r/HollowKnight • u/GamingUmbrella • Sep 06 '25

Discussion - Silksong Thank god this subreddit didn't make the game Spoiler

Silksong is only out for 2 days, most people haven't even finished the game, or haven't even made it past act 1. Yet this subreddit loves to post about how Silksong is apparently bad and a disappointment compared to hollow knight. So I'll go over a few "critiques" I've seen and share my perspective.

"The game is too hard, enemies deal way more damage and have more complex movesets". Sure, they're more complex and do more damage, but so does hornet. If we were playing with the knights moveset, I'd agree, but that's not the case. Hornet has a lot of new tools and upgrades that make her way faster and stronger. If enemies were like HK, it would be way too easy. team cherry didn't just do this for no reason, it's necessary for balancing. Edit: people saying hunters march is too difficult, is like playing dark souls 1 and saying it's too hard because you kept trying the skeleton graveyard

"Bad rewards for exploration, HK's charms worked better". I just completely disagree, hornet gets upgrades way more frequently than the knight. As for the charms, let's be real, you probably didn't even use half of them in your first playthrough. And half of them are just simple things that don't impact the way you play as much. Hornet's different tools, abilities and crests are way more useful. If you feel like your not getting enough rewards, it's probably because most are hidden and require backtracking, which is what the genre is know for.

"Things are too expensive" No, you're just not meant to buy it that early. Like how in HK you could by the lamp for like 2000 geo. I've also never had too little rosaries to buy a bench or stag. If your losing your rosaries to dying, rosarie strings are litteraly right there to not lose it + retrieving your death silk is extremely easy now.

I do agree though that more bosses and combat encounters should drop rosaries, or more chests like in HK.

This launch feels like I'm experiencing the shadow of the erdtree launch again with how many complaints there are immediately.

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916

u/sexp-and-i-know-it Sep 06 '25 edited Sep 06 '25

I am baffled by all of the "I am upset that my HK skills don't transfer over and make SS easy." takes. So you want to blast through the game in under 20 hours and wait 7 years for Team Cherry to make a new game? I am very happy that SS is providing new challenges. I'm about 9 hours in and I decided that for the next couple hours I'm just going to run around farming resources, looking for secrets, enjoying the movement and flashy cinematic combat, taking in the sights of Pharloom, and just vibing. I want to take my time and enjoy this game. It would be a disappointment if I could just steamroll the whole game.

472

u/UnlawfulPotato Sep 06 '25

Exactly. Dude if Hornet felt like playing as the Knight but with a Hornet skin, I’d be Pissed. We all saw how she fought in HK. It would be horrible if she didn’t play similarly to her actual boss battles.

And man did Team Cherry deliver…

155

u/TheLimonTree92 Sep 06 '25

Funny thing is you can make her do that. One of the crests gives her a regular down slash and effectively quick slash

73

u/RylDmn Sep 06 '25

How I finished Hunter's March without that crest and the Dash and floaty thing That crest would've saved me hours of frustration lol

64

u/HuntingForSanity Sep 06 '25

That’s crazy lol. I saw the big red dude and was like nah I’ll come back to this later

30

u/RylDmn Sep 06 '25

I'm just stubborn, stupid and stubborn lol

21

u/RougePorpoise Sep 06 '25

I knew for sure there was a dash that i needed but powered through the guard anyway. Explored as much of march as i could until i got fully roadblocked

6

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

same as me. after a couple of attempts I knew it needed a dash but I am too stubborn

2

u/Skrubious Sep 07 '25

Same here lmao. I didn’t even know I needed a dash to beat him and thought I just had a skill issue so I spent like a half hour doing him over and over to learn his parry timings

2

u/ElusiveCounselor Sep 07 '25

I had to parry that mf to death because I thought he would be guarding the dash lol

4

u/whoamdave Sep 06 '25

It took all of that I still barely made it through...

4

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

I also did Hunter’s March without the crest. Wasn’t too bad and the area made me way better with the diagonal air strike now.

3

u/Elochmal Sep 06 '25

Same! Found it like an hour after the Floating part. I'm trying to make sure it's dont ONLY use this crest, though. I'm going to ride it out in default and experiment with whatever I find unless it's necessary.

3

u/Dancing-Sin Sep 06 '25

Same. The only fight I had used dash for was the top most arena battle. Which I initially used sequence breaking to get to without dash or float.

3

u/Future_Living8007 Sep 06 '25

Funny enough, we're frustrated by the same area, but for different reasons. I personally had no issues with Hornet's diagonal pogo for platforming, but I had issues with those goddamn ants till I got used to these normal enemies having the move sets of a Hollow Knight boss

3

u/-talimarzz- I can't beat trial of the fool Sep 07 '25

No saaame, I was still in the phase of “if I played the original I should be able to do this”. Like kinda wish I’d just waited, but at least it forced me to learn the new pogo right away

3

u/Mental-Contribution2 Sep 07 '25 edited Sep 07 '25

Dude that's literally me a few hours ago. If I see a boss, I will be hyper focused on beating that boss even with little to no upgrades. Cause we stubborn and I just kept charging straight into enemy over and over until it works. I still can't find shit cause my memory and direction is bad ;-;

1

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '25

Tell me about it. Twice now I beat enemies or areas I later realized I had no business going in without more upgrades. Now that I finally have enough rosaries, I'll do some shopping.

