I'm guessing it's something like when you lose to a boss you have to travel a senselessly difficult and long way back to the boss to try again?
That's exactly it. The runbacks aren't too long in this game despite all the complaints, but some of them are tricky and can get annoying if you keep dying 10 seconds into a fight.
More like the Dark Souls formula of having to trek through heaps of enemies and traps to get back to the boss. Including the whole “lose all of your money on death” thing.
This is the only thing I wanted to know from reviews, for whether or not to bother with Silksong. I love difficult boss fights, but cannot be arsed to spend more than half a minute doing a tedious chore in order to actually redo boss fights.
I’m guessing it’s something like when you lose to a boss you have to travel a senselessly difficult and long way back to the boss to try again?
Exactly. Lots of bosses don’t have convenient save points nearby, so you’re forced to walk back from the save point every time. And many of the treks are either long or just outright annoying (cheesy enemies, obstacle courses, etc). It’s like the 5 Minute Long Unskippable Cutscene’s more annoying older brother, because this unskippable cutscene requires actual gameplay and focus.
Hot take here, but I don’t mind them. Exactly because they take focus. They tell me when it’s time for a break. If I’m not up for the runback, then I’m not up for aother attempt at the boss.
I haven’t played silksong, but I’m just going off other games in the past for my experience.
If you make it through the hallway of meaningless denizens that just waste time and get to the boss, then die to the boss… Why waste time going through the meaningless denizens again to challenge the boss?
I can see it on higher difficulties when you need to make sure you get through the meaningless denizens perfectly in order to preserve your health and resources to have a better chance of defeating the boss.
But when you just want to experience the story on lower difficulty why make the denizens less powerful to make the boss easier when you can instead just put the save point in front of the boss in instead of the denizens? You’ve already made it through the denizens, it’s not like you’re skipping content.
The runbacks don’t bother me too much so far. I do think there’s some skills in the runback, but it relies heavily on the level designer as well. An ideal runback:
is relatively short, you should have time to reflect on the boss, but not get sidetracked
has enemies that drop currency, so repeated runs slowly build you up (assuming you always collect your shade)
has enemies that train you on the bosses timings or counters (if the boss is parry heavy, put a tricky-to-parry enemy enroute back)
has a “speed route” that let’s you bypass most or all of the run once you’ve figured it out
These factors make a run both interesting game play and still a form of progression. A badly designed run lacks these factors, being just a slow slog to get back into the boss fight.
My biggest complaint so far is the double damage. Every boss and so many common enemies do nothing but double damage. Why even have 5 HP instead of 3? And it being 5 (and bind healing 3) have compounding effects with this problem. Taking a single hit on the way to a boss actually costs you an entire “boss hit” so runbacks are worse all around. Trying to heal mid boss only gets you “one and a half” hits back which takes a lot of silk to build up and probably is a worse deal for you than just using the silk to power more attacks.
Double damage would suck a lot less (and be a better mechanic) if you had 6 HP to start, or if you healed 4 at a time, or if bosses didnt always do 2 damage. There’s no tension to avoiding punishing hits because every move is equally punishing. It makes fights feel very conservative which is maybe intentionally meant to evoke Hornet as a careful hunter, using traps and plans to take down big foes.
I find the opposite though, she feels fragile and reactive. I wish starting damage was higher too. I had this issue in Hollow Knight as well, everything takes too many hits. Common enemies are spongy, bosses take at least 33% too long across the board. Especially it gets annoying since a lot of bosses so far get spammier and faster towards their final phases, so you spend so much time dodging the same attacks and looking for openings to chip hits in. Skills and traps don’t do enough damage to feel especially useful either.
I also hate, and this is another compounding factor, the complete lack of enemy HP bars. On regular enemies this is annoying (gotta count my hits) but on bosses it feels negligent. Bosses have multiple phases and take so long to kill, it would be nice to know if my last run was just a hit or 2 away from the end or if I still had a 3rd phase to plan for. It adds to the poor perception of skills and traps as well. Sting Shard and Thread Storm both seem to hit several times, around a half-dozen, but neither seems to do much more damage than a couple of regular hits.
Overall I’m really loving Silksong, the art and music are top notch. The DLC for HK convinced me that Team Cherry and I disagree about some fundamental ideas in game design, and HKSS bears that out.
I’m pretty early into the game as well, so I almost didn’t say anything. But even if theres a charm that adds HP bars later, I would be annoyed about it. Why wait so long? I’m over 10 hours in. Why take a slot with it? I get similar annoyances about the compass, but at least that one I can understand because maybe some people like the challenge of landmark navigation using just the maps. There is a skill there, and it is part of the skillset of Exploration (a major pillar of design in any metroidvania).
