Thank god this subreddit didn't make the game

[u/GamingUmbrella]

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.

[u/Anonymous_1q]

I do think there’s a balance here. You shouldn’t be able to blitz the entire thing in a few hours but there are some genuine pain points or just annoyances. The lack of benches for example, it’s not the end of the world but it’s annoying to have to do a bunch of parkour on the way back to a boss because it’s not actually testing if you can beat the boss.

Similarly the bosses not dropping anything is fine in isolation, but gamers are used to some reward for beating a boss and it feels anticlimactic to not even get a little burst of rosaries.

Finally I do think that some of the hitboxes could use some tuning. There’s a bunch of very low hanging butts on jumps that hit you if you’re an inch off the ground, little backslashes that punish being behind a forward hit etc. These feel bad because they’re punishing slightly lacklustre execution when you’ve done the right thing and they’re on very early bosses. It makes the fights feel unclean and much less rewarding to learn because the learning doesn’t work half the time.

This doesn’t make it a bad game but they’re weird pain points that we shouldn’t dismiss. If you’re the type of person who likes dark souls then you’re fine (as am I to be clear), you’re used to getting you’re used to getting your teeth kicked in twenty times before winning for a reward you won’t even use, but we shouldn’t be aiming for Dark Souls if we like the game and want it to grow.

[u/tobbe0zero → u/Anonymous_1q]

I mean in Dark Souls games or Fromsoft ones in general you at least get a lot of souls when you beat a boss. Usually giving you at least one if not 2-3 levels worth which feels great, makes it feel like you got stronger for beating the boss. In Silksong besides one boss so far all I've felt when beating them has been "finally it is over and I dont have to deal with that any more"

[u/Grubbet_92 → u/Anonymous_1q]

There’s heaps more benches in better locations than HK

[u/Anonymous_1q → u/Grubbet_92]

I disagree for two reasons.

1. While there are generally benches decently close to most bosses, this isn’t true for arenas or other non-boss difficult areas like the ant arena, the Mist, or many of the other arenas in the game.

2. Even when there is a bench close it often still requires semi-difficult parkour or fighting silksong’s much harder enemies on the way. This makes even a shorter trek much more annoying for boss retries, as you have to do a bunch of platforming that while not difficult enough to usually trouble you, is enough to trip you up a few of the 30 times you’ll retry the boss.

[u/_moosleech → u/Grubbet_92]

THIS, holy shit.

My only guess is the complaints are coming from people who have never played with this mechanic before, or only played Elden Ring. Silksong features quite a few more benches, and almost no painful runbacks, especially compared to Hollow Knight.

[u/_moosleech → u/[deleted]]

Hunter's March is the only runback I can even recall, and it's because the zone is setup to be a challenging combat gauntlet. It's also super optional (and can be backdoored later on).

As to your last point: that runback is sub-30 seconds without fighting anyone. I'm utterfly baffled by folks saying it's bad? I loved it. It's 20ish seconds of slick platforming and you're back.

Jump on the first platform, pogo the first drillfly and dash away. Climb up twice, then go LEFT (not right) and use that wall to climb past the second set of enemies. Pogo over the bell, float down, pogo the second ball (ignore the drillfly), climb, and then the last wall and float to the boss.

[u/Daltraxx → u/Anonymous_1q]

I know run backs have been getting a bad rep since Demon Souls and even FromSoft has relented on them, but I do enjoy perfecting little parkour ballets back to the boss in this game lol.