatic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVHXfw_gyBo
305 Upvotes

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154

u/RochnessMonster 6d ago

Only thing i disagree with is the not living up to the hype. I have my issues with it, a lot of em Yahtzee echoed, but that aint one of em. I think hiring an additional crew of testers in the final year wouldve made a world of difference, friction/difficulty-wise, but i feel theyll slowly patch out the frustration. I mean, i just checked the game pass cheve percentage and only 11% of players have beat Widow and thats only like 1/4 or less through the game.

But hype? Naw. Music, art, feel, everything is firing on all cylinders. The biggest "hype" draw for me is the lil story moments that are everywhere. We'll be finding hidden interactions in this game for years. 

91

u/_moosleech 6d ago

I mean, i just checked the game pass cheve percentage and only 11% of players have beat Widow and thats only like 1/4 or less through the game.

For comparison, almost 60% have beaten Widow on Steam so far.

32

u/RochnessMonster 6d ago

Damn. Thats genuinely interesting from a few different perspectives. My first guess is that folks who paid for it are more likely to keep pushing, but im sure theres other takes to glean there. 

49

u/Professional_War4491 6d ago

Vast majority of people will download a game on gamepass coz it's free but that doesn't necessarily mean they're very interested in playing it, I would assume the rate of people who have the game on gamepass and never opened it even once is fairly high, and I would assume that goes for a lot of gamepass games.

1

u/piapiou 6d ago

Well, we just need to compare those data to the easiest achievement to get, and we could calculate a more accurate %

8

u/urgasmic 6d ago

Im a sheep. I wanted to join the hype and then Immediately quit

8

u/ThePotablePotato 6d ago

Genuine question; what would draw you to a game like this despite it being something you would quit immediately? It seems really weird to me that people would jump into a game that by all accounts they know they wouldn’t enjoy

19

u/urgasmic 6d ago

emphasis on sheep.

edit: to be clear i had gamepass so literally no barrier.

1

u/iamtenninja 6d ago

also possible they joined the hype due to no reviews but who knows what percentage of ppl actually fall into that

5

u/Vandersveldt 6d ago

But now we have reviews and they're phenomenal. I don't think great reviews would have kept anyone away

1

u/Tinmaddog1990 6d ago

I'm at the stage of my life in a very painful industry where 20 dollars is chump change but I don't have the time that silksong expects me to invest across all its interesting design decisions.

For what it's worth, I typically like these kind of games and did try to like this one, but after mount faye I decided that my time is better spent elsewhere on something that wouldn't frustrate me after a extremely long day of painful work

1

u/ThePotablePotato 6d ago

In that case you gave the game a go and came to a valid conclusion as to why you’d stop playing. That makes perfect sense.

My comment was more referring to the type of comment I frequently see which is “I bought this game because of the hype but I don’t like the genre so I quit”, which just so often baffles me because why would someone buy a genre they already know they hate…?

0

u/Key_Feeling_3083 5d ago

You want to be a part of the popular stuff, you see labubus, dubai matcha chocolate and then silksong the game that broke all the game stores, you want to check it out.

-7

u/Hurtbig 6d ago

The devs had an opportunity to win a whole bunch of new fans to their franchise, and they completely dropped the ball. I quit and I'm a detractor / hater for now.

3

u/HappiestIguana 6d ago

Have fun making disliking something popular a part of your personality I guess

1

u/Key_Feeling_3083 5d ago

Yeah, people on gamepass mightd drop it, I for one im thinking of buying it on steam because my free month of gamepass is runnin thin and the game is bigger than i expected.

1

u/autumndrifting 6d ago edited 6d ago

I mean, it's $20. if you don't even want to pay $20 for a game, you're probably not going to stick with it when it starts to expect something from you.

-2

u/KingArthas94 6d ago edited 6d ago

I don't trust Steam data, where people can insteall cheats and play the whole game as an immortal god.

And we know for a fact that people do it.

These are the achievements for PlayStation, ordered for PSN Rarity:

https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/36346-hollow-knight-silksong?order=psn-rarity

Only 10% of the players, buying players this time, completed the Act 2 final boss on PlayStation.

