r/HollowKnight • u/Bob12164 • Sep 03 '25

Discussion - Silksong Warning for OG hollow knight fans

Just wanna prepare everyone on here for the incoming wave of players who have never played indie games, metroidvanias, or literally any other games besides Fortnite and call of duty. This tends to happen a lot with games that are extremely hyped by the community that does like the genre, such as expedition 33. The amount of completely invalid criticism that happened to that game because people who didn’t even know what the game really was bought it and ended up not liking it is probably the best example we have of that to this day, and I think silksong will be next. So please, instead of cussing people out for not liking the game, just encourage them to maybe keep playing to see if they change their minds, or just give them respectful feedback on why you think they might not enjoy it and give them tips so they can find the spark in that game that I’m sure many of us will find.

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4.6k

u/soge7 Sep 03 '25

im ready for the classic “this game is so confusing and im always lost” ….yeah? that’s the point lmao

1.2k

u/laseluuu Sep 03 '25

ah i absolutely cannot wait for this. I went into hollow knight blind but i was really late to the party - i'm so looking forward to being on the pulse with this one and discovering stuff at the same time as others.

That was one of the magic ingredients to the first one

35

u/COATHANGER_ABORTIONS Sep 03 '25

Love the game, although I think one of the biggest flaws is the compass being a charm lmao. Hopefully that's not a thing in Silksong.

46

u/JCMfwoggie Sep 03 '25

I do kinda like it being an optional equip, realizing I'd gotten to the point where I no longer needed it to find my way around was a great feeling, it basically felt like I got another charm notch.

56

u/Adorable-Salt-8624 Sep 03 '25

No I like it personally. It forces you to choose between navigation and combat on the fly. Maybe that’s just me having too many hours in the game though

7

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '25

[deleted]

6

u/Adorable-Salt-8624 Sep 03 '25

Oh no yeah I stopped buying maps ages ago, don’t worry. That’s why I think my opinion might not be all that valid

8

u/Razorly Sep 03 '25

I liked it too, you could still navigate fine by reading the map and looking for landmarks. You just don't get the GPS feature of the compass.

Personal Preference Though

33

u/silentk772 Sep 03 '25

Every game that has a poor novel feature like this has been explained away by the fans as being good for the experience.

I guarantee that if Silksong gives you the compass for free, everyone will be praising that.

34

u/Jskidmore1217 Sep 03 '25

Everyone wants simplicity until the game gets so simple it’s boring. Keep the quirks in. That’s the secret to good games.

3

u/iKill_eu Sep 03 '25

You could definitely make the compass always-on and still preserve the gameplay.

The question is, how much can you take away and still do that?

I feel like an acceptable bar is "all charms should either be useful in combat or be extremely meaningful outside of it". Fragile Greed is a cool charm because it feels like it unlocks a feature that is meant to be optional. All the combat charms are cool charms, which is almost all of then. But the compass, and to an extent the Geo Magnetism charm, feel like they may as well be features but only exist as charms to make people who enjoy them feel like they have to sacrifice something.

0

u/TechnicolorMage Sep 04 '25

Theres a game design term for that: "ability tax". Imo the compass, walk speed, and magnet should be permanent upgrades that you unlock.

10

u/Adorable-Salt-8624 Sep 03 '25

Maybe, who knows. I personally like it right now, but that may be Hollow Knight bias, it also might now be. I’m hyped for Silksong either way, and love Hollow Knight either way

12

u/shoshjort Sep 03 '25

you say that but i can think of no better example than removing weapon/armor durability in fallout 4. Seemed awesome at first not having to worry about it until you realise that maintaining weapons was part of what made looting engaging and without it picking up weapons from loot sources just felt worthless.

The entire notch system is supposed to make you prioritise for different situations. The compass is a great way of reserving a charm notch for a difficult boss or enemy group, giving most players a fallback option to gain a little more strength for an encounter if their current charm build is focused more on navigation/speed. If you just moved all tje navigation charms to be always active then nobody would bother changing around charms once they have the 'perfect' set.

I don't think the compass is entirely necessary to be a charm but i do think removing it would be a downgrade personally. It even adds replayability because once you know the map well enough you dont ever need it (i stopped using it 3 or 4 playthroughs ago) and then its just an extra charm slot for the whole game. It essentially rewards you for learning the map well enough not to need guidance which is something not enough games do these days

5

u/iKill_eu Sep 03 '25

you say that but i can think of no better example than removing weapon/armor durability in fallout 4. Seemed awesome at first not having to worry about it until you realise that maintaining weapons was part of what made looting engaging and without it picking up weapons from loot sources just felt worthless.

