I’ll never forget when one of my roommates in college spent like $500 on the board game and his friends came over to play and it took them 4 hours to set the game up and process the instructions, then they played for a couple hours.
Very good video that lines up with a lot of my own thoughts (yay).
That said? I think I fundamentally disagree with the idea that everyone should be able to beat every game for narrative reasons. My preference is for something similar to what Nine Sols did (AMAZING boss fights. Dogshit metroidvania and traversal), but I don’t fundamentally believe that everyone needs to be able to experience every game. Like, you can make an “easy mode” for DCS but… the point of that game is the fidelity and turning all of that off just feels “wrong”? At the end of the day, it is up to the devs and what they want people to consider “accomplishment” to be.
And we live in the internet age. I remember beating Arkham Knight, having fun, and then deciding there was zero chance I would ever want to get all the riddler keys or fight deathstroke a dozen times and just went to youtube.
But I 100% agree with the back half of the video. The game is very much designed to just take a break and wander off when you get frustrated. Which is where I DO wish there were more QOL features to make it clear what areas might still have a mask (preferably one you can reach) rather than needing to find a guide or try to guess. Especially when you don’t even get map markers for a decent chunk early on.
Yes. If you know ahead of time you’ll prioritize those.
If you are new to the game/genre and are struggling and even wiping occasionally? It isn’t a priority.
But there is also a big difference between having a few different pin types and just having “Well, SOMETHING was there?”. Hell, I still need to get around to figuring out which of my oranges are NPCs because I wasn’t sure if quest NPCs would be auto-tagged (they are, once you have a reason to talk to them again).
Which is another factor to all of these discussions. I fairly regularly push back on Dark Souls (and its successors) being a “difficult game”. It really isn’t. What it is is an incredibly well designed (first half of a…) challenging game. Everything up until Amazing Chest Ahead is designed to teach you how to play the game and how to approach encounters. And once you know that? You are in really good shape for the entire genre even if it is a game that emphasizes parrying (Lies of P), blocking (Sekiro), or beautiful beautiful loot (Nioh! Aka “Best Souls”). You don’t learn character builds (mostly “pick a single stat and work with it”) but that comes later.
And… some of that applies here. I know I made it WAY farther than I should have with no meaningful upgrades because I am a sicko/idiot. But for people who don’t know the idea that “Hey, this crypt full of skeletons is a mofo. Maybe go somewhere else”, they might be slamming their head against a wall trying to fight Last Judge for far longer than they should (although, questionable balancing decisions means that upgrading your health doesn’t matter all that much but that is a different rant).
But it is still the idea of a first game versus a fifth game as it were. And we all start somewhere.
I agree with a lot in this video, but disagree on one key point. You can go explore somewhere else and get upgrades and stuff.
I really liked this aspect in Elden Ring, where the bosses could get pretty hard, but you could always just go explore. Explore the lands, level up, find cool weapons and upgrades to get really OP. Then return to the boss and kick their ass. Once you’ve put 500 hours into it, you do challenge runs like SL1. But if you only want to put in 100 hours, you can easily beat it, no matter your skill level. The exploration feels great, the world is interesting and there is a lot to find. As compared to the previous Souls games where the game would just put a big roadblock boss in your path and good luck getting past it. Or a game like Nioh that gives you a tutorial boss, with which one struggles a bit but then beats pretty fast, only to almost right away throw in the next boss which is so hard about 70% of people quit on him (according to stats I’ve seen).
However, I feel like this doesn’t apply to Silksong at all. You can go explore and get a whole lot of stuff, but a lot of it seems totally useless? You can get one damage upgrade, which does fuck all (haven’t looked it up, but feels like 15% maybe?). The different crests are really cool, but won’t help you beat bosses. There is maybe 1 full mask or 2? But as everything does 2 damage, that’s only 1 extra hit. The secondary weapons are mostly useless and as the video said, you need to farm resources to be able to use them.
I consider myself pretty good at these kinds of games. Not great, but pretty good. I’ve played the fuck out of DS1, DS3 and Elden Ring. I’ve beaten Nioh 1. I’ve done SL1 runs and all sorts of challenges in DS1, DS3 and Elden Ring, I’ve done randomisers etc. I’ve beaten Hollow Knight 3 times, the third time I did 112%.
For Silk Song I’m about 20 hours in, I’ve beaten Act 1 and did pretty much everything I could find (not spoiling myself on anything). I’m part of the way into Act 2 and I don’t know if I want to play anymore. Every enemy is a bullet sponge, requiring a lot of hits to get out of the way. Everything does so much damage. Simply exploring and finding shit feels like a slog. I’ve had many completely unfair deaths where I got booped by an enemy only to fall into a pit of spikes and die. You go from full health to death very fast. And the bosses just keep on getting more difficult. It feels like a grind instead of fun.