The yellow tools, in general, I’m iffy about the design of. So far I only have 3: compass, more shards, and auto-collect beads. Of these, auto-beads is the most obviously useful. You need many beads, and they get lost pretty easy. Shards are super common and don’t have many uses. But none of these are essential, and all of them get less useful the later into the game you get. The tradeoff is only meaningful early game, and seems to encourage a balance between memorizing the levels and grinding, neither are amazing activities.
Having the compass charm tied to ALL map markers would certainly up the utility of it, though it’s gating another feature behind both a purchase and a charm. I’ve also only found 1 semi useful trap\red-charm so far. Maybe having more traps and skills that required shell bits would put more pressure on needing them and make the charm that gives extras more appeal for a trap-heavy play style?
Again, I grant that maybe I’m too early in the game yet, but I feel like these systems should be coming together and cohering more after a half-dozen bosses and 10 hours of play.
I, uh, have kinda given up on progressing for the foreseeable future. I’m bad at platforming, and after struggling for probably around half an hour to get through one aection that was particularly difficult for me, I was met with a surprise boss fight. Nearest bench before that section. It’s brutal. It takes me about 5ish minutes to do that section now, but fuck I wish I were exaggerating. None of the other fights have anywhere near as nasty a runback and it honestly feels like they forgot a bench.
The game is hard and that’s fine, but that instance I feel ok bitching about and don’t feel like I’m a qhiny pathetic fuck for doing so, which is incredibly telling given how easy it is to make me feel like a whiny pathetic fuck.
I like the game, but I definitely think it deserves some criticism. I really don’t get the thinking behind not placing a bench directly in front of every boss arena. The run-backs don’t make the game harder, just more frustrating. It’s also something I disliked in older Souls games, but thankfully they realized the problem and fixed it in Elden Ring. And some mechanics are just baffling, like benches that are locked behind a paywall, which you have to pay every time you want to access the bench. Why on earth would they do this, with currency already being as sparse as it is?
The paid one time bench thing etc is for a narrative reason, the main point of the story as far as I played is about the church scamming people on every occasion. Money won’t be an issue once you reach act 2, I always have more money then I can spend even after buying out all merchants I’ve seen.
As for no benches in front of bosses it’s to discourage throwing yourself at the boss without reflecting on where to improve. The long runs I saw people complain about also were mostly like 2 screens. Worst bossrun so far was probably the judge which was only like 2 screens when you think about it.
I really enjoy the game so far, I’m about half way through act 2 I’d say so maybe it gets super hard later, but right now I think it’s very balanced between a bit challenging but not frustrating. I do feel that the game was created with players like me in mind, someone who did all pantheon, steal soul mode as well as all achievements in hk but is a little bit rusty from the long wait.
We should definitely talk about how levying criticism, especially thoughtful criticism, is treated as a personal attack by other people playing the same game. It’s a bizarre form of tribalism.
We should also talk about how “Difficulty is part of the game and if you find it too difficult then this game is not for you” is not a personal attack, but a perfectly valid response to said criticism.
If the criticism is limited to “It’s too hard.” then I would agree. But that’s not a valid response to criticisms about specific design elements like “these power ups feel like they do nothing”, even if it’s a perception issue at hand you need to address the actual observation and not jump on with ‘git gud’.
I was learning a game a few months ago and struggling with understanding a specific character, so I went to the official discord and asked for advice, not complaining it was too hard, just asking for what kinds of strategies work and I was met with endless ‘try harder, scrub’ responses and literally no actual advice. I quit playing the game because the community was so up it’s own asshole.
And for sake of clarity. I don’t play HK, it’s not my preferred genre and my favorite game (that I can replay) is Noita so I am familiar with reviews that complain about difficulty. It’s fine for games to be hard and it’s also fine for people who find the games too hard to leave a review saying they found it too hard. That is part of informing buyers so people can only pick it up if they desire that kind of challenge.
It’s just a trend that is all too common in gaming. People like a game or a developer and become incapable of seeing an opinion that they disagree without taking it as a personal slight. It’s weird.
This excuse stopped working the day I opened a tough-as-nails game like Furi, saw it had a difficulty menu, said “That’s nice”, and went back to challenging myself against the bosses on default settings.
It’s such a huge cop-out of self control, and especially falls to acknowledge that the forms of difficulty in a game are often varied - and someone might suck at only one of them.