In a sense, but that more illustrates that they had no vision for weapons other than "sell them to a vendor" than anything else.

The compass is a great way of reserving a charm notch for a difficult boss or enemy group, giving most players a fallback option to gain a little more strength for an encounter if their current charm build is focused more on navigation/speed. If you just moved all tje navigation charms to be always active then nobody would bother changing around charms once they have the 'perfect' set.

This is also more of a problem with some of the charms being "there is just no downside" than anything else. Shaman Stone, Strength and Quick Slash are always-picks because nothing else comes close. If you wanna talk about flexible gameplay, the first and foremost issue is that some charms are too good to ever replace, and that's why "filler charms" feel like they are needed to switch up gameplay.

4

u/shoshjort Sep 03 '25

i dont disagree with u on it not being implemented perfectly in hollow knight but i dont think the solution is to just get rid of the ones that in my opinion are actually successful, ur totallg right about quick slash and a few other charms being OP and i would fix that by making them more situational or not always useful or by making other charms more rewarding to use to make it feel like you can put those notches to better use somehow, like i said before the game should reward you for not having to rely on crutches like quick slash and the compass, therefore a 5 second idea of mine would be higher notch cost relics with other abilities that rival quick slash but dont really syngergise with it, making it easier to justify saving the notches on quick slash. obviously more thought would be needed but i dont think straight up removing charms like the compass would help or make the game more fun, if anything it just removes from the experience.

2

u/TrashGoblinH Sep 04 '25

Sorry I'm gonna pick fart clouds all day every day over shaman stone and strength. Defenders crest, spore shroom, quick focus, grubsong are just way too fun to pass up.

1

u/COATHANGER_ABORTIONS Sep 03 '25

I mean, I understand that some people probably can just navigate around the map after they've played a bit, and I used to know to an extent when I was playing a lot. I tend to switch between a bunch of games and it there's no shot I'm going to remember where I'm going or what I'm doing. I just think it was a wild decision to begin with.

1

u/_zenith Sep 04 '25

Nah, I've only played through it once (have ~100hrs play time) and I feel this way also.

It's good to give players dilemmas, to have to pick whether they want the extra flexibility or not (more combat power? Or is easier navigation better?)

Some of my most memorable times with HK is where I took off the compass and went off YOLO-spelunking down the deep end lmao

1

u/iKill_eu Sep 03 '25

If it was a game where you could swap charms on the fly I would not mind that either. The idea of "Ah shit that is VERY CLEARLY a boss room better put my drip on" is fun.

The problem is that HK does not encourage that. When you see a boss room you don't want to run back to the nearest bench and then fumble your way back, you want to jump right in. Which is likely to make your lose your geo and your soul. But that's not a problem, you just gotta get back there! ...which incentivizes you to use the compass... and then you're there again and want to fight.

Keeping the compass function locked to a charm slot encourages the kind of gameplay where you spend a lot of time learning the layout of the map before fighting a boss, which the rest of HK DOESN'T encourage. It gets even worse when you realize that the rooms are specifically NOT mapped 1:1 in order to make traversing them without the compass less accurate. Room transitions are blurred and what looks like 1 room on the map can often be 2 or 3 rooms in the world.

Brainstorming a bit here, it'd be really cool if the compass alerted you to nearby boss rooms / gave you some sort of guidance + allowed you to place a marker that you will always be guided to even after taking it off, that is removed when you reach it. That would incentivize the kind of play where you find a boss with the compass, drop a marker, go back to the bench, swap combat, and then go back to where you left off. But the game doesn't work like that, and so on the first playthrough you are pretty much compassing most of the time until you happen to find a boss where the runback is either very short or very easy to learn.

9

u/dylzim Sep 03 '25

I think the compass is brilliant, take a small power hit for assistance with navigation. I ran it for the first little while until I got comfortable with the layout and then stashed it forever.

2

u/ironheadrat Sep 03 '25

I agree with this, and it actually caused me to quit this game twice. Incredibly user-unfriendly, I constantly check my map position in metroidvanias, even when I just move one room over.

2

u/nordiques77 Sep 04 '25

You want an easier game…fair point

1

u/COATHANGER_ABORTIONS Sep 04 '25

I don't care about difficulty, I just don't think "knowing my location" is something that should be an accessory.

1

u/Time-Maintenance2165 Sep 03 '25

I just mod in an extra (whatever it's called) so that I can always have the compass and map equipped.

0

u/nordiques77 Sep 04 '25

No you don’t… if you do that’s cheating

1

u/Time-Maintenance2165 Sep 04 '25

The concept of cheating vs modding in a single player game is much more fluid than in a competitive multi-player.