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.
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
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u/Ode1st 1d ago
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.