In my opinion, the game is not particularly difficult. That is, if you’ve played through the original Hollow Knight. Which most people haven’t. In fact, it looks to me like a lot of people jumping on the hype don’t have too much experience with metroidvanias and soulslikes.
It’s a sequel, so intended to be played after the original. Why do we care what people who haven’t played the first game think?
It’s difficult for me and I like it. I played Hollow Knight but didn’t finish it because it was too frustrating late game. Silksong to me is not frustrating because difficulty is mainly in figuring out how to pass the challenge, not doing reflexes which I don’t have. Most of the things I heard people complain about are solved by not rushing around with failing strategy but by thinking what the game recently suggested you to do for this particular encounter.
I actually think bringing in Hollow Knight experience aka “I already know everything” might be the reason why some people are frustrated. Like I heard a person who claimed to get all the achievements in HK complain that the second phase of one boss is terrible because they spent a hundred tries to dodge all the projectiles while you can just stand at the corner of the arena where non of them will hit you and use the tools this game gives you to win the fight.
And all music should be under three minutes long. Every book should have page numbers. Photographers should have familiar subjects. Paintings should have a full explanation by the artist telling you exactly what they meant to communicate. /s
If the game isn’t for you, just move along. There are tons of games out there.
are you aware of the meaning of the word “setting” in this context?
Just in case I can explain:
It means you can switch something from one behaviour or effect to another, basically giving you a choice of how something should work. So, adding a difficulty setting changes nothing about your experience of the game.
do you need more words to explain this simple thing?
I can try to use simple language and shorter sentences if you require it?
Runbacks are a lame attempt at artificially increasing difficulty. I’ll happily die on that hill. I love difficult games, but there is a fine line between frustration and difficult.
Elden Ring (at least all the bits I played through) and Sekiro absolutely nailed it. None of the run backs were particularly egregious, and it let me really focus on experimenting and learning to feel out the difficult fights. Celeste is another good example. I have dropped hours on some of the later levels trying to master them, but never once got frustrated.
Hollow Knight I never finished because I got stuck on a boss and the runback was just way too long and annoying. I loved everything else about the game and want to finish it eventually.
Edit: I think they have their place as “mods” that you could enable to increase difficulty, and i’d actually probably enjoy it that way. Just designing the game around them is where i draw the line.
To be fair, From has like many games to learn from that while Cherry only has HK. I’ll never forget the sheer pain of the Frigid Outskirts from Dark Souls 2.
To me it feels like “if you don’t survive the journey, you’re too weak for the boss itself” it brings me down and makes me calmer until I reach the boss.
I like them because it forces you to try to salvage a fight instead of just conceding after a bad start. The time spent getting to the boss is investment you don’t want to waste.
I think this is really just an issue of the tools and abilities not being inherently linked to the related bosses.
FYI quickhop attacking is faster than ground combos and you can weave in the trio dagger throws when you are dodging away from close attacks. Also your attack will negate enemy attacks weapon hitbox(but you still have to dodge bodily contact). The poison tool upgrade is overbalanced and makes a lot of fights a joke.
This is to be expected. Silksong gained so much hype that now you have a bunch of people trying it who are finding out it’s not their thing.
I know people these days are used to early access garbage being shoved out the door as a full release, and are ready to rush to the comments to explain why the game is wrong, but I promise you this is not one of those cases.
So far, every run back I’ve experienced in silksong has a purpose. If it’s not something you enjoy, I recommend not playing the game. But don’t be in that overlap of the Venn Diagram between people who are enjoying the game and people who are complaining they aren’t enjoying the game. Either stop playing, or finish it and then we can talk about its design.
Name one with purpose, then. There is the big cave with the boss. It is separated in two halves by a long ass platform. There are no enemies, exploration, rewards or challenges on the platform. The sole purpose of it is to make you run right and then left, instead of just facing the boss right away.
If it’s the one I’m thinking of, I barely consider that one a run back. It’s like 40s to get to the boss from the bench. And at that point I the game, I noticed myself start hitting the bounce plants much more consistently after having to do this run many times. Up until then I hadn’t been forced to repeat the same small section yet.
And (staying vague to avoid spoilers), the bench itself was particularly “surprising” specifically because of the long gap without any benches leading up to it, forcing you to repeat the same long platforming/combat sections over and over. Players would not have been “surprised” by it if they weren’t so desperate for a bench.