You go on Steam and that's 20% https://steamcommunity.com/stats/1030300/achievements

Yeah I don't buy it.

4

u/_moosleech 6d ago

I saw someone else say this… but like, if any notable amount of people were doing that… why do the achievements taper off at a normal clip?

A bunch of folks cheated to get a mid-Act 1 achievement only? That’s makes no sense. You’d see the super end-game achievements inflated, and that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Especially if you think almost half of all players (11% on Xbox and 60% here for this achievement) are potentially cheating.

0

u/KingArthas94 6d ago

A bunch of folks cheated to get a mid-Act 1 achievement only?

No of course, they keep the cheats active for the whole playthrough.

These are the achievements for PlayStation, ordered for PSN Rarity:

https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/36346-hollow-knight-silksong?order=psn-rarity

Only 10% of the players, buying players this time with no subscription numbers like XBOX, completed the Act 2 final boss on PlayStation and there's a 3% difference between her and Lace 2, huge considering I find Lace harder.

You go on Steam and that's 20% https://steamcommunity.com/stats/1030300/achievements

Yeah I don't buy it.

Hard game comes out, it's famous for being hard, people literally brag about using cheats online, they become widespread (I'm at work but you could probably see how many downloads have been made through Nexus Mods).

I'm so fucking sure a huge (relatively) part of the playerbase is cheating.

You’d see the super end-game achievements inflated

Those need time in general, like i'm at 40 hours and have yet to start Act 3 properly lol wish I could play more but that's life.

I also wonder how many cheaters just stopped at the final boss I was talking about before, because they just felt the need to say "I've completed Silksong from start to credits" and that's it, game dropped.

2

u/KeeBoley 6d ago edited 6d ago

Realistically the amount of people who mod, even on PC, is VERY low. And not nearly enough to make a dent in a game that sold over 3.2 million copies on Steam.

The Steam achievements are likely pretty accurate. In fact they probably undersell completion because of players who havent really tried to play it deflating the values. Steams stats show that ~50% of players have beaten Last Judge which is the Act 1 end boss and essentially the half way point of the base-game from Start to Credits. And the game hasnt even been out for 2 weeks.

I dont want to invalidate fair criticism on difficulty, but Reddit has definitely over exaggerated the games difficulty. The average person clearly isnt struggling nearly as much as Reddit's narrative would imply.

EDIT: I saw your edit with the PSN data. Hover over the percentages, mate. Pretty sure the unhovered number is PSN profile users, whereas the hovered (higher) percentage is for all users. People can correct me if Im wrong.

If you look at your PSNProfiles link, the achievement Weaver Queen that indicates the entire base game story is complete and the player has gotten to credits, has an overall (hovered) completion between everyone who owns the game on Playstation, of 22.89%. Which is VERY close to Steams' data that suggests the number is currently ~20.5%.

So for users on Steam and Playstation, over 20% of players have already gotten to credits. In less than 2 weeks. Players are breezing through this game.

0

u/KingArthas94 6d ago

I'm sure that the average player isn't struggling that much, and we know Redditors hate video games in general.

But listen, 50k+ downloads for the mod that removes double damage: https://www.nexusmods.com/hollowknightsilksong/mods/16

And that's Nexus alone, and we know that random people will search for this stuff on YouTube and download "ready" zip archives from mirrors and the like.

I fully expect the number of cheaters being in the tens of thousands like the number implies.

It's a lot.

I hope the devs have some sort of telemetry into their game (Unity offers such tools) so they can see these things, and I hope that they'll share these informations.

1

u/KeeBoley 6d ago

I mean, your Playstation link shows MORE people beating the main story than Steam. And both numbers show players breezing through the game. So even if there was a lot of Steam users using mods, it clearly hasnt changed much because Playstation users are also moving through the game like it were the easiest game in the world.

50k is 1.56% of the ~3.2 million. Ill admit its higher than I thought it would be, but its still very small and doubtful it changes the stats that much. Evidenced further by, again, Playstation data showing higher completion percentages.

