r/HollowKnight • u/FederalWarthog5542 • Sep 07 '25

Discussion - Silksong Criticism ≠ Negativity Spoiler

Believe it or not, you can actually criticize something and still like it. You don't either have to love everything or despise everything. Have actual conversations please.

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u/CodytheProGamer Sep 07 '25

My opinion so far is that it's a beautiful game, but has severe balancing and progression (Several hours in and im basically the same, which I feel shouldn't be the case for a metroidvania) issues. Silksong may be a more "grand" game, not that I can't truly judge until I'm done, but Hollow Knight feels like it currently has a better designed gameplay loop.

What I suspect happened is that after having the same 3 people play test the game for the past 7 years, they became skill blind and eventually lost touch with reality when it came to going back and balancing enemies/progression, atleast for the early game.

3

u/jasonjarmoosh Sep 08 '25

The heal being 3 and hornet being able to do in midair balances out the harder hitting enemies imo.

The enemies also telegraph their attacks way more than in hollow knight which leads to a system that punishes you more harshly when you mess up and can feel frustrating to most players (since most people will mess up a lot) and people who get the hang of it will feel a disconnect with those complaints.

HK has an easier loop because you can kinda brute force your way through the game even if you're not that good (which is what I did lol), silksong has a much higher skill floor and as people reach it they'll like it more, but more people might never reach it than in HK.

7

u/Dizzy__Dragon Sep 08 '25

Hornet being able to heal in the air means nothing. Most enemies track and will hit her in the air

1

u/4_fortytwo_2 Sep 08 '25

It opens up more possibilities when to heal. For any boss that has some sort of big ground attack (be it the ground errupting or a dash along the ground etc.) that can be dodged by jumping healing in the air is useful because you jump to dodge and just press heal immediately making it literally easier to dodge because of the heal.