Honestly, Hollow Knight 1, and what I’ve played so far of Silk Song have frustrating runback only if you feel that exploration should carry no risk. And also if you feel the consequences–dropping your resources and needing to abandon them–are game ending.
The devs make no attempt to hide the fact that the father afield you get, the more dangerous it gets, but that you can get stronger if you make the most of what you’ve already explored.
Resources are unlimited in the world, so you can always get back to where you were even if you abandon your cocoon/shade. You can also go back and spend the resources before you lose them.
Once I realized that venturing too far off carries a growing risk, I started looking out for the telltale signs that I’m entering a boss room. When this happens or even when I just feel like I’m going to lose all health, I just venture back and spend at the nearest shop or just prioritize finding a bench. Where I don’t heed the warning and go in anyway, I take it as my fault I can’t recover my shade/silk before I once again prioritize finding a bench.
All that said, at least so far I’ve found that whereas in Hollow Knight, if you die in a boss fight you’re not equipped for, you MUST abandon it or try again. In Silk Song, the silk cocoon actually helps with the fight: instead of also trying to kill you, it’s extra health that you can save until mid-way through the fight. Also, some boss rooms don’t lock the entrance (at all or as quickly) so you can die closer to the entrance and safely recover your stuff.
After starting Silk Song, I went back and started replaying the original and some changes like this are actually actually a quality of life improvement over the first 😂😂😂.
(I’m just irrationally mad that they removed the cheeseable pogoing. It was so cheeseable but I get why they tweaked the mechanic to become harder to use in exactly the same way. I’m actually using the other offensive abilities more.)
(I'm just irrationally mad that they removed the cheeseable pogoing. It was so cheeseable but I get why they tweaked the mechanic to become harder to use in exactly the same way. I'm actually using the other offensive abilities more.)
Minor spoilers regarding crestsThere's actually one crest that straight up brings back pogoing and another that give you something similar, but honestly Hornet's default dive is very underappreciated I'd say. It allows you to do maneuvers that you can't with normal pogoing, and even platforming isn't that hard when you get used to it.
If you’re not able to commit to learning new strategies and using game mechanics to adapt to a game’s difficulty, and experience it as the developers intended, maybe it’s not for you. You can always watch a lore video or let’s play by other gamers to get the story if that’s the goal. This is Dark Souls 2 all over again, and I will personally say as someone who initially hated it, then gave it another chance; When you persist and triumph through grit, the game leaves a lasting impression and sense of accomplishment that you cheat yourself out of with a difficulty slider. That’s my favorite game in the series now, which is a deeply unpopular opinion, unsurprisingly.
This debate pops up every now and then and my opinion remains the same, there are plenty of games that aren’t meant to be a challenge to choose from. Part of games that are built to be a challenge is being able to reflect on how far you grew in the process, and people hate to hear it but ‘git gud’ is a real thing for those who believe things worth doing are hard.
My biggest complaint is the sheer lack of rewards when I finish a fight. Give me any currency.
I have spent so much of this game broke, unable to buy the things I need to advance any side plots.
I’m currently stuck on the fight for the Music in the top left of the citadel. The double boss at the end is brutal. But because no enemy in that fight drops monster parts, I have to quit to grinding it to go grind more materials to build equipment, despite having slain 20+ enemies each run.
I’m about 10 hours into silksong and it’s amazing, don’t get me wrong. But the majority of the boss fights seem… cheap?
Like, their difficulty doesn’t come from their various attacks, or their environment. Instead, it usually comes from the fact that they do double damage, or the fact that they spam the same two attacks over and over way too quickly, or the fact that they can do the same add summon three times in a row and make what was a controllable situation practically impossible
Now, I’ve 112% the OG hollow knight and beaten true radiance, so I’m not against difficult boss fights. In fact I relish the feeling of learning their moves and patterns after every single death
But when the moves are “ram into wall. Then ram into wall again” it becomes incredibly annoying
I think it’s a great game for veterans who like challenges like myself.
But I have to call out team Cherry for their interviews: They said they wanted anyone to be able to pick up this as their first Hollow Knight game and just start playing… Sorry, but, bullshit. the difficulty ramp is too quick, double damage comes out to early and the boss fights get more challenging quickly. See the weaver for instance, a fight I’d place around the difficulty of Grimm, but there’s double damage and you probably only have 5 health.
Also they mentioned part of the game’s difficulty was due to Hornet’s competence and utility… Ghost is canonically a better fighter than Hornet, so by that logic they should have made the game easier (yes I’m being silly about this part).
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Aktywne