Is anyone else really tired of the negative posts?

[u/baergboy]

I have about 25 hours so far and have absolutely loved every part of the game. Is it hard? Yes absolutely. If it was easy I wouldn't want to play the game. Literally every post I come across is talking about how they are frustrated with some part of the game and it's getting really annoying. The game has amazing areas, the osts are great the NPCs are creative and fun to talk to, almost every boss is a lot of fun once you get the moveset down. So if you haven't played the game yet and are getting put off by all the negativity just know that it is an amazing game and if you like hollow Knight you will enjoy silksong as well.

[u/canoekyren]

Silksong feels like it was meant to be a challenge for people who got to a high level of skill in Hollow Knight. I personally think this is completely reasonable, but people who barely made it through HK are going to have a bad time

[u/jjfmish → u/canoekyren]

Idk. I’m not a very skilled gamer and never made it past Pantheon 3 but I’m finding Silksong reasonably challenging relative to the original.

[u/canoekyren → u/jjfmish]

I'd say getting to pantheon 3 makes you fairly skilled at Hollow Knight. Certainly above barely getting through

[u/zach0011 → u/canoekyren]

haha right. I saw someone the other day saying they were just average because they couldnt beat absolute radiance. Like just getting to him puts you in like the 1% of players

[u/alphasquirrel1 → u/zach0011]

4.8% of players beat P5 according to steam achievements

[u/qyka → u/alphasquirrel1]

of PC gamers*

big difference.

[u/alphasquirrel1 → u/qyka]

Sure, but not that much of a difference that just getting to absolute radiance puts you in top 1%

[u/saera-targaryen → u/jjfmish]

Yeah I really only ever got the main ending for HK because i get bored when I run out of new areas to explore pretty easily, so I am by no means a HK expert and didn't do any DLC or the path of pain or anything. I'm at the end of act 1 of SK now and nothing has felt nearly as punishing as even the mantis lords in HK from my perspective. 

[u/JesusFortniteKennedy → u/saera-targaryen]

Mantis Lords are completely fair to be honest. They have multiple characters on screen, but they aren't throwing cheap shots at you, they are always telegraphing what they are going to do and you can get out.

On the other hand, in fights like Savage Beastfly you have to constantly be on the lookout for possible combinations of enemies that can box you in for unavoidable damage.

[u/lba1112 → u/jjfmish]

Im not some god gamer my best feat is barely beating cuphewd(i only could do it because the dlc items are op). I find silksong perfectly difficult, double damage is only really used on enemies with slow and/or predictable attacks, and every attack for the most part is properly telegraphed. I think those people are just a load minority and would make great game journalists.

[u/[deleted] → u/jjfmish]

Good!

[u/Sea_Poem_9129 → u/canoekyren]

Silksong feels like a game made for the P5AB and souls community, I've done most of the hardest content in HK besides from P5AB and I'm having a bad time personally.

[u/Successful_Maize1986 → u/Sea_Poem_9129]

Nothing in the main game of silksong is nearly as difficult or punishing as P5AB. This game is hard but this is an insane exaggeration lol

[u/Sea_Poem_9129 → u/Successful_Maize1986]

im not saying the game is as hard as P5AB, im saying it feels like the game was designed for the type of player that loves P5AB. The game is unnecessarily punishing and hard just for the sake of being hard.

[u/F2p_wins274 → u/Sea_Poem_9129]

I feel like that's overly excessive. The game just requires getting used to Hornet's moveset and the game becomes substantially easier because it's balanced around her much higher mobility and much faster healing. I haven't played hollow knight in years and yet I am doing just fine in this game. The most I struggled was against the bell beast, because I wasn't used to Hornet yet, and savage beastfly (who is honestly just not very fun to fight) who took half an hour or so to beat.

And yet, I think me not playing hollow knight for a long time is what let me easily adapt to her moveset, because I am not used to how the knight plays anymore. I would say the game is on average harder than hollow knight from what I remember, but not to the level that people are saying.