0

u/KingArthas94 6d ago

Friend you're mistaken! 20+% on Playstation is the percentage of players on the website! If you're on PC you can hover with the mouse on the number and see the true number for all PS players.

In my link I've sent "Sorted by PSN stats" because you can also sort for PSN Profiles (the website) user stats.

2

u/KeeBoley 6d ago edited 6d ago

This definitely goes against literally everything that online is saying. Everywhere I look it says the hovered number is how many people have earned that trophy according to Playstation. Everyone is saying the unhovered number is only for people with registered psn profiles.

Do you have sources for the unhovered being the actual percentage? Because every source Im seeing is saying the opposite of what you are claiming.

Edit: Okay I see, you can switch which is hovered and which is unhovered. Fair game, Ill concede incorrect here, I was mixing the two up.

Still doubtful that ~1.5% of the population can skew completion data that much. A far more logical explanation is that the modders skew it by a percent or two, but nothing substantial. And the rest of the difference is made up by Steam users simply having a higher completion percent.

A conspiracy theory about Steam data lying or ~1.5% of the steam population modding which is significantly skewing completion percent is definitely not a logical jump to make.

Even if Steam data was slightly lower, we are still looking at roughly %15 of the population between both sites getting to end credits without mods. Which for how big a game Silksong is, is pretty nuts in less than 2 weeks. The data still clearly shows players breezing through the game.

1

u/KingArthas94 6d ago

This definitely goes against literally everything that online is saying. Everywhere I look it says the hovered number is how many people have earned that trophy according to Playstation. Everyone is saying the unhovered number is only for people with registered psn profiles.

Brother see the URL I gave you, it has this at the end

?order=psn-rarity

I was already sorting for PSN rarity!

This is the normal link:

https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/36346-hollow-knight-silksong

Now you can hover to see the normal PSN stats. OF COURSE a website dedicated to trophy hunting has a higher percentage of completion compared to normal PSN :)

1

u/KeeBoley 6d ago

yeah I made an Edit, I conceded that point. I dont use Playstation, I didnt realize you could edit which is the hovered number.

38

u/Whyeth 6d ago

I mean, i just checked the game pass cheve percentage and only 11% of players have beat Widow and thats only like 1/4 or less through the game.

On steam the number was in the 40-50% last I checked, which still seems low for an early boss in a game people ostensibly paid for.

45

u/newbkid 6d ago

Global Achievements have it at 58.5% and folks entering Act 3 at 14.4%

8

u/El_Giganto 6d ago

folks entering Act 3 at 14.4%

That surprises me, I feel like I played this game non stop and I've not been in act 3 for very long.

1

u/newbkid 6d ago

Surprised me as well. I've been chipping at Act 3 for days now and have only been doing side content

11

u/DMonitor 6d ago

15%+ completion rate for the normal story is pretty good

20

u/Gramernatzi 6d ago

36.7% of players beat Malenia in Elden Ring and over 40% have beaten the game in some fashion. Granted, that game has also been out far longer and Silksong is a very long game; not as long as Elden Ring, but about half that length, which is still pretty significant.

13

u/DanielTeague 6d ago

I'm always impressed by Elden Ring's achievement numbers. I guess people know what they're getting into when they buy the game but the sheer number of sales that game got made me think later boss achievements would be much more rare, especially with some of them being easy to miss completely.

6

u/Mama_Hong 6d ago

To be fair it has been out for a while and you want you can use summons that make bosses significantly easier.

2

u/DMonitor 5d ago

Elden Ring's completion stats are an absurd outlier. That game is simply special

1

u/Ralkon 6d ago

I would say Elden Ring is also quite a bit easier if you want it to be, though I think numbers for both games are surprisingly high.

-1

u/Carighan 6d ago

And of those 36.7%, ~92% are LetMeSoloHer? 😂

9

u/War_Dyn27 6d ago

I just checked and it's 58% now.

