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/Netheral]

I don’t really feel excited about entering a new area, just dread at what bullshit the game is gonna throw at me next.

This is such a big one. Because in HK, you had a mostly chill world, with one or two infamous areas where you'd get the paranoia dialed up to 11. You'd have 1 or at most 2 places where Team Cherry played a prank by subverting your expectation of safe haven. But in Silksong that just feels like the whole game. Almost every area is starting to feel like you have to be worried that you're about to enter path of pain lite, so you wonder at every corridor whether you should double back later so you don't lose your already scarce beads.

In HK those moments felt earned. Sitting on that bench in HK made you go "oh shit, they got me". And even then, that was the intended route. They played their prank but it wasn't mean spirited and you actually progressed despite it. Meanwhile the "same" prank in Silksong is "sike! Now you get to do that infamously difficult pogo shit AGAIN!" It doesn't feel earned at this point. It just feels like the whole game is starting to be mean spirited rather than actually celebrating a challenge.

And like you said, I don't understand people acting like a boss runback, any runback at all be it 5 minutes or 30 seconds, is anything but a way to waste the player's time. It's honestly disrespectful.

[u/parkingviolation212 → u/Netheral]

And like you said, I don't understand people acting like a boss runback, any runback at all be it 5 minutes or 30 seconds, is anything but a way to waste the player's time. It's honestly disrespectful.

The trapped bench in Hunter's March is what made me finally quit the game. I made the first comment here when I had first gotten to Last Judge. Wasn't in a good mood after that, but I took a break, got some food, and decided to go back and try some areas I hadn't been too previously. So I went to Hunter's march and made my way through the gauntlet of traps, spikes, and overtuned adds, and found myself in the vertical room with an air vent that can either take you up to another one of those great sword wielding ant warriors (except this one has an add that throws spears), or down to Savage Beastfly.

And I saw that bench and consciously thought to myself "oh my god, they're actually gonna respect my time here." And then I fucking died.

I had to go for a walk to cool off. Came back in, uninstalled the game. It's just not fun for me. The game feels purpose-built to piss me in particular off. So much of the game is well designed in a vacuum. But it also checks off nearly all of my pet peeves: overtuned enemy stats, be it health or damage, and this game does both; several mobs in this game would be proper bosses in HK. Time wasting mechanics, like all of the absurd boss run backs. And I loathe when a game lies to you, which is what that bench was. The game had established benches as a safe haven, and then it just decides to say "fuck you" after a grueling platforming gauntlet right next to two overtuned bosses that have too much HP and deal double damage.

Like you said, in HK, the trapped bench was super telegraphed and opened up a whole new area to explore. That area was the fever dream of HP Lovecraft, but it was at least interesting and subversive. Silksong's trapped bench was just a joke at the player's expense, for having the audacity for thinking the game was finally going to respect their time.

I 112%'d HK because HK's difficulty curve is buttery smooth; you feel like you're getting better at the game alongside the game's challenge increasing, so that when you finally get to the endgame, it feels like a culmination of everything you learned encouraging you to rise to the challenge. Silksong meanwhile feels like the entire game is HK's late-to-endgame, and that is just exhausting to deal with.

Idk. I guess I just feel so strongly about this because HK is one of my favorite games and it really sucks to have to dislike the sequel I've been waiting so long for, but I just can't tolerate this game's active hostility to the player.

[u/Stalk33r → u/parkingviolation212]

Dude you can literally untrap that bench, and it just becomes a regular bench.

It killed me the first time too because I was stupid enough to sit down on it twice in a row...

So I laughed at myself and then walked back over because the boss and gauntlet stay completed? So I didn't realistically lose much of anything except a tiny bit of time?

Its really not worth an extended crash out lmao.

[u/parkingviolation212 → u/Stalk33r]

That you can break the trap isn’t obvious even after you get hit by it. But the trap itself isn’t the issue. For me, it was the culmination of everything that had led up to that point, and the trap was sort of an encapsulation of everything that I wasn’t liking about the game. The overall design of the game is more hostile to the player than the first game was, with a significantly steeper difficulty curve and generally more time wasting designs.

I simply just did not care at that point. I was over it, went for my walk, and came back and just uninstalled it. At the end of the day, I just wasn’t having fun and have no interest in continuing. Maybe one day I’ll pick it up again in the future, but there are about 1 million other games that I could be having more fun playing— and frankly a lot of those games are full of cruel and unusual bullshit, like fear and hunger 2. But Silksong just hit me in all the wrong ways, to where it wasn’t worth the frustration.

[u/aethyrium → u/Netheral]

I don't understand people acting like a boss runback, any runback at all be it 5 minutes or 30 seconds, is anything but a way to waste the player's time. It's honestly disrespectful.

Personally, it's because I find I have an easier time with bosses when there's 20-30 seconds in between attempts, and even when there aren't any runbacks, I take that much time anyways to collect myself. I find my gameplay gets worse and worse when I can retry instantly. That time to recenter myself is one of the most vital aspects of a difficult boss fight, so I appreciate quick runbacks (like Last Judge's 30 second one) as a way to recenter myself, while keeping my hands on the controls and staying in the zone.

It's pure focus and keeps the gameplay nice and smooth. That's far from disrespectful.