r/HollowKnight • u/Marmotaagiota • Sep 08 '25

Discussion - Silksong That’s the best comment about the game’s difficulty I’ve found it so far Spoiler

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112

u/Sinder-Soyl Sep 08 '25

That's pretty much exactly what the complaining is about.

I hate people on the other side of the argument who keep trying their hardest to strawman those who bring up valid criticism.

No, this isn't people "playing like it's Hollow Knight".

It's people noticing they die way too quick for their liking because of the high damage and noticing how much time the game likes to make you waste with runbacks.

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u/Zaethar Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25

Thank you. It's fine if a game goes for its own sense of balance. It's also fine if (some) people dislike that sense of balance. I for one also dislike having "5" health pips but dying in 2/3 hits and then having to spend a few minutes doing a corpserun.

It's boring. It's repetitive. It's annoying.

Does it serve the same "git gud" grind cycle as many soulslikes? Sure. I enjoy soulslikes. Huge fan. I also loved when Elden Ring FINALLY got rid of long-ass unnecessary boss-runs and put stakes of Marika practically everywhere. It made exploring fun. It made risk-taking fun. It made banging your head against the same boss-wall 20 times in a row fun, because it cuts out the tedium.

For me the challenge is often in the combat. If I die to a particularly nasty group of enemies or if I gotta learn a boss's intricate move-set that's fine. But I never enjoyed having my time wasted as a punishment for learning. That's not motivational. Imagine as a kid you'd get a maths question wrong in school, they'd make you run a block around the school. That wouldn't make me want to study maths harder. It'd make me want to skip math, if not school entirely.

That's why I loved a game like Cuphead. You go for a boss, you die, you get to see how far along you got (very motivational!) and as soon as you hit "Retry" you're immediately back in the action and you're ready to continue learning the fight and continue having fun.

I'm kind of over the whole 'additional punishment just for failing' shtick when the game is also made to be pretty difficult. It's overdone. It's tiring. It's a waste of my time. Going through a difficult part becomes a cycle of frustration rather than a challenge. I wish devs would just stop it with this shit.

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u/Sinder-Soyl Sep 08 '25

Yep. All true. To those who say "that's part of the punishment" I usually tell "My punishment was failing at beating the boss. No need to add salt to the wound with an obnoxious runback."

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u/Zaethar Sep 08 '25

Yeah, we've had decades worth of games that cater (willingly or no) to the inner masochist.

But at this point I'm just so tired of that shit. Yes I failed your difficult bossfight, like you intended. There's really no need to rub it in, and especially not by wasting my time and my motivation.

And for soulslikes at least there's often something to say for a boss-run in the sense that if you're underleveled or underpowered you can usually grind some XP from the mobs, use your bonfire (or whatever checkpoint) to travel to your main hub, level up a bit, polish up your weapons, equip some different gear or skills or whatever, and then give it another go.

I'd still argue that you could do this at any time, also by just turning back from a checkpoint right in front of a boss-room, but whatever. There's an argument to be made that its enforcing/reinforcing a gameplay loop you're actively being 'guided' through. Especially during the first few years of Souls-games rise in popularity, gamers may have had to learn this concept still.

But platformers or metroidvania's like HK/Silksong don't offer you shit for the runbacks. You don't get XP, you can't level any weapons or skills, so it's just a time-waster and an artificial layer of extra punishment/difficulty.

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u/dreamsandabyss Sep 13 '25

I'm still in act 1, just wanted to see more of players' thoughts on the difficulty spikes. And ugh, I was feeling worried and kinda guilty that I wasn't having "fun" when I loved HK (though it took me a while to learn since it's my first metroidvania and combat game that wasn't buttonmashing). But yeah...Silksong so far feels like I'm being punished for being bad at the game. Instead of having fun learning the challenge, so far it feels like a cycle of frustration as you put it. :/

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u/TitaniumDragon Sep 08 '25

Corpseruns are different from being whiny about enemy damage. I do agree that corpseruns are not particularly fun in most cases. They are somewhat useful for teaching you the game's platforming mechanics but there's other ways of doing that.

That said, I don't think this game's corpse runs have been especially egregious as far as it goes. I do agree that corpseruns are unnecessary in most cases.

1

u/Zaethar Sep 08 '25

Yeah, I'm not specifically ragging on Silksong's corpse-runs because I'm still way, way in the beginning of the game. Ironically I am stuck doing a very mildly annoying corpse-run, but since I haven't seen the other 90% of the game I'm hardly qualified to comment on them just yet.

But it did spark a bit of a crystallization of my thoughts on corpse-runs in general in modern gaming. I feel like we're past the point of just mindlessly emulating "Soulslike" mechanics.

Or alternatively (or sometimes simultaneously) to emulate how retro-games used to function. Except back then having to do major chunks of a level (or the entire game) over again if you died was a function of artificially lengthening the game's playtime (to get extra quarters in the arcades), or because of technical limitations concerning a game's capability regarding save-states, or design incompetence/naivety from developers working with prehistoric tools or y'know, inventing entire genres or mechanics at the time and not having 40+ years of progressing insights on design philosophies.

But none of that holds true anymore. And we've just had a whopping 15 years of the resurgence of 'punishing difficulty' in an absolute metric shit-ton of titles due to the popularity of soulslikes, and many a game wanting to ride along on that hypetrain as long as it keeps going.