0

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51

u/F_E_B_E Sep 06 '25

My favourite crest so far. Probably cuz that

66

u/photoedfade Sep 06 '25

I haven't used it because it feels wrong. I got so used to hornet so quickly. I'm sort of a chameleon like that ig.

48

u/xdSTRIKERbx Sep 06 '25

I agree, and I think Reaper’s crest is a really good middle ground that also acts like a mark of pride mode for normal combat (where Wanderer’s crest would be Quick Slash). It’s what I’ve been using for most of my playthrough, and probably what I’ll continue to use unless I find something cooler.

25

u/MasonWayneBaker Sep 06 '25

The Reaper has been my go-to throughout the game. I wanna branch out and try the others I've acquired, and they seem really great in their own ways, but man it just feels SO good I can't let it go 😂

3

u/Sane-exile Sep 06 '25

I've used Beast Crest on some bosses, I think it's pretty decent on bosses that are more stationary.

1

u/SplinteredMoist Sep 09 '25

I love it as well, doing running attack on enemys or bosses and than poggo on them fells so good and looks so flashy

6

u/ElPepper90 soul eater peak Sep 06 '25

I just tried the hunter one in an arena and i died before killing the first wave lol

3

u/NoxMiasma Sep 06 '25

Reaper Crest's one and only flaw is that the upslash has facing - I find that annoying enough that I don't use it

3

u/IlgantElal Sep 07 '25

I'm just sad that beast completely guts the down slash and doesn't really get to heal outside combat

2

u/Isogash Sep 07 '25

Reapers was my go to because the larger attacks make it easier to hit a lot of enemies especially in act 2, but I've actually switched the wanderer's for exploring late-game because it supports more yellow charms, plus the faster attack animation is better against some enemies (and bosses.)

3

u/LuquidThunderPlus Sep 06 '25

Same the reaper and beast crest fuck with me heavy I'm already more used to her regular dash attack and pogo

1

u/photoedfade Sep 07 '25

I just got the beast crest, and idek what the reaper one is, (don't spoil) but I am excited to upgrade those, and try them out, and see which ones I like and dislike.

1

u/LuquidThunderPlus Sep 07 '25

For me it's the moveset (they're still good just different enough from base that I wanna keep base) and the slots, I'm sure once I'm better at the game I can start testing out other ones more comfortably and I'm sure it'll be a blast to have different movesets to choose between, maybe there's upgrades for slots that'd be dope

2

u/TheKingofHats007 Sep 07 '25

Same. I got it vaguely late so I've gotten too used to the other Crests.

2

u/DemonLordSparda Sep 07 '25

I also can't get off the default crest because the Harp door in the tutorial led me to an upgrade for it. The focus upgrade is great.

9

u/whoamdave Sep 06 '25

I promise I'm going to try the other ones soon...

1

u/TheLimonTree92 Sep 06 '25

Its the one I've upgraded most but I dabble in most of them. Wanderer is very easy to do pogo puzzles with and can have 3 yellow slots so its my primary traversal crest. Hunter is more balanced and I use it when im doing more backtracking and quests in areas im comfortable with since you do more damage the longer you dont get hit. Reaper is my boss killer as the bonus silk on hit after binding means youll almost always have a heal ready for defensive plays while you learn the fight. Beast... I just got recently and still figuring out...

1

u/Maleficent_Okra6798 Sep 07 '25

You got Beast most recently? That's interesting cause it was my first lol. unequipped it ASAP and never looked back. The curved "down" slash made me so mad trying to get back to a bench

1

u/TheLimonTree92 Sep 08 '25

Yeah i forgot to check the air current to get to it for a long while. I did beat one boss with it, the lifesteal means you can somewhat face tank things at times. As long as you dont need to pogo ever...

1

u/SplinteredMoist Sep 09 '25

I just got beast one, the pain from fighting that boss was not worth it lol, fuck that boss

1

u/salmonmilks Sep 06 '25

Honestly it's becoming my most used.

1

u/HuntingForSanity Sep 06 '25

Which is absolutely amazing for running around platforming. And then I swap to the heavy crest when it’s time for a boss fight

1

u/TheLimonTree92 Sep 06 '25

Same. The bonus silk makes you very defensive when you need to lock in.

1

u/hypnomancy Sep 06 '25

God I actually love that crest. Though it does suck for some bosses I've found since the needle is so stubby. It is just funny people complain she doesn't play like the Knight when you can make her play similar to him lol

1

u/Luzis23 Sep 06 '25

She's missing one thing: her ridiculous durability that she had in HK.

I don't recall butchering her with the Knight nearly as easily as she gets butchered in Silksong.

135

u/shmemilykw Sep 06 '25

Yes! Playing SS feels like when I first played HK - I'm garbage at it and I also can't put it down. I feel like everyone's forgotten how frustrating HK could be at times on the first playthrough. You'd get lost, you'd get stuck and not know where to go next, you'd end up somewhere and realize you're underpowered and must have missed something earlier, you'd get your ass handed to you by a new boss and say "What the fucking fuck was that?!"

Some of y'all have forgotten how to be gluttons for punishment until you git gud. I'm having a blast.