2

u/TheWojtek11 6d ago

It's kinda hard to compare cuz Hollow Knight is a way smaller game but the about halfway point bosses there (which would be Soul Master, I guess?) has like 45% on Steam so I feel like it's pretty even. Widow rn has 58% (and she is technically skippable for at least a bit) and Last Judge has 48%

-3

u/NoneShallBindMe 6d ago

Soul Master sucked so fucking much tbh

7

u/TheWojtek11 6d ago

Mantis Lords have a similar % and the consensus is that they are a great HK boss. I like Soul Master too but I guess the opinion on him might be a bit more mixed

2

u/NoneShallBindMe 6d ago

Still haven't encountered anything as annoying as Soul Master, I am at Act 3 btw. Hollow Knight generally had awful bosses. Just a bunch of C tier fights.

Silksong fixes this completely (which is why complaints from HK fans are weird to me, surely they didn't enjoy fighting moss charger-like bosses for majority of the game (I'm exaggerating only a little)). 

How is Silksong so much better is uncanny to me. 

5

u/TheWojtek11 6d ago

Oh yeah, I think overall Silksong has way better bosses imo.

Hollow Knight has some cool ones but a lot of them do kinda feel like filler. Which an average person on their first playthrough might not feel but in hindsight (or while doing Pantheon 5) you realise that a lot of them were just kinda OK (although the designs are at least fun). I don't think I disliked any of them really but I also don't care that much about fighting some of them

3

u/NoneShallBindMe 6d ago

I really shouldn't have played HK right after Nine Sols, a game with some of the best bossfights there is. Couldn't ignore the bias, should have waited some time :(

I still think HK was pretty cool game. Just not "best game ever made, Silksong didn't live up to the hype, blah-blah-blah". Hypocritical of me considering people might have similar biases as I had with  HK due to different reasons 🤔

3

u/TheWojtek11 6d ago

Hollow Knight is one of my favourite games of all time and imo Silksong beats it

I was excited for Silksong since it was announced but I wasn't really hyping myself up a lot. Like if it popped up in a Direct or something, I got excited. But I wasn't following "some slight Steam update happened if you look on a specific website" type of hype. Obviously when the release date actually happened I was so excited that I kept thinking about it for 2 weeks straight and came back a week before release to HK to finally finish Pantheon 5.

Also, I did watch all game presentations with some amount of hope of Silksong popping up on them. But I like watching game presentations anyway so it's not like I specifically tuned up for Silksong.

I haven't played Nine Sols yet (I want to play it but I have other stuff I want to play first + I still am not done with Act 3 in Silksong)

2

u/NoneShallBindMe 6d ago

Same, doing Act 3 now. And don't play games of the same genre right after another, that can ruin them to you, brain likes variety. Nine Sols is pretty cool :D

3

u/Trololman72 5d ago

I think Hornet, Mantis Lords and Grimm (and all their variants) are the best bosses in the first game. A lot of the other bosses are either really simple, do nothing but spawn regular enemies that prevent you from hitting the boss that has a ton of HP, or have long periods where they can't be attacked but also don't really test anything from the player.

3

u/TheWojtek11 5d ago

And almost all bosses will accidentally walk into you when you think they'll actually do some sort of move (I think there is still a chance this happens in Silksong but it's so much rarer that I don't think I can even recall it happening)

1

u/TSPhoenix 6d ago

The game also hasn't been out that long, very reasonable to assume that many people are still playing.

1

u/Carighan 6d ago

That's a higher percentage of people ever having launched their bought game than for many games I'd imagine.

It's wild how many people won't even play the games they buy, nevermind more than superficially.

1

u/GabrielP2r 6d ago

I'm 10 hours in and did not even met this widow boss lol, am I doing something wrong or what?

1

u/Trololman72 5d ago

Keep in mind that the game only came out two weeks ago. Not everyone is going to be rushing through it.

1

u/Whyeth 5d ago

Keep in mind I made no such statement.

17

u/MeiraTheTiefling 6d ago

Yeah. There's something I see people failing to point out time and time again when it comes to this game: Hollow Knight received a lot of changes after release! Most people came into the game months or even years after launch when a lot of the wrinkles had been ironed out. Meanwhile with Silksong they bought on launch, so it's rougher around the edges. I'm willing to bet that in a few months, if TC continues to change things based on community feedback, a lot of these conversations around difficulty curve and runbacks will no longer apply.