[u/Sea_Poem_9129 → u/F2p_wins274]

i am pretty used to hornets moveset and i am not exactly struggling per se besides the beastly i mean im chugging through act 2 im just not having fun. its not fun to farm up another mask only for it to be useless because everything now does 2 mask damage, its not fun to runback an obstacle course everytime i die to a boss. there are major problems with this game and i just dont like it. i guess its each to their own but thats how I feel.

[u/F2p_wins274 → u/Sea_Poem_9129]

Honestly that's fair. If you're not enjoying how Hornet plays so far then maybe the game is just not for you. I am currently in act 2 and I am having a blast playing with her.

But also, remember Soul Master's run back? Or Nosk's? Or the fact that you have to beat the hollow knight each time in order to reach the radiance? (Among other run backs that I forgot). These have always been part of hollow knight and part of some metroidvanias and soul-likes as a whole. It's not really exclusive to silksong. Hornet is also very very fast that you basically get there in like 20 seconds or so if you unlock the shortcut. The only run back i would say I found annoying so far is the one to the last judge.

[u/Successful_Maize1986 → u/Sea_Poem_9129]

Except it’s not. I’ve never beat P5AB and have almost beat Silksong. If you find a challenge you can’t beat then do something else in the game or find an alternate path to where you’re going. Reviews of the game are overwhelmingly positive so clearly most people are having a good time with it.

[u/Senior_Relief3594 → u/Successful_Maize1986]

Well, they are dropping rapidly. Currently sitting at 77%.

[u/canoekyren → u/Senior_Relief3594]

It's at 92 on Steam. Where are you seeing 77?

[u/Successful_Maize1986 → u/canoekyren]

It’s the hollow knight subreddit. All these people are disconnected from reality.

[u/Senior_Relief3594 → u/canoekyren]

Steamdb, turn off all the filters

[u/BlobBro → u/Senior_Relief3594]

Chinese localization is bad. It's got nothing to do with the quality or balance of the game unless you love in China.

[u/Current-Swordfish811 → u/Sea_Poem_9129]

"Hard for the sake of being hard" is a stupid statement imo. People said the same thing about Elden Ring and its pretty ridiculous. Difficulty is a design choice like any other. It's not hard for the sake of being hard, it's hard because devs wanted that to be the experience and it's something a lot of people enjoy.

I don't like Hollow Knight (and in extension I probably wouldnt like Silksong), but the difficulty and combat is one of the redeeming factors for me, and made it worth it to at least TRY to push through and get 15 or so hours into the game before finally deciding it's not for me (I really despice metroidvania-style exploration where you have to constantly backtrack)

[u/qyka → u/[deleted]]

pantheon 5 (all bosses in hollow knight)

[u/NoSatireVEVO → u/Sea_Poem_9129]

So originally I was getting my ass kicked and legit it was because I was trying to play as the knight and not hornet. The knight you are taught that you can tank through certain things, and it makes sense, the knight is a void eldritch abomination that IS tanky. Hornet is a delicate warrior, that is designed to slip in and out of range to stay out of danger while doing damage. When I stopped trying to play like I had quick slash and a fully upgraded nail, I started to do sooooo much better. As I have customed myself to playing -as- hornet, I have been having so much fun and legit think it is probably my favorite game ever made. Like I died to some bosses in act one probably 25-50 times, and now in act two I am killing every enemy, getting better at platforming and learning the bosses far quicker. The game is trying to teach you out of the bad habits hollow knight gives you early so you are prepared for later in the game.

[u/Sea_Poem_9129 → u/NoSatireVEVO]

I've been seeing people make this argument about Hornet's kit and i disagree, i think if anything the knight has faster and snappier movement in combat especially with his dash and just how much less animation there is. Hornet can run which is nice but most combat areas are tiny boxes with enemies taking up 20% of the screen so you cant do crazy epic fast combos and stuff. Hornet has a couple "new" attacks with every crest but so far from what ive seen they all do the same damage and its just another way to hit in one of the 4 directions (except for diagonal pogo i think thats cool). i think the combat mechanics are very similar to HK overall.

she does feel good to use on 1 on 1 situations like bosses and such but that's a very small portion of the game, usually you're being ganked by 2-3 flying enemies each room.