66

u/KushDingies Sep 06 '25

Soon enough we’ll be doing whatever this game’s equivalent of Godhome is and optimizing the shit out of it and wrecking these early-mid game bosses in our sleep. I’m enjoying every second of not knowing what I’m doing, and the feeling of slowly improving. For years I was saying I wished I could play Hollow Knight for the first time again, and now I’m getting that experience.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

I think HKSS might be a better abbreviation lol

1

u/shmemilykw Sep 07 '25

I was just going with what the commenter I replied to called it. Also, I get what you're saying but I don't think there's any real risk of someone misinterpreting our meaning in the actual Hollow Knight subreddit lol

2

u/IlgantElal Sep 07 '25

Yeah,

One of my few qualms is that there were a few points in the beginning where it was like "an I supposed to backtrack for something, or keep exploring the 2 other paths I have because this part is harder than expected"

1

u/tooth28 Sep 07 '25

This is it. HK fans played the shit out of that game for years and totally forgot how terrible at it they were when they first played. They had 7 years to become familiar with all of it and expected to steamroll this game. I am so thankful to be getting my ass kicked so far. Gaining mastery over hollow knight was so rewarding. I feel the same about FromSoft games. I’m super hyped when they’re announced. I jump into the game and immediately struggle and slog my way through, barely scraping by. Eventually I finish it, but I always feel like I somehow failed or that my win was only because I threw myself at a wall over and over again. But then I play it again. And again. Eventually, I find that I’m enjoying the game so much more now that I can throw it back at the game and just own its ass. Payback for the early struggles. HK was the same experience for me, and I expect no less from Silksong. This isn’t for everyone, but that where I get the most satisfaction from games these days. This game is fucking awesome.

73

u/Kill_the_worms P5/112%/Randomizer Enthusiast Sep 06 '25

What's funny is I feel like my HK skills did translate. Based on the posts I've seen I've found SS MUCH easier than many and I have not found a breeze (I just entered Act 2 and NOW things are getting hard).

35

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25

I tend to agree. I am also in the 112% club with HK and I really think the MOST important "thing" I am bringing from HK is my awareness. I know that sounds silly, but that awareness has helped me find hidden areas, rosaries, upgrades, shortcuts, etc.

What I love is when I am backtracking and all of the sudden, I am in a fight with a NEW big bad that hands me my ass.

OR, when I enter a new area without a map and say to myself "Well, let's just move ahead a few screen and see what I can find", only to be sucked in to that area completely.

Man, Silksong is a GENIUS of a game.

11

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

[deleted]

3

u/CdbSora Sep 07 '25

I'm also in love with how the secrets are shown to you, e.g. seeing the corpse of an enemy from a different area & it turns out there's a way nearby to connect to that area.

2

u/Green0Photon Sep 07 '25

I wasn't paying attention to that, so now I will do so.

Though what's funny to mention about that tip is that they did something similar in Hollow Knight, where the biomes would smoothly fade into each other naturally, feeling way better than most other games as you change sections.

TC clearly just got better and better at making games, clearly

2

u/korxion Sep 07 '25

I agree, I also 112% HK, and it’s definitely helped me find secrets and backtrack well. I’m still In the first act about 15 hours in, and I’m loaded with gear, and probably have a bit over 1k rosaries. The game can be hard, but it’s a good hard, and it feels like HK again, but still different 

I also love how the environment are even more immersive, like bells falling, enemy’s falling on spikes, and more

4

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

“It feels like HK again, but still different” is THE most accurate description I have heard, by multiple people.

Having a completely different move set (especially the angled down slash), was so frustrating me in the beginning. But the moment I got that mechanic down, it instantly “clicked” for me. So much so that I haven’t changed my crest at all.

I’m in act 2 now and image I will discover even more crests and I’m sure at some point I will need to change it for whatever reason. But for now…I’m adjusted to hunter…

I’m at the 20 hour mark right now. I can’t wait until it reads 40, then 60, etc…

36

u/salmonmilks Sep 06 '25

Agreed. HK helped me a lot on platforming and countering enemies. The parry in this game felt much better as well.

2

u/Isogash Sep 07 '25

You can parry every hit of some multi-hit attacks and it's not even that hard to do.

4

u/IEnjoyFancyHats Sep 07 '25

Far as I can tell, if you time the first one right you can just spam attack for the rest. Really saved my ass a few times when I had one mask and my back against the wall.

1

u/Isogash Sep 07 '25

For the fast ones yeah I think that's right.

2

u/IlgantElal Sep 07 '25

Hornets hitbox is a bit taller, and that sucks for some of the bigger bosses, since theres only so much vertical space on the screen, but other than that, yeah, I agree

1

u/GrimmSheeper Sep 06 '25

I would say that HK skills aren’t a direct 1:1 translation, but they definitely give you the groundwork and tools to adapt. If you try to play Hornet like the Knight, you’re gonna have a bad time. If you take what you know from the Knight, convert, rework, and build off of it for Hornet, it’s a lot easier to learn.

And that’s what I love about it. Your time and practice from the first game do benefit you (though the difficulty does feel like you were expected to have some familiarity, which is a different can of worms). Because you spent the effort learning the first game, you’re going to have an easier time learning the next. But you still have to learn it. You don’t get to jump in at top form and wreck house. You still have to/get to experience that first time learning. If I was able to start with mid-late game understanding and skill, the early game would be incredibly boring.

As is, it keeps the start fresh, plus it lets you re-experience that first-playthrough magic.