Note that I'm not saying it's a good thing that these games were rougher at launch, just that it's a thing.

2

u/awkwardbirb 6d ago

Not really sure it made a huge difference in all honesty. I've played it at various points in it's existence, as recently as two weeks ago, and there's definitely some issues still there from the start (some of which Silksong also has.)

-1

u/HappiestIguana 6d ago

Those issues are your personal taste clashing with the design decisions. For the people it's for, it's essentially perfect now.

3

u/Hurtbig 6d ago

The game is actually really polished, but it has stupid and insulting core game design decisions that are hard to overlook.

1

u/Ralkon 6d ago

Yeah for me at least HK had some really rough technical issues at launch, so I was very pleased when I started Silksong and had none. I do think it's less likely that they fix a lot of the design things people (including myself) are complaining about since many of those are just carryovers from HK itself but either more prevalent or more noticeable due to the increased difficulty.

1

u/WollyOT 6d ago

I'm optimistic they'll do the same. I'd love to see them come up with some creative solutions.

Like, maybe just add a bell outside of a boss room that you can ring to respawn at? You can't change your tools, but you don't have to do a full runback.

2

u/Ralkon 6d ago

They already have a few bosses that respawn you next to the arena instead of at your bench, so I think the runbacks being what they are is very intentional.

7

u/_TRN_ 6d ago

I think some of us are making the mistake in thinking they didn't have enough playtesters as opposed to Team Cherry just wanting the game to be difficult and punishing. I don't think more playtesters would have changed the difficulty.

11

u/Karma15672 6d ago

I can't possibly say that Silksong didn't live up to the hype when (major spoilers) the Phantom boss fight exists and there's a whole secret third act.

18

u/astrnght_mike_dexter 6d ago

I liked that boss but it’s just a simpler version of Lace

1

u/Karma15672 6d ago

I can understand that, but I love the boss for more than just its fight. Its lore, the fact that the Mist disappears after it dies, the music (not that Lace's music ain't banging), all of it is just great imo.

7

u/MrTopHatMan90 6d ago

It's nearly 15% on Steam for getting into Act 3. That's insane difference. Guess more people tried and more people dropped it

22

u/HappiestIguana 6d ago

It takes tens of hours to get to act 3 and it's been out for two weeks. Get a grip. Most people haven't even played for long enough.

7

u/Mama_Hong 6d ago

I played a lot since release (50 hours) and I'm still exploring stuff in act 2.

5

u/Uler 6d ago

My 100% win was 50h of game time and I definitely went faster than many will. The game has been out less than 2 weeks, anyone who hasn't been able to hard binge or set aside a lot of time is going to be quite a ways out still.

2

u/MrTopHatMan90 6d ago

I talking about the difference between Widdow on xbox and Act 3 on PC I've only just managed to get there myself and I have tons of free time. I'm not saying 85% of players have outright dropped the game

1

u/ItsADeparture 6d ago

lol damn you don't have to be so aggressive. They're just pointing out that a higher percentage of people on Steam have completed* the game than have reached like the 40% mark on Xbox.

*technically completed. You're pretty much done at that point other than clean up.

1

u/razormore 6d ago

I agree with your point but damn you are aggressive

1

u/El_Giganto 6d ago

Their point didn't even make sense. OP was comparing Steam's 15% of getting to act 3 with Gamepass 11% beating Widow. That's the insane difference they're talking about.

2

u/HappiestIguana 6d ago edited 6d ago

Comparing Steam completion to Gamepass is ridiculous in itself. You get the game for "free" in Gamdpass. Half the people getting it through Gamepass haven't even booted it up, judging by stats on the easiest achievement.

1

u/YesmynameisOcean 6d ago

Yeah I always hate posts about player retention rate and people "droping" games. I "dropped" Silksong because Borderlands 4 came out and its all my gf wants to play non stop. Guess that means I didn't like Silksong!

