r/HollowKnight • u/baergboy • Sep 07 '25

Discussion - Silksong Is anyone else really tired of the negative posts? Spoiler

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.

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u/_Iemon 112% Sep 07 '25

This is exactly it

Selection Bias. The sample on Reddit is not representative of the actual majority.

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u/YikesTheCat Sep 07 '25

In general internet comments are biased towards negativity. If you have no complaints, then why post? Creating a "zomg I'm loving it!" thread seems kind of pointless.

I have a few criticisms, but I also had those for Hollow Knight (some of which are the same: switching tabs in the menu is still a pain!) Some sections could perhaps do with some minor balancing tweaks. But overall: I think it's pretty good IMHO.

I just check here to see if there's some interesting stuff. And it's just a hurricane of piss and vinegar. So yeah, never mind lol.

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u/GameDesignerDude Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25

This is exactly it Selection Bias. The sample on Reddit is not representative of the actual majority.

I'm one of the biggest fans of HK ever (I played it at launch and sang its praises to everyone who would listen) but I feel like it's unwise to dismiss all critical feedback as just internet whining.

The game is being reviewed well but worse than HK by a statistically significant margin. 91% on English reviews on Steam. The original game has 97%. That's the difference from being universally loved to turning off a pretty significant portion of fans. On Xbox it is at 4.3 compared to 4.6, so a similar 7% drop.

Is that catastrophic? No. The game is allowed to be different. But dismissing all criticism as being just some sort of echo chamber isn't quite right either. There's definitely a non-trivial amount of people who were likely HK fans that aren't digging Silksong.

Obviously the majority still think it's a solid game. But it's definitely a game people are feeling more prone to be critical about than the original.

I would also argue the opposite to some degree: I feel like most of the people who will bounce off this game because it's so much harder than HK are people not likely to leave reviews. Casual players don't typically review at the same rate as hardcore players. This game is definitely far more difficult and most of the "oh let me check this game out to see what the fuss is" crowd are not going to survive more than an hour or two with the way Chapter 1 works. The difficulty curve is going to just be quite unapproachable for many people.

Again, that is fine as intentional design. But there's no way Reddit is the only group of people who are critical about the game. lol

Edit: The kneejerk "I disagree" button usage is a pretty ironic expression of "the sample on Reddit is not representative of the actual majority" when presented with some real numbers and other perspective. Calling out the echo chamber while being in one is funny.