On the other hand, I love the way the game looks, I love the boss music (not as much a fan of the level music, too much atmospheric, too little actual music), I love how smooth it feels to play. And I love the world and want to explore it all. That’s where I disagree with the video, I’m not in the rage quit phase, I’m in the this isn’t fun to play phase.
Maybe I’ll continue, I know I have the skills to beat the game. But if I’m not having fun, what’s even the point of playing anymore?
You can get one damage upgrade, which does fuck all
The first damage upgrade increases your damage by 80%, the second increases by 44%, the third increases by 24%.
The different crests are really cool, but won't help you beat bosses.
Wanderer's and architect will definitely help you beat bosses.
There is maybe 1 full mask or 2?
You can get 3-4 masks in act 2 I think
Like many complaints it sounds like you are ranting that the game is hard to be honest. Especially in act 2, the game really opens up with many different paths to take. Take a break and stop trying to brute force the game.
You misunderstand. I was limiting what I said to act 1, just like the video did. The things you are talking about are in act 2. I’m glad to see it gets better in act 2, however I’m not as far into that yet. Most people running into these issues will quit before beating act 1 most likely, so it’s kind of a moot point.
I simply can’t believe those damage numbers. I was talking about the nail upgrade in the town. Is there some other upgrade I’m not aware of? All the low level enemies seem to take the same number of hits. In Hollow Knight the upgrades to the nail were very noticeable. The nail upgrade in Silksong felt like it did nothing at all. Bosses might have gone from 16 hits to 12 hits per phase, which is still a whole lot of hits. Especially as windows for damage are brief and far in between and bosses have 4 phases typically.
Edit: checked the damage output and whilst sources provide conflicting information, it does appear the first upgrade is 80% as stated. However it does not decrease the number of hits enemies take, due to a poor lineup in health and damage. So only a few enemies actually take less hits with the nail upgrade, making the upgrade feel pointless. For bosses the difference is obviously huge. But with perhaps the exception of a single boss, usually you fight the boss with the damage you’ve got. Very few people would be counting the hits (although I did at times to see if I was progressing). So there is little frame of reference in this case.
You misunderstand. I was limiting what I said to act 1
Fair. Act 1 is fairly tough but one can still go through the mist to skip last judge at least which is where most struggle.
The damage values are real and I'm also talking about the town upgrade, you can see the wiki to confirm ( https://hollowknight.wiki/w/Needle )
It goes from 5 dmg --> 9 dmg --> 13 dmg. It felt noticeable when I got it, enemies that took 5 hits take 3.
FYI your crest matters a lot when it comes to damage output. Reaper as an example has a long range but a slow attack speed which might make fights drag on.
I haven’t done a whole lot with the crests as I found the starter crest to be very versatile and I got used to the moveset. I have played around with the Beast crest which is really fun, allowing you to just go ham on enemies. However I found against bosses the Beast crest doesn’t work at all, as the damage taken is too large for the lifesteal to overcome. Unless you are dodging and weaving, which defeats the purpose of the Beast crest a bit.
The patches that have been release will probably help a lot of people with the bosses as, if I understood correctly, they’ve decreased the contact damage. This will help a lot with the feeling if boss fights being unfair due to hits taken are often compounded by subsequent contact damage. On many occasions I’ve gone from 4 health, doing OK to dead in less than one sec. This can feel very unfair. Especially after going through a long and annoying run back and then 2 easy phases, just to get to the hard part and die right away.
It feels like if one were to simply be able to practice the hard part, bosses would be defeated much faster. The runbacks (which often include shortcuts it must be said) combined with long easier phases contribute to a feeling of unfair difficulty. It also makes things take up more time than needed, leaving people to feel like the game is wasting their time. Or difficulty for the sake of being difficult. As the video stated, difficulty is a tool that most be wielded carefully.
When doing for example a SL1 run in a Souls game, the player must play at a high level without many or even any mistakes. Boss fights will take longer and the stakes go up. The difference is, one chooses to do these challenges. Often only after already mastering a game. For many people Silksong feels like being thrown into the deep end, without being able to properly swim.
Silksong feels like being thrown into the deep end
I think it feels less like a standalone game and more like high-end Hollow Knight DLC. The gameplay expects that you’ve already completely beaten and mastered the hardest parts of Hollow Knight, and expects you to pick up from there.
Maybe that would be fine if I’d been grinding the Godhome continuously for the past seven years. But I think most people haven’t been doing that.
