Some things in the game definitely piss me off. But I avoid ranting about it because then the game would only be about the bad parts. It can still be a lot of fun if you take it slowly.
Big tip for boss fights: turn off the music and it becomes 10x easier. For me the music is way too overdramatic and distracting during a boss fight.
Also it does really get easier when you have more movement abilities.
I have been pleading with my husband to do exactly this. But no, he will continue to bash his face off enemies until they die by some kind of miracle. He has 5 masks, does not use red tools (but uses the poison polyp in his one blue slot), does not pogo or hit enemies above him, not use running attacks, or heal in the air. Just straight on hit with nail while face tanking and ground heal. I am DREADING him somehow reaching Bilewater.
I absolutely KNOW he is not the only person playing like this, and suspish this is the main source of the difficulty discourse...
Silksong makes me want to cry sad tears of defeat.
It's so melancholy and difficult sometimes. Yeah, there's the whole 'get good' argument, but there's a lot of arguably unnecessary tedium involved that starts to feel like difficulty just for the sake of being difficult and nothing else. That's definitely been a bit of a detractor for me, as well as a lot of others it seems.
The clip I watched the character was going through some Lion King game esque jumping sequence and I immediately knew the game wasn't for me.
That is fair. I don't think people have been complaining about the platforming too much though, mostly the combat.
I avoided all Silksong articles and posts until I finished Act 1 and probably shouldn't have been surprised by the response, but I was. To me, this threads the needle of that difficulty curve I'm looking for. It's hard but none of my deaths have felt cheap - I made a mistake in my read or hit the wrong button or I'm old and my reflexes are slowing down.
The high you get when finally learning the boss patterns and beating them is fantastic although...
act 1 spoiler
when I landed the final blow on the Last Judge I dropped my controller and threw my hands in the air only for the corpse to explode and drop me down to one mask. It was 🤌
The bosses are fun
The fucking mob wave rooms is way harder than any boss and can suck it.
Difficulty and fun are orthogonal, one doesn't exclude the other. Look at something like Celeste, it gets brutally difficult in farewell but never feels unfair.
A difficult game should motivate the player to get better, and that can happen while still remaining a fun experience. Nine Sols has a difficult combat system, but the combat feels fluid and fast-paced. Learning how to parry an enemy's attacks and get in counter hits feels amazing, also you get lots of meaningful upgrades and rewards from everywhere.
Meanwhile in silksong you have a character with insane horizontal movement, then you repeatedly get pushed through narrow vertical platforming sections with flying enemies above, spikes on the sides. Killing a bell guy by agonizingly hitting them 1 hit at a time before they dash away out of reach again is not a fun combat paradigm and doesn't create the power fantasy Hollow Knight excelled at.
The boss fights and >!Mt.Fay!< are fantastic but exploring the map just feels frustrating, especially when 90% of zones don't drop any rosaries.
Why drop rosaries when you get killed in 3 hits (for about all of act 1 at the very least) and come across a dozen enemies that bait and dodge every input you make and spike traps within a couple screens every time you die and you get killed a second time on your runback anyway
I think it'll only be "too hard" the first play through. I got every achievement in HK, I'll probably do the same with Silksong, which means eventually I'll be able to beat every boss in order without dying in less than 10 hours. It'll get easier to the point where I'm adding challenges to my game just to stay entertained.
Most of the complaints are limited to the early game. After act 1, I didn't really struggle to the same level anymore. I had the masks and abilities I needed to navigate hard fights.
I hope they don't nerf anything else. I was grinding through Sister Sledge (or whatever the boss is called) and I'd nearly done it. Then patch 1 came out and I did it first time. I feel robbed of the achievement.
Tweaking the rosary economy is ok however there is a clear lore reason why it is less generous initially.
I feel like they should stick to their guns and just make the game they want to make.
Is it going to be for everyone? No, but no game is.
A game developer can have massive blind spots about their game, feedback can elevate the artist's vision if responded to critically.
“So, gamer, what did you think about the campfire scene?”
“I didn’t get it at all. When they said Earl and his kid were dead and everyone started crying I had no idea who they were.”
“Huh? You don’t remember him? He was in the scene where you visit the city gate.”
“I haven’t been to the city gate yet.”
“…Really? I…oh shit.”
With all the interactivity games have, it’s very possible for someone’s session to just not hit the same emotional beats the devs planned out. True for an improperly gated story, as well as for a difficulty curve.
Shout out to all the homies that missed the Estus Flask in Dark Souls 2, and who learned nothing revelatory about exploration when they finally came back to it.
Yes, but trying to please everyone can also lead to pleasing no one.
It's right in the difficulty sweet spot for me despite not being as into games (at the age of 40) as I used to be generally. It's like it was made for me!!
Some games are just supposed to be harder, it's how they were designed. Developers shouldn't have to come out and address anything. If it's too hard for you, just refund it and move on to another game if you don't have the patience to learn it.
Sucks to be anyone who didn't realize how prohibitively difficult it would be until after the refund period
This is true. There are lots of reviews out there to read though before making a purchasing decision.
These people have obviously never played cuphead either then.
Cuphead shows you how much health you took off before dying, and lets you restart boss fights immediately and infinitely without needing to replenish any forms of ammo.
I’d say Cuphead is FAR more relaxed.
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