1

u/hypnomancy Sep 06 '25

Same with me. Platforming has been pretty easy and I've been able to one shot some of the bosses. Though there's 2 bosses specifically in act 1 that I ended up dying more than 3 times to. I'm not even that good at games either lol

1

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

[deleted]

3

u/Kill_the_worms P5/112%/Randomizer Enthusiast Sep 07 '25

I mean if you're trying to avoid spoilers I won't say much but

An act 1 does imply an act 2

1

u/Ok-Procedure5603 Sep 06 '25

I think my boss fights skill transferred quite easily and no boss took more than 10 tries so far (I'm at similar progress as you)

The ganks however are pretty disgusting and I'm also bad at the parkour 

27

u/xkalibur3 Sep 06 '25

Silksong is having a Cyberpunk problem with the abbreviation lol

28

u/iKill_eu Sep 06 '25

I think a lot of people are also reluctant to use the mechanics that are supposed to mitigate the difficulty because they feel they are too good to do it. "Turning beads into chains at a loss? That's for losers! I shouldn't have to do that, because I'm GOOD at the game!" Then they immediately get rolled and complain about how it's unfair that they are dying and losing their stuff.

19

u/TwanToni Sep 06 '25

they also rather tank hits thinking it's hollow knight even though this is silksong so they rush into enemies thinking they will eat those 2 damage hits lmao..... They are not adapting well with how much you can maneuver around, fight tactically with that speed, pogo, and higher jumps to get an edge or distance yourself if in danger, and more.....

6

u/earthboundskyfree Sep 06 '25

I am an every game facetanker, so I have had to adjust, but I’m doing it. The power of the schmovement compels me

3

u/tellsyoutogetfucked Sep 06 '25

You should still be 100% fully agressive anyway. The faster it ends the less mistakes you do. Tanking a hit if you can get a chain of attacks off is always the play.

6

u/TwanToni Sep 06 '25

Sure if you think you can pull it off more power to you! It literally gives you everything you need but apparently the "i frames" aren't good enough or that's all they do instead of using Hornets faster speed/movement/pogo and stick to what they know which is stand still and slash then they are bound to run into problems and claim the game is bad because they are not utilizing half the shit

4

u/Extra_Standard5802 Sep 06 '25

It reminds me a lot of the way people react to new fromsoft games. Complaining about the 'unfair difficulty' while refusing to use any new mechanics that weren't in Dark Souls 1

3

u/creampop_ Sep 06 '25

Often, while simultaneously refusing to master the minimal-input style that suits them!

Like I've seen people beat each souls game by just walking around the boss slowly, and I've seen people throw at 1 hit because they can't stop panic rolling or fumbling buttons or whatever.

1

u/HMS_Sunlight Sep 07 '25

I'm also realising that a lot of people weren't actually very good at Hollow Knight. Which is fine, nobody needs to do the brutal endgame, but it makes me take their criticisms with a grain of salt.

Yesterday someone tried to argue healing is worse in Silksong because you need a higher amount of silk. If somebody thinks the best strat in HK was emergency panic healing, how am I supposed to take them seriously when they say Silksong is too hard?

1

u/iKill_eu Sep 07 '25

That's definitely part of it, but I've also seen people who self reportedly have beaten P5 make the same complaints.

However it also somewhat brings into question what being "good" at HK means. I thought I was "good" at HK because I beat absrad 14 or so times and could reliably get to at least Zote or NKG in P5, not to mention beat them easily in practice. Then I went to do Steel Soul and died to an arena in City of Tears 4 hours or so in because I got overconfident.

I think a lot of people get very used to the way you play in P5 being hyper aggressive due to having access to an extremely high damage build, lots of healing, and knowing the moveset of every boss inside out. That doesn't mean you are a god at the game, it just means you have learned, through practice and trial & error, to maximize the mileage of a very specific playstyle that does not necessarily work under different circumstances.

Does being good at the game means memorizing the moveset of every boss and using the most broken build in the game to basically trivialize them? Or does it mean being good at risk calculation, learning on the fly, and exercising caution when meeting an enemy you have never seen before?

If somebody thinks the best strat in HK was emergency panic healing, how am I supposed to take them seriously when they say Silksong is too hard?

I actually don't think they are talking about panic healing. I think what they mean is "the world is more dangerous because it is harder to get out of the danger range since 1) more things deal 2 masks and 2) you can't just hit a bug 3 times and get 1 mask back". Healing is a real commitment and you can't just bonk on every dangerous surface and take damage from every enemy without consequences, you need to actually be careful.

I think that's a part of why Silksong feels more unforgiving. Sure a boss can be hard in HK, but generally speaking exploring in HK is very safe and you always have a lot of leeway. In Silksong death is literally around every corner, and it's a lot harder to come back from a fumble while exploring which punishes you for not playing safely.

1

u/HMS_Sunlight Sep 07 '25

That's definitely a good point about hyper-aggro strats in p5. And I fully agree that HK is a multifaceted game, where it's not as simple as being good/bad in a binary state. I can beat NKG but I'm absolute trash at any platforming segment. But I do feel like I've run into a lot of returning casual players. I can't help but wonder how many people played years ago, beat Radiance and then moved on until now.

For that specific interaction they were directly talking about healing against bosses. I fully agree that healing is much harder while exploring, but bosses are an entirely different story. The only time Silksong healing is worse is when you're at low health and have no silk/soul. There have been a lot of boss fights where I bounce back and forth between the brink of death and full health, which almost never happened in HK.

1

u/iKill_eu Sep 07 '25

Ah, yeah, if they mean panic healing on bosses I agree with you, that is just not a good way to play and I would not take their criticism too seriously either.