Fair. Act 1 is fairly tough but one can still go through the mist to skip last judge at least which is where most struggle.
Though that’s quite well hidden and very few people will find that without some Google help. I’d also argue that it’s probably harder to go through Sinner’s Road and Mist than fighting Last Judge, though YMMV.
It goes from 5 dmg --> 9 dmg --> 13 dmg.
That didn’t match my experience, I did a lot of tests after getting the first upgrade and it definitely didn’t cut down the hits by that much.
So I was looking into that and according to tests made by a redditor there’s some kind of “damage reduction” stat in place that negates some of that buff. Their page is a work-in-progress but they’re documenting the exact damage and # of hits to kill each enemy with each upgrade.
The secondary weapons are mostly useless and as the video said, you need to farm resources to be able to use them.
I’d argue these are some of the few “useful” upgrades since some of these tools are really strong. But I agree they made them quite annoying to use due to the need to manage/farm resources.
I think the death run back and the option of exploring for upgrades were always at odds. When you respawn, getting things back is your first task as a form of loss avoidance. But then you’re standing in front of the boss room, maybe after jumping some spike pits, and you might as well just go in. There’s no thought to going other places at that point.
Shovel Knight used a death run to reclaim your lost treasure, and it worked out because it plays as a linear platformer, egging you on into accomplishing the daring feat you just pulled; gating little important behind upgrades.
Soulslike Tunic basically abandoned the death run back, just having you lose 20 gold (which hangs in that spot), and the game didn’t really suffer for it especially because exploration of old areas is so key to that game.
“In a new patent quickly accepted by the US department of embarrassments Nintendo has secured the rights to the concept of looking at a screen that displays things.”
There is a section in this video where he talks about game elements he thinks are “bullshit” and I don’t know if I agree about any of them. But I will also admit that playing NetHack at an early age, where
You fall into a spiked pit! The spikes were poisoned! The poison was deadly! You have died. Do you want your possessions identified?
was a completely normal and expected way to lose a run, may have warped my sense of what counts as a fair game mechanic. ^_^;;
Holy crap this is amazing based on the demo. Agree the gameplay is a bit basic but I don’t really care with this style and interesting characters and their dialogue.
I cannot wait for this game. It doesn't seem to have a lot of hype but it's a return to form for the OG TellTale devs. The demo's writing was sharp and fun. I hope it does well because there has been a drought of interactive story games since they went out of business.
There is a demo out on Steam, if anyone wants to try it.
Edit: So, I played the demo. Takes about 30 minutes. The game has a lot of charm, but that much was clear from the trailer. The gameplay is… basic. There is a map on which missions pop up. You choose the hero to send there, based on their skills. You get some hacking minigames and every now and then you can choose what your character says or does in a cutscene.
If I had to critique something else besides the basic gameplay, it’s the lack of feedback after a mission. You get a voice line and a little graph that shows how well your chosen hero’s skills matched the requirements of the mission. Also some missions were clearly meant to be done by one specific hero, but if they are on cooldown or already busy elsewhere you have to send someone else. Made me feel like I did something wrong. I think the game will be its strongest after you have already played it once. Knowing who to send where and being aware of character specific missions. But at the same time, a lot of the charm of the game will be gone by the second time you play it, since you already saw most of the very well done cutscenes.
Exactly my experience. I tried 3 runs, bat was on cooldown for “his” mission on the first one, he was in the wrong form in the second one, and I failed the rng on the third one, like, I just wanted to see the good outcome from that mission (:
It does have some replayability on the map section by just sending different people to different jobs to see different unique dialogs (eg: sending someone good at dealing with fires to the “shit’s on fire yo” mission, or sending the Pyro that caused it), but I’m not sure it’ll entice a second run if the game is mostly a linear story.
The dispatch loop is extremely similar to a game called This is the Police. Any good management game like this will have situations where there is no correct decision, and the fun of it is having to make those tough calls. I’m curious to see if the core loop holds up over the full runtime, because it ran a little thin in This is the Police. The story bits between that harken back to Telltale are some much appreciated new special sauce on the formula in This is the Police, but that alone won’t keep the core loop fresh. Still, I’m looking forward to this.
I’d recommend you don’t watch this if you’ve yet to play the first game (either iteration). A few spoiler elements.
It was kind of a given that this would be made, since, while the first has a great set of conclusions, it also sets up a really compelling cliffhanger element. The two games were supposedly written as one originally, and then split to two since it was getting long.
Still, part of me predicts some people will play the upcoming remake, and then get so wrapped up in the ending they’ll just buy the old-fashioned SC so they don’t have to wait for the remake edition.
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Aktywne