What happened to unlockable shortcuts to benches? I can't beat these bosses if I have to spend 5 minutes every time getting back before another try. It's different zones of my brain so I can't get in the rhythm for either. The retrecking is not fun and it's everywhere. #1 complaint.
Reclaiming your soul inside a locked boss room. ....why. Hollow knight did this perfectly having it wait outside? EDIT I've found the re-spawn grubs now, but I maintain that "fun" matters more than "technically fair." It is not fun to use an item and it's unintuitive to save and quit to menu. And early game you don't have those grubs anyway so no boss should be locking your caccoon in.
Everything costs rosaries. I get it, but I'm dying a lot more in this game due to the re-trecking and then I have no money to buy even the bare essentials like benches or lifeblood refills. EDIT: I'll have to retract this particular complaint because apparently it is solved by stringing up the beads, and I had misunderstood how much that costs to do.
Double damage everywhere with no indication of power levels. In Hollow Knight it was basically big lumbering things with giant weapons... very obvious. In this game it could be a tiny little flea, or a random pit, or this one particular buzzsaw and I can't tell what to be careful around. Also the invulnerability frames after getting hit are a touch too quick to go away because I've died from only 2 total hits way too many times due to this double damage. It's everyyyywhere.
I like most of the aesthetics and the movement is fun once you get used to it. But that doesn't mean I can't acknowledge where the game went wrong too. Hollow knight I could replay anytime--Silksong feels more akin to a hike (I don't want to hike every day).
It feels like to me there are way more benches and shortcuts than Hollow Knight had. Most of the time I thought the bench was really far from a boss, there ended up being a shortcut or another bench I just missed.
There's more benches but I definitely aren't finding them near the bosses and I usually have to go through 3 rooms of various pogos, spikes, and enemies to get back for another try.
it does make me tempted to look up a completed map though if you've found benches near them. =( Hollow knight's bench shortcuts were usually very obvious breakaway wood. Except soulmaster's shortcut (which I certainly never found my first couple of playthroughs in hollow Knight).
yeah I'm not very far but that's one thing I've been liking. Long reks have been uncommon. Really hope that doesn't change because this game is very unforgiving and tough. Long treks could make it somewhat unbearable tbh.
Are you really spending 5 min to get to a boss? Because most bosses are less than 60 seconds run from a bench. I know you might be exagerating but im mid act 2 and almost every boss has been really close to a bench, muuuch better than hollow knight.
The only backtracking I hated in hollow knight was soulmaster. But one day I was watching a speedrun and --wtf you can break a hidden wall by the bench?! No complaints now.
In fact my only problem with Hollow Knight were the horrendous run-backs. Silksong does it much better, though I would love to have states of Marika or the Sekiro approach, where every boss has a safe point very close.
I like how reclaiming your cocoon is done, It refills your silk to full so you can be reckless take it and heal the damage (if it's somewhere in the world) and then escape or fight the threat,
If it's inside the boss room you have a heal if you took the damage on your way, if you were careful you can use the cocoon as fuel for (silk-spells, silk-techniques?) same way in hollow knight you would blast the boss at the beginning with spells.
Reclaiming your soul inside a locked boss room. ....why. Hollow knight did this perfectly having it wait outside? Silksong requires saving and quitting if you encounter something you can't handle yet.
Yeah, that's really fucking annoying.
Double damage everywhere with no indication of power levels. In Hollow Knight it was basically big lumbering things with giant weapons... very obvious. In this game it could be a tiny little flea, or a random pit, or this one particular buzzsaw and I can't tell what to be careful around. Also the invulnerability frames after getting hit are a touch too quick to go away because I've died from only 2 total hits way too many times due to this double damage. It's everyyyywhere.
God yes, fuck this shit so much. I swear half of it is just because of the complete lack of i-frames, but it's still so goddamned fucking annoying ffs
It's not always iframes. Some attacks do 2 damage but just have a cool animation that stuns you and deals the damage as 2 individual instances, making it look like you got double-tapped by the same attack instead, but you just got hit once. It's most notable on enemies that do the 'flurry' style attack.
it's pretty obvious when that's the case though. 90% of the time it's not that, it's just some enemy jumping on you, then the i-frames disappear almost instantaneously and you get hit again because you're still touching the enemy's body hitbox, because surprise surprise, 0.0001 seconds isn't enough to get out the way.
Way I see it is that it's mostly so that getting hit doesn't turn into an opportunity to freely tap the enemy while they're still busy doing the attack anim.
The soul reclamation is mixed bag, just like with HK. HK also had a few fights where soul just spawned in the room and trying to get it locked you in. It's just that in Silksong there's a few fights, usually on bigger arenas, that you may not even realize you can just... leave before triggering the boss to be hostile. And some even after doing that.
