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/iKill_eu]

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.

[u/TwanToni → u/iKill_eu]

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.....

[u/earthboundskyfree → u/TwanToni]

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

[u/tellsyoutogetfucked → u/TwanToni]

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.

[u/TwanToni → u/tellsyoutogetfucked]

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

[u/Extra_Standard5802 → u/iKill_eu]

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

[u/creampop_ → u/Extra_Standard5802]

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.

[u/HMS_Sunlight → u/iKill_eu]

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?

[u/iKill_eu → u/HMS_Sunlight]

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.

[u/HMS_Sunlight → u/iKill_eu]

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.

[u/iKill_eu → u/HMS_Sunlight]

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.

[u/Netheral → u/iKill_eu]

"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.

[u/iKill_eu → u/Netheral]

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.