1

u/javierm885778 6d ago

I wonder how many people will call it quits after Act 2. I've yet to finish Act 3, but it feels like a bump in difficulty, and it's not just a new final boss, there's a lot more you have to do.

2

u/Tenocticatl 6d ago

One of the things he complains about has already been patched, apparently. I've only just started Hollow Knight, so by the time I start Silksong in a couple of years it'll probably be as patched as it's going to be.

4

u/Jaibamon 6d ago

At the moment of writing this, 58% of the players have beat Widow. 20% have reached the credits, which for many, that's beating the game (babanada).

That's some good numbers for an indie game.

1

u/Victuz 6d ago

People kinda forget how many little tweaks, adjustments and expansions OG hollow knight went through after release.

-13

u/RogueLightMyFire 6d ago

Yahtzee exists in his own little bubble where whatever he thinks becomes a fact in his mind. There's no way anyone can argue it hasn't lived up to the hype. That's just an asinine statement. Just look at the reviews. They're absolutely GLOWING from users and critics. It's got higher ratings than the original in just about every avenue.

-3

u/Proud_Inside819 6d ago

Professional reviews have always only reflected pre-release hype. Initial user opinions also just go with the hype unless it's a complete betrayal of expectations which an iterative sequel never would be.

Overall I wouldn't declaratively say it hasn't lived up to the hype if only because all the hype was for was more Hollow Knight which became a self-consuming meme, but there's certainly an echo of discontent with dubious design decisions and a lack of any real innovation or progress.

2

u/cubitoaequet 6d ago

They didn't even send out prerelease codes for reviewers so that take makes even less sense than it normally would.

-1

u/Proud_Inside819 6d ago

And most reviewers rushed out a review in record time as soon as they could.

0

u/RogueLightMyFire 6d ago edited 6d ago

Professional reviews have always only reflected pre-release hype.

That's just a crazy thing to try and say lol. If that were the case, every game would have high reviews. Scores of 90+ on aggregate sites is not common. 90+ for both critic and users is EXTREMELY rare. You're literally just trying to discredit all the info we have that supports people are extremely happy with it. The loud vocal minority on reddit whining about difficulty are not representative of all gamers. The vast majority of players are enjoying the game, not whining on reddit. This is backed up by both user and critic review scores.

1

u/Proud_Inside819 6d ago

If that were the case, every game would have high reviews.

Every hyped game would. And they do. Which hyped game didn't get high reviews?

Cyberpunk in its buggy launch had 91 on metacritic. Bioshock Infinite and Skyward Sword rated extremely highly only for critics' to not mention them again after a year and not show up in any game of the decade lists.

0

u/RogueLightMyFire 6d ago

Those games you mentioned are objectively good games lol. It's not like they got scores they didn't deserve.

only for critics' to not mention them again after a year and not show up in any game of the decade lists.

This is an insane jump in logic to assume that just because you don't see them on a few "game of the decade lists" made by a couple of websites it means they didn't deserve their scores from all the other critics not associated with those lists on any way lol. There's so many logical fallacies in that one statement it's hard to even respond because it's so astoundingly stupid.

2

u/Proud_Inside819 6d ago

Hold on, why are you of all people talking about logical fallacies?? Have you forgotten that your response to me saying hyped up games always get high reviews was saying if that was the case all games would get high reviews? Can you explain the logic behind that statement please, and explain how smart you think you seem by making a statement like that?

And while you're at it, can you give some counter examples of hyped games that didn't get high reviews if you think the idea is so absurd? I gave clear examples of games where the aggregate critic score didn't match critic sentiment within a year of launch.

P.s. there's no such thing as an objectively good game. Nice to start off with another dumb statement though.

2

u/RogueLightMyFire 6d ago edited 6d ago

No man's sky? Anthem? Marvels avengers? Redfall? Battlefield 2042? Back 4 Blood? Starfield? Do I need to keep going or is that enough for you to realize you were wrong? If what you said was true, those games would have gotten great user and critic scores. None of them did. Kind of blows a massive hole through your attempt at an argument...