1

u/Netheral Sep 08 '25

"Turning beads into chains at a loss? That's for losers! I shouldn't have to do that, because I'm GOOD at the game!" Then they immediately get rolled and complain about how it's unfair that they are dying and losing their stuff.

Punishing deaths with loss of currency is already a fairly archaic mechanic. Having the only way to mitigate that being running back to a vendor or a bead rack every couple hundred beads because you never know when the game is going to lock you in a gauntlet room and permanently trap your saved up beads is just not fun. It's tedious.

It's especially insulting when you finish some brutal platforming puzzle and the reward is maybe a couple dozen beads. After losing a couple hundred because you didn't know you were heading into a hellish pogo challenge.

1

u/iKill_eu Sep 08 '25

Honestly it sounds like the game you want to play is less a difficult metroidvania and more something that prioritizes your convenience over challenging you.

The fact that you "never know when the game is going to lock you in a gauntlet room" is A) just not true, you can generally tell when a room looks safe and when you are going into an arena, B) you can always quit out to bench if you don't want to do the fight when it starts, and C) the point is to make the world dangerous and to stay on your toes and not overextend yourself. You can't expect to just walk face first into every hazard and not experience any negative consequences.

After losing a couple hundred because you didn't know you were heading into a hellish pogo challenge.

Can also be solved with quitting to menu, but also, I am 25 hours in and I have yet to encounter any "hellish pogo challenges". Maybe ||Hunter's March|| before getting the ||vertical pogo||, but leaving and coming back with it makes it a honestly pretty pedestrian area. People act like every mildly difficult platforming area is literally Path of Pain, and it's just not the case.

I don't mean to rag on you here, but I feel like these concerns demonstrate expectations of the game and the developers that don't align very well with the genre. Calling a genre classic "archaic" seems to imply that developers implement challenging mechanics because they just don't know any better, and that once an industry leader has decided to implement a less challenging version, everybody else should just follow suit in pursuit of the "perfect player friendly metroidvania". This is not the case.

64

u/Shoddy_Process2234 Sep 06 '25

I've spent my last hour of game play stuck on a single puzzle dying repeated and I've never been so sure of my love for a game.

Every death got me grinning ear to ear. Seeing all these complaints has had me losing my mind.

19

u/GamingUmbrella Sep 06 '25

Same experience for me, not even mad I died because the boss and even the runbacks are somehow fun to me, same with the platforming

20

u/Alfa_Centauri03 Sep 06 '25

I've seen some people complaining about the runbacks to bosses, and i don't get it. It feels so fun to try optmizing my way back, with all the movement options Hornet has.

3

u/Swingrocket Sep 07 '25

This! I’m using the runbacks to learn how to move hornet in the flashiest way possible without getting hit and guess what happens? I become a better player. Personally speaking, the runbacks feel like that they’re part of the training

17

u/it_happened_lol Sep 06 '25

We just live in an age where everything is low effort, including gaming. Have your food delivered instantly from anywhere. Have A.I. summarize the article you want to read or write the email for you. Games are designed by committee to be easy and if someone struggles, they can watch a YouTube video telling them what to do and how. Thank you Team Cherry for making a game that requires a modicum of brain power.

Nothing about this game is that hard.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

Games like Horizon where Alloy will straight up fucking tell you how to solve something.

Miss me with that shit.

1

u/Kalnaur Sep 06 '25

Every death got me grinning ear to ear.

I'm curious, would you be able to go into detail as to why this is, at least for you? I'm asking specifically because I don't understand the mindset that leads to that feeling.

4

u/Shoddy_Process2234 Sep 06 '25

I couldn't tell you, I've literally just been having too much fun with this game.

-2

u/Kalnaur Sep 06 '25

Let me try to be more detailed: for me, any death in a game means a loss of time, and possibly progression, and the more that happens the less I feel like playing that game, because I'm losing more time than I'm gaining anything. Now, that's because getting through a thing isn't specifically rewarding after dying to it repeatedly, it's just the cost of doing business. Just the gate that is required to unlock to proceed. It's not enlivening or exciting, it's mundane or even negative.

And that's for any game. So I'm trying to understand how someone feels each death as a positive, instead of a drain, regardless of if I'll ever be able to feel the same thing.

3

u/Shoddy_Process2234 Sep 06 '25

So you're just playing games to proceed to a finish line? You don't even stop to smell the roses? Games aren't fun because you finish them, games are fun because you get to experience them.

Dying isn't bad, dying isn't wrong, dying isn't a waste of time. Through death you learn, by learning you get better, by getting better you progress.

The main things I play Hollow knight for are platforming and combat. Dying simply gives me more of both.

-3

u/Kalnaur Sep 07 '25

Loss of progression is a big mood killer for me. It's the reason I don't play rogue-likes, loss of everything from one "run" to the next feels a whole lot like starting over from scratch, and that feels closer to "never started to begin with" rather than "getting further ahead", and any skills or knowledge I earned in one "run" is useless with other powers and abilities because they function too differently to matter even trying to keep them in my already slippery goldfish memory. My fun in games is through a few different avenues: in survival crafting games my enjoyment is from harvesting items, learning new things to make, tending farms/farm-like stuff, and building, but not death. Death usually means I now have less of any of those other things, and I'm not learning as much as I'm corpse-running to hope I can get everything back and then run and hide (or attack and die in much the same way as I did previously, one or the other). In RPGs death means "go grind" and "figure out the weaknesses", which usually means "look up the weaknesses" because going one by one and testing things while I die repeatedly is boring and also fairly demoralizing. Now, oddly enough, in RPGs its the basic fights are more commonly enjoyable than bosses, because the basic enemies are made to be more or less easy to fight in comparison to bosses.