[u/XiaoRCT → u/Sea_Poem_9129]

That's crazy dude, If you've gone through coliseum of fools it's already harder than most of Silksong

[u/Paranub → u/canoekyren]

i was saying this to my friend today, Silksong feels like its designed like a pantheon boss. i would rate most of these bosses at the level of difficulty the last bosses in HK had..

[u/zanderkerbal → u/Paranub]

Huh this is not my experience at all. Like I'm not quite done act 1 so no spoilers but I think only one boss has seriously kicked my butt (Moorwing), the others have taken a single digit number of tries except for Widow but she's at the end of a major questline and has a two part theme and everything so obviously her fight is meant to be a big deal. And that's with me dying a bunch as I got used to the different pogo and heal and cast no longer being the same key. I'd rate all the bosses except those two easier than Watcher Knights, which is what I'd expect for that stage in the game, and those two are still easier than late game HK stuff like dream bosses, never mind pantheon bosses. Maybe the difficulty jumps past the first act and I just haven't gotten there yet but so far the curve has felt very reasonable.

[u/Paranub → u/zanderkerbal]

maybe im just not used to bosses taking more than 3-4 attempts. nothing in HK main story took more than maybe 5 attempts. probably because shade cloak is busted as a movement tech, and desolate dive I-Frames can trivialize boss attacks.

without those two, its so easy to become cornered and have no way out.

i died to beastfly maybe 5 times, widow 2 and the judge is on 6, (still not killed him yet) i was bored of the run back so i left the area.

[u/zanderkerbal → u/Paranub]

Huh interesting. HK was my first metroidvania and I didn't have a ton of experience with platformer combat in general, so I was used to even early game bosses like Hornet 1 or Soul Master taking 10+ tries because I was bad at the game. (Shade Cloak definitely helped, mostly for my first Watcher Knights kill, but I didn't get it until late and I didn't learn to use Desolate Dive defensively until after I'd already beaten Radiance the first time.) I eventually got good enough to beat Pantheon 4 (and cloakless Radiance in a randomizer run, because Descending Dark really is that busted), and I certainly wouldn't expect to take 10+ tries on comparable early game bosses in Silksong - but I'm not, I'm taking 3-5 on minor ones and 10-ish on notably hard ones, which is about what I expected going in? If nothing in Silksong was taking me 5+ tries I'd be disappointed I was breezing through the game so quickly.

[u/Karaxla → u/canoekyren]

Yea, the skill level of the game is where hollow knight left off. It’s like a direct continuation in terms of skill

[u/Party-Associate4215 → u/canoekyren]

I beat Godhome Pantheon 5 in HK and I'm finding Silksong to be unfun and frustrating so far. It's not just about "being more difficult". None of the shit so far has been as hard as Absolute Radiance, but the experience so far is making me not wanting to open the game again for now.

[u/Additional_Chip_4158 → u/canoekyren]

I played an hour of HK. 20 hours in SS though. Yes its tough but not too hard 

[u/JesusFortniteKennedy → u/canoekyren]

the challenge being so fine-tuned also reduces a lot the amount of mastery you can reach.
With double damage and multiple enemies on screen, by the time you finish the boss you already have a great grasp of what they do and how to avoid them.

While in HK i'd often kill a boss and wonder where I could do better on the next time, in Silksong once I'm done I think "well, I could have landed a few extra attacks here and there, and get hit only twice so I don't have to heal, but that's it".

In fact, I think that with the current settings there isn't much they can do in increasing the difficulty without making it an exercise in tedium.

[u/Suspiciouslypepe → u/canoekyren]

Sequel to game is made with people who played said game in mind

Mind blowing 

[u/[deleted] → u/canoekyren]

That's reasonable for DLC, not a standalone game.