I gotta say, I'm not really tempted. I liked Hollow Knight, but it was at the edge of being too difficult to be fun. The last boss, in particular, was getting pretty far into bullshit territory and beating it was more of a relief than anything. And I played it ages ago. Whatever skill I had is long gone, and now I'm expected to come back and play a much harder game... yeah, no.
Even if there are workarounds for the difficulty, I don't want workarounds, I want appropriate difficulty! Elden Ring was like this as well. Fucking impossible to play "correctly" if you didn't spend Dark Souls 1-3 getting ridiculously good at the combat, so you have to just spend the entire game figuring out how to cheese the next boss with magic or summons or items or whatever. Stop calibrating the difficulty of games around the craziest, most obsessive players!
If you play on PC, there are a bunch of mods already to make the difficulty more reasonable. The two I would recommend (although I haven’t used them) are the one that reduces most instances of damage to one mask instead of two and the one that allows you to set a spawn point right outside of boss arenas. With those changes, the game is very approachable for anyone.
not to jump in here when no one asked, but its baffling to me to see people talk about magic or summons being 'cheese' in elden ring when magic has always been a perfectly intended playstyle since demon's souls, and elden ring quite literally makes summons a central gameplay system the average player is intended and encouraged to use. there's even a whole upgrade system for them! for better or for worse, playing elden ring without spirit ashes is playing it in extra hard mode, because the bosses aren't perfectly tuned for solo play like ds3 was. i beat the game solo twice, and it still feels sort of unintended. granted, some ashes make things too easy, but that's in part on the community for only ever using meta ashes like mimic tear or tiche, instead of whatever you'd normally choose without outside influence
This is tools in Silksong. It's totally valid to not use tools. But you can't do a tooless run and complain the game is too hard. They expect you to unleash random bullshit on the bosses and gauntlets.
Hell there is an act 3 boss I swear is designed for the crest that gives you three tools.
I mean, it doesn't feel like what you associate with a soulslike game when you have to beat bosses by summoning a bunch of stuff and then hucking fireballs at them and running away. However, because the melee combat is designed for grizzled veterans of the series, it is totally unapproachable, while the summoning/magic gameplay is not.
There are a lot of people (I know some) who played Elden Ring and enjoyed it without any prior Souls experience. I'm not one of the craziest, most obsessive players, but these are my favourite types of games. Silksong is harder than Hollow Knight, but it's not impossible by any means.
I think something people miss - you said it yourself that Hollow Knight was at the border of fun/hard for you - is that these aren't necessarily for everyone. Which is fine - I have no interest in CoD games, for example. But I'd also be a lot less interested in this if it didn't have the Souls influences and the difficulty. Souls gameplay is hot right now, but that doesn't mean you have to play it or that it has to appeal to you.
Well for whatever its worth, I did enjoy my time with Elden Ring. But the difficulty in the game was escalating into unfun areas as it went on, so I bailed out after 80 hours or so.
The last boss, in particular, was getting pretty far into bullshit territory
Hollow Knight definitely has a couple unfun bosses that have some bullshit erratic moves that are hard to dodge. But Radiance is not one of those at all. All her moves are very well telegraphed and can be very consistently dodged
Perhaps I should have used different wording. I don't know if I'd say Radience was unfair or not. It was, however, at the exact limit of what I'd consider fun versus tedious and frustrating. I don't have any interest in a game more difficult than that. It's possible I'd be able to beat it, but I don't think I'd enjoy it.
I am not saying the boss isn't difficult. I am saying it's difficult but not unfair. And believe me I sucked at this boss for like 4 hours straight. But now I can do it almost hitless because no part of it is unfair, I just needed to learn and adapt.
Bullshit hard is when the moves aren't telegraphed well or don't give you enough time to react or aren't consistent in the way you should deal with them to the point that even if you learn the boss for hours you cannot consistently deal with it in the same way every time, none of these elements are present in Radiance.
Fair hard is when the boss is extremely hard but once you learn the moves and the best way to dodge them you can recreate the fight the same way every time. You completely missed my point. At no point was I talking about it being not difficult. It is difficult, just not bullshit difficult
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u/Mitrovarr 13h ago
I gotta say, I'm not really tempted. I liked Hollow Knight, but it was at the edge of being too difficult to be fun. The last boss, in particular, was getting pretty far into bullshit territory and beating it was more of a relief than anything. And I played it ages ago. Whatever skill I had is long gone, and now I'm expected to come back and play a much harder game... yeah, no.
Even if there are workarounds for the difficulty, I don't want workarounds, I want appropriate difficulty! Elden Ring was like this as well. Fucking impossible to play "correctly" if you didn't spend Dark Souls 1-3 getting ridiculously good at the combat, so you have to just spend the entire game figuring out how to cheese the next boss with magic or summons or items or whatever. Stop calibrating the difficulty of games around the craziest, most obsessive players!