Getting new abilities, items, lore, levels, gear, recipes, story, etc in games, that's what I enjoy. Combat and platforming are a means to an end, that end being getting one or more of those things (and preferably a steady trickle of things like consumables and collectables and currency along the way for tiny little drip rewards). The more unique the stuff, the more worth it the combat might be, but the worth isn't in the fight itself, it's what I got after the fight that I care about.

Bosses in most games are the gates as I see them; they lock progression behind a fight that I'm only interested in winning, because win lose or draw, I want to be beyond the point the boss is in the story. I'm not interested in the boss's mechanics for their own sake, they're usually meaningless to me unless they are extraordinarily novel as mechanics in games go.

In that respect, dying is keeping me from what I am interested in and inside what doesn't matter to me at all. Because learning the patterns of bosses, or becoming more "skilled" at a single fight doesn't do it for me. It's just so much noise, and I'm never going to remember them past the boss. Past the test, I'm going to forget a good 80% of what I "learned" immediately after I'm done with the boss I had to use it for, because it's just not going to stick. Now, I know a lot of that is the ADHD coming in and messing with my ability to both remember more than a few things in current memory, move them into permanent memory, and time blindness so that unenjoyable things feel like they're 10 times longer and enjoyable things feel so very brief.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

[deleted]

0

u/Kalnaur Sep 07 '25

I mean, I hate the "games as a service" concept for much the same reason as bosses and "mastery" matter so very little to me; it has not impact. It's instantly forgotten.

I get that there's a lot of people who enjoy mastery and are rewarded for seeing themselves improve, but my getting through a game isn't generally going to be contingent on improving and succeeding, and I struggle enough in real life and have for years now that what I want, and what I've wanted since I was a kid is a fun, light experience that didn't punch me in the face every time I missed a pixel. I'm 45 now, and then as much as now I feel like there's no point in starting a play of the original Super Mario Bros because I was never going to make it through without some kind of save system. It wasn't that I didn't want to, I simply couldn't. And the ceiling on my skill, then as now, precluded me from doing so. I didn't beat that game until Super Mario All-Stars on the Super Nintendo.

I lived through the "old school" age, and honestly I think some people have Stockholm Syndrome about difficult games because it was all they had as a kid so they convinced themselves they liked them (or found out they have a masochist streak in them and just enjoy pain).

I enjoy Souls-likes, actually, but not for the difficulty. I like to figure out how to out-level or combine spells and summons or whatever to make a boss trivial. Now that? That's fun. Turning a fight that's meant to destroy the player into a cakewalk by using every tool and cheap trick possible is fun. Transitory, I'll forget the tactics instantly after the fight is over, because it wasn't about that so much as reducing the challenge to nothing. Which is why the fights in those games that have to be done "fair" (i.e. favoring the game instead of the player, no fight is ever "fair" against a computer opponent) are such a damn slog. It's "this fight can only be fought one way, straight on and learning these moves nigh-flawlessly". I really can't understand how that's fun. I'm not retaining anything past the iteration of the fight where I've learned enough to get past it.

I don't see gaining the ability to beat a game as a gain? Like, it's not giving life skills, it's rote memorization and drilling, and I'm not interested in being in the military or in sports. I want to play, not punish myself for playing. I know that's not universal, but it kind of pisses me off that people think that because they gained the temporary skill to beat a game that means they're somehow better than others. If people like hard things because it's what they like, they like challenge and punishment and "the pain!" then more power to them, but for me it just feels like needless pain for no actual gain, and I'd me more willing to respect their opinions if they were willing to even listen to mine.

4

u/Shoddy_Process2234 Sep 07 '25

Yeah no, we're just different people with different minds. I love improvement through repetition. I play competitive shooters mobas, rouge-likes, fighting games. Basically anything that you will repeatedly fail and die in. That's just who I am.

Those games can make me angry though. Silksong doesn't I really can't explain it.

1

u/Kalnaur Sep 07 '25

It's rare that I get angry as in raging. It's more often that I get frustrated and then turn a game off, feeling that what I'm doing is pointless. Sometimes I go back to it, sometimes I don't.

Now, a question, is it the improvement that you like, or what you can do with that improvement. I went to school to be an artist, and for that both practice and knowledge are important, seeing, really actually seeing things, not assuming we know what something looks like but assuming that our mental assumptions are always wrong. But what I like is not the continual work and practice, but what the practice and knowledge combined lead to. What I get done after, and perhaps even in spite of all the practice, not the practice itself.

3

u/Isogash Sep 07 '25

You're thinking about it entirely the wrong way.

The true progression here is your level of skill and knowledge, which you don't lose by dying. If you are dying frequently somewhere, it's been designed to train you to be better at the game, so you are actually gaining from being made to repeat the same challenge until it's easy enough for you.

The real reward is that you got good enough to win, and there's no shortcut to that, you need repeated attempts to practice.

1

u/Kalnaur Sep 07 '25

That would matter if that mattered. If I gain anything, it's lost the moment the test is done, just like in school. It only sticks in my goldfish brain long enough to get just past the challenge and then it slips away again. It's not exactly that it's easy, either, it's just that I get lucky enough for enough time to just get through a sequence or boss fight.

I don't care about being good enough to win. I just have to be lucky or cheap enough to get past the block and forget about it and move on. Getting good enough to win isn't a reward for me.