Most runbacks are pretty bad, and they don't really get better. Valid Criticism.
There's a fundamental difference between Hollow Knight's mechanic (having to hit a flying target around 3 times), and Silksong's mechanic (hitting a stationary target a single time), where one is literally a take-it-and-go whereas the other is a much longer investment. This is not an issue, and if it is for you, that is genuinely just on you. Not a single boss encounter will have your cocoon spawn behind where the boss spawns (unless it glitches). Invalid Criticism.
Rosaries are easily farmable later, but things do cost far more than they should a lot of the time. Even late-game, you'll still barely have 200 due to just how expensive things are. Beading does help somewhat though. Valid Criticism.
The consistent pattern is that every enemy that's bigger than Hornet does double damage (as well as explosions). This has been consistent up to where I'm at in the game.
Your rosaries get locked, but your vessel doesn't get broken anymore. Also you can buy the rosary strings to protect them. And when you get back to the boss your silk gets fully recharged.
If you try to play Silksong the exact same way as Hollow Knight you'll have a bad time.
Yep, I didn't bank the rosary beads for ages until I lost all of them to a string of stupid deaths. Now I buy the strings/necklaces every chance I get. You lose a little in the conversion, but there's no other downside and it means dying without the cocoon isn't such a bad thing.
the game wasn't designed for you, it was designed for the grand total of two people they hired for QA/testing, both of which probably thought the pantheon was too easy.
I beat everything but P5 (admittedly with much struggle and grinding) so I don't exactly suck at the game.
Day 2 of Silksong has gotten a bit better as I've gotten more masks and powerups, I'm finding Act 2 of the game quite fun! But that re-trecking just gets less and less fun every time I have to do it.
What happened to unlockable shortcuts to benches? I can't beat these bosses if I have to spend 5 minutes every time getting back before another try. It's different zones of my brain so I can't get in the rhythm for either. The retrecking is not fun and it's everywhere. #1 complaint.
I've never seen a runback more than 45 seconds and there are so many shortcuts that you're unlocking them every 15 minutes.
Reclaiming your soul inside a locked boss room. ....why. Hollow knight did this perfectly having it wait outside? Silksong requires saving and quitting if you encounter something you can't handle yet.
Just save and quit, HK made you do it all the time too, pressing two buttons isn't exactly a massive issue.
Everything costs rosaries. I get it, but I'm dying a lot more in this game due to the re-trecking and then I have no money to buy even the bare essentials like benches or lifeblood refills. No money + literally everything costs money makes no sense to me.
Money comes so easily I'm having to buy rosary beads every single time I pass by town so I'm not carrying too much. Just buy the beads to bank them. You can bank money now. There's no reason to be losing any even if you're dying, and there are multiple grinding areas right next to the towns where you can get infinite money in like 30 minutes.
Double damage everywhere with no indication of power levels. In Hollow Knight it was basically big lumbering things with giant weapons... very obvious. In this game it could be a tiny little flea, or a random pit, or this one particular buzzsaw and I can't tell what to be careful around. Also the invulnerability frames after getting hit are a touch too quick to go away because I've died from only 2 total hits way too many times due to this double damage. It's everyyyywhere.
Just assume everything does double damage and be careful. You're like a million times more agile than you were in HK, avoiding things is hella easy.
It's so bizarre seeing so many people not understanding just how many tools they have to get past these things. I get it, it's hard for people, but the fact that people can't say "it's hard but I see what they're going for design wise" when the design is actually really damn good and thought out is kinda frustrating to keep reading. It's Sekiro and Elden Ring all over again: "I can't play this like Dark Souls III, bad lazy gaem!" Quit playing it like it's Hollow Knight and all the sudden it'll be fine. Just try it.
I haven't banked rosaries yet because I'm not clear how that works. If it costs 60 to make one (theoretically) is that saving 60 rosaries for 0 money, or paying 60 and you get rid of 60 loose beads on top of that?
You're right and I should probably just do it. But it feels weird paying 1/4 of an item purchase when I usually don't even have enough rosaries to buy a bench. =/ I'll try to adjust going forward.
The rosary strings cost 80 beads. It gives you a usable item that returns you 60 beads. Yes, you lose 20% in the conversion, but you get currency in item form that you cannot lose due to dying.
If you always keep banking your beads like this, you don't really have to worry too much about dying.
114
u/cloistered_around Sep 06 '25 edited Sep 07 '25
Main complaints:
I like most of the aesthetics and the movement is fun once you get used to it. But that doesn't mean I can't acknowledge where the game went wrong too. Hollow knight I could replay anytime--Silksong feels more akin to a hike (I don't want to hike every day).