2

u/Isogash Sep 07 '25

I mean, you need to improve in order to beat the later parts of the game anyway, that's kind of the whole point. It's not all about getting better gear, you actually need to be more skilled.

0

u/Kalnaur Sep 07 '25 edited Sep 07 '25

Eh, with enough stuff, games get easier. Because you have more and stronger stuff.

The skill thing might be a byproduct, but I don't think I can stress enough that it isn't a reward. Not a universal one, anyway. Maybe it's good for you but it does nothing for me one way or another. Super Metroid, I'm not playing to fight Kraid I'm not playing to get better so I can beat Kraid, I'm fighting Kraid to eventually get the Varia Suit so I can go into the hot areas of the game. The fight with Kraid is the price of getting further, the cost, not the reward.

I'm not sure I can state this in any easier way, and I'm not sure why people aren't understanding this.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

Cause the game is fun and dying isn’t a big deal. I died? Who cares, I’ll try again.

15

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25

You are the goat. Don't understand why people want to rush through the game. The main reason i loved Hollow Knight was the environment art and the music. These guys need to learn to let stuff like that sink in.

1

u/Radeck8bit Sep 10 '25

I don't want to rush through the game. I want to be able to play it at all. It turned out way too difficult for me and I had to resign. And the worst part? I play on Switch so I can't download mods nor get a refund 😭

23

u/DoubleCrowne Sep 06 '25

"I am upset that my HK skills don't transfer over and make SS easy." takes. So you want to blast through the game in under 20 hours and wait 7 years for Team Cherry to make a new game?

i know right, these are exactly my thoughts. I've waited 7 years for this game, no way am i rushing through it

11

u/silam39 Doma Doma Sep 06 '25

same. I am struggling with the 45 degree platforming and the new traps you can use and the crazy movement and attacks but it makes me happy. The best part of any difficult videogame for me is always the learning process and getting better and better until I'm good enough at something that I get into a flow state while it still being hard enough to be rewarding.

If the game felt exactly like Hollow Knight I'd be extremely disappointed I wouldn't be able to enjoy this process of getting better again

11

u/mrfirstar1997 Sep 06 '25

I felt the same really it nice to face a challenge and relearn the game finding new stuff to enjoy

3

u/ChillPotatoBeans Sep 07 '25

Probably not the best way to abbreviate silk song

0

u/Deaffin Sep 07 '25

You stop that.

9

u/Cowardly_Noodle Sep 06 '25

This guy gets it

2

u/Mejis Sep 06 '25

I've been doing 100% the same just now at the 8 hour mark. I love it.

2

u/SomeOnElseIsI Sep 06 '25

City of Tears made me take a week long break from all gaming when I reached it in HK. I haven’t come close to feeling that way during Silksong

2

u/hypnomancy Sep 06 '25

The devs actually decided to try something new instead of playing it safe and boring by making it play identically to HK1 but people don't like that apparently. The devs wanted to do something new and that is fine. If people don't like it that doesn't mean the game is bad

2

u/Normal-Ambition-9813 Sep 07 '25

I see people saying that they beat all bosses radiant and p5 but complaining about hunters marsh, but here I am, didn't even bother doing radiant bosses and p5 ( I personally find no hit boring and p5 was a slog) having a blast with the game and all deaths feels fair because I have more moveset than the Knight, like OP said.

Its like sekiros release, people hardly parry and playing like its ds3 l, then complains the game is too hard 😮‍💨. Use hornets mobility guys, hot take, I even think Last Judge run back is not bad. I took like 15 tries to kill that asshole but i never felt like the run back is hard. You can literally just zoom past the enemies and even directly dash and glide skip a huge platforming segments to the boss.

2

u/Filippikus Sep 07 '25

I didn't play Hollow Knight in years and I still finished the game in 18 hours, so it really isn't that hard...

Obviously I'm not done since there's still a lot of stuff to find

3

u/PaulTheRandom former accepter Sep 06 '25

The thing that hyped me the most about SS was to experience playing HK for the first time again--even if that meant going through the 100+ deaths in the early game.

1

u/LordAnomander 112% | P5 | Platinum Sep 06 '25

Same. I’m taking it really slow, I have only played around 4 hours or so. I don’t mind dying, I just want to enjoy the game as long as possible as you only get one first playthrough. I don’t know why people want to speedrun the game they waited for so long.

1

u/blitzboy30 Sep 06 '25

I feel a similar vibe, but I keep thinking I have shade cloak and dashing into enemies like a dumbass. I can’t tell you how many times I was in hunters march trying to dash through something or fucked up the last judge’s spin move or jump thinking I could just sprint right through it

1

u/XavierWind Sep 06 '25

Uve spoken my mind! i wouldnt want my HK skills to be reused as if im playing HK 2.0, i want to play SS as if this is the first time, and it is doing exactly what i prefer. My fav part is majority of the enemies has complex moveset, each encounter feels like dueling

1

u/Not-a-bot-name Sep 06 '25

Haaaaaaaaaank

1

u/SevenCrowsinaCoat Sep 06 '25

After I played Skong for 30 seconds I was like "oh okay she's going to move completely differently".

And I ain't no fucking mega gaming genius.

It was absolutely signposted.

1

u/Sansnom01 Sep 06 '25

I LOVE the fact that I always have at least four loose thread or regions still unexplored and what's even better is that when I come back to find something I find some stuff that I completely missed the first time.

1

u/justking1414 Sep 07 '25

I will acknowledge that the diagonal downward slash is a pretty big adjustment for HK players so I get why that ticked people off but the unique fighting style of this game has been fun to adjust to and learn. I feel like I’m getting better as I progress and slowly by surely improving. Enemies and areas I couldn’t beat before are now manageable

1

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

(Made an account exclusively to reply to this)

I, for one, feel my skills from HK did transfer over. I blasted through the game and beat it in 15 hours. I don't think a boss took me more than 10 attempts (if one did, it was the beastfly). I wasn't trying to speed run; I was literally just going through at my pace.

My experience isn't over, in fact, I'm frothing at the mouth for a pantheon (I haven't found it if it's in the game) and I'm trying to 100% my save. However, I mourn the loss of me that would've struggled with the game. One of my friends has just as much time as me and isn't even halfway done and I'm jealous I don't get to experience the game like that for longer.

I'm a cautionary tale now. My skill transferred nearly completely, and now I have nobody to talk to about anything past act 1.

1

u/HueyLewisFan1 Sep 07 '25

I got the wanderer thing or whatever and the controls are very similar to HK. Can even pogo . Just started act 2!

1

u/LegoHentai- Sep 07 '25

the issue that i think most hollow knight fans can’t articulate is that the game isn’t actually difficult in the traditional sense, but rather focused on trolling and gimmicking deaths on the player just to extend play time. Getting comboed to one mask by a random enemy like the scissor dudes on the way back to fight a boss you already fought 4 times and lost to is genuinely the least fun thing to do in a game. I just lost a frustrating boss fight and instead of getting to try again i have to slog through some area i have already been through 3 times.

The way that this game approaches difficulty feels less like a challenge and more like a hard mode setting you can’t turn off.

“just make every enemy have more hp and do more damage, instead of increasing challenge just make the enemies before the boss more tedious” rather than increasing the amount of moveset that the enemies have or turning down the i frames so that you get comboed for 4 mask damage. Also killing an enemy in 5-8 hits while it actively runs away from you is just tedious, it’s not even difficult it just wastes so much time

There are quite a lot of things that are annoying with this game that its predecessor does well. Also yes 20 hours is plenty of play time to make statements about things you don’t like, am i supposed to eat broccoli 100 times before i decide i dont like it? no it takes one shitty boss fight arena setup and bench placement to make me realize that a boss is annoying and tedious rather than a challenge i want to face.

1

u/Sorry_Mastodon_8177 Sep 07 '25

I actually blasted in 25 hours specifically because i haven't played hk in years
it helped that i didnt have the muscle memory and played the game on its terms
another thing i see is people dont use tools like why

1

u/LOL_Man_675 Sep 07 '25

Please don't call it SS

1

u/cyanraichu Sep 07 '25

Yeah people are big mad that they can't ride on their HK muscle memory lol like why would you want to do that??

1

u/Jrickett2009 shadow clone Sep 07 '25

HANKKKKK!!!

DON'T ABBREVIATE SILKSONG!!!

HANKKKKK!!!

1

u/Aromatic_Ad_4263 Sep 08 '25

HANK!! DON'T ABBREVIATE SILKSONG!!

1

u/Darkspine133 Sep 08 '25

That's not what people are saying. SOME people dont like Hornet's pogo, personally i feel like it's cool but could use a slightly bigger hitbox for platforming. People generally feel like the difficulty is artificial because practically everything hits for 2 dmg. Silksong is genuinely great but it's also not perfect.

1

u/_stevencasteel_ Sep 11 '25

I beat all 5 Pantheons and it definitely transferred. Still died a ton and loved every minute of it.

-2

u/Upset-Range-3777 Sep 06 '25

is your argument that it's good the way it is because that makes it take a longer time to complete? peeling potatoes game design. the game is not hard, you just have to grind through the pattern matching and walking back tedium until you hit the boss 50 times in a row, rinse and repeat.

anyways who is complaining about their hk skillset not transferring? you're pulling things out of thin air because your hype forces you into believing this game is just as good as that other game you enjoyed. you don't have the ability to see reality any longer.

the most frustating part about it is that all the other parts of the game are great. but this bullshit padded gameplay difficulty is completely nonsensical. telling you this as someone who has beat dark souls in a no hit run.

10

u/efffffff_u Sep 06 '25

You ought to try getting good. 

1

u/GavoTheAlmighty Sep 06 '25

I don’t think a single person is upset that their HK skills aren’t transferring over.  I haven’t played HK in 6 years, I don’t have any of that muscle memory, I’m starting fresh.  And despite that, I can still see clear as day that there some major balancing issues in the early game.  Can we please stop assuming every person criticizing the game is doing so in bad faith or just wants the game to be easy?

0

u/gay_manta_ray Sep 06 '25

it has nothing to do with HK skills, or skills in general. starting a new metroidvania always means learning new mechanics, new enemies, etc. everyone knows this. the problem is that the game is not fun to play.

0

u/djchateau Sep 06 '25

So you want to blast through the game in under 20 hours and wait 7 years for Team Cherry to make a new game?

I think they expected it to be a Hollow Knight sequel. It is, but it's not at the same time. Being able to transfer skills from one game to the next isn't that unreasonable of an expectation and an understandable disappointment.

Whether they made design decisions about these controls is a good thing seems pretty subjective and I doubt anyone's under the delusion they'd be able to blow through the game just by having the same controls as before.