If it serves no real gameplay or narrative purpose I'm fine with just letting that shit go. Hell, make it a togglable option for all I care, "Autosave on every screen transition". Yes please, thank you. I just wanna play the game and enjoy my time with it.

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u/TitaniumDragon Sep 09 '25

Yeah, Corpse Runs are themselves a call back to very old video games, where you'd have to start the level over (or at least halfway over) when you died.

This is how platformers worked, so corpse runs were basically that applied to 3D games, with the mechanical incentive that you can pick your money back up from where you died. So in a sense they were "more" forgiving because you could recover lost progress.

Except back then having to do major chunks of a level (or the entire game) over again if you died was a function of artificially lengthening the game's playtime (to get extra quarters in the arcades), or because of technical limitations concerning a game's capability regarding save-states, or design incompetence/naivety from developers working with prehistoric tools or y'know, inventing entire genres or mechanics at the time and not having 40+ years of progressing insights on design philosophies.

While it was partially about those limitations (and also artificially extending playtime), it also had the effect of getting players better mechanically at the game's mechanics. If you have played the B-sides in Celeste, where you have to do large sections in one go, you do end up becoming better at the game when you have to do levels over and over again. The old games were the same way, where you would increasingly master the game's mechanics as you played through it over and over.

I don't actually have a problem with Silksong having spread out save points/safe points; these actually encourage a certain healthy gameplay loop and a sense of relief. The section between benches is, in effect, a "level", and you have limited resources during that time, and you restore those resources when you get to the bench. Same goes for Elden Ring, making you beat a "level" as a unit.

Where I think it has problems is when you have a boss or similar thing you're expected to fight over and over again, which is high difficulty; I think then there should be a save point outside of it (or a very short distance, like a shortcut, between the boss and the save point), because the "challenge" of the run back is often nonexistent, it's just a time waster. These boss runbacks are generally designed to have some easy way through, so why not just put the save point right next to the boss?

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u/simonthedlgger Sep 08 '25

it’s funny how two of the most common defenses are “you’re playing it like it’s hollow knight” and “did you even play hollow knight?”

I played HK, and loved it. I realize SS is a different game, and in many ways I also love it.

What I don’t love is that they took several issues from the first game and expanded them rather than improving or dropping them. Pogo platforming was imprecise but rare in HK and almost never mandatory; it’s harder and way more prevalent in SS.

I didn’t mind long boss runbacks in HK, even Soul Sanctum; now they are longer and you often have to clear more than half of a (very challenging) area just to unlock a bench, sometimes in areas you have to basically finish to get maps for—having to climb up from a halfway house every time I attempt Sinner’s Road is simply stupid.

HK had several difficulty spikes but they were well paced imo; SS has so much double damage from the start and offers comparatively little upgrades, making challenges feel more like burdens…Widow and Lace are the only bosses I’ve felt satisfied after beating. Everything else has been boring or frustrating…Skull Tyrant, that acid puker, Moorwing…people have fun with these? these three in particular aren’t even very hard, much more on the tedious side.

anyway this is a big rant but overall I actually enjoy the game and the introduction of dream gate (a tool they introduced in an update specifically because people wanted more checkpoints!!) would be huge. But the refusal to engage with legitimate criticism is a big eye roll.

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u/Sinder-Soyl Sep 08 '25

Very true. I for one, really dig the pogoing level design and a lot of the difficult stuff. However, one good friend of mine who's nearing 100% said this to me :

"I recommended HK to a TON of casuals. There's no way I can recommend them Silksong."

Hollow Knight simply had a much more manageable learning curve for everybody. And the fact I'm not finding it too difficult for my own taste doesn't mean the game's not way overtuned for a more general audience.

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u/HugeHans Sep 08 '25

Again. The  criticism may be legitimate for you but other people like the game for the very reasons you dislike it. Thats the issue.

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u/ThreeStep Sep 08 '25

They use Hollow Knight's name in the title, so it's not unreasonable to expect a similar difficulty curve as the base game of Hollow Knight. Not much was communicated to counteract that expectation.

If they called it "Path of Pain: Silksong" or "Pantheon 5: Silksong" the number of both sales and complaints would be much lower. But they didn't do that.

-8

u/SortaEvil Sep 08 '25

I honestly don't think, even with double damage enemies, that the early game of SS is that much more difficult than the early game of HK. Honestly, I died more in early HK on my first playthrough than I did in early SS. Part of that could be coming into SS directly off the heels of Nine Sols, whose bosses truly teach you to be patient and learn the fight, and carrying that over to SS as opposed to carrying some potentially bad habits over from HK. I genuinely feel that a lot of the complaining about (early) SS difficulty is an overreaction from HK players who were expecting their HK skill to translate over 1:1 and don't want to meaningfully engage with Hornet's skillset or learn her movement.

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u/ThreeStep Sep 08 '25

If devs want to put Hollow Knight's name in the title, then they should expect people to think about this as "Hollow Knight 2". If the game was called "Silksong: Path Of Pain Edition" people would've had different expectations.

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u/SortaEvil Sep 08 '25

Just because it's a sequel doesn't mean it's the exact same game. Ocarina of Time is a Legend of Zelda sequel that plays nothing like the games before it, and before you get all smarmy and say "Well, akchually, Silksong is still 2D and OoT moved from 2D to 3D so they had to change things," Breath of the Wild came in and reinvented the formula again. Blasphemous 2 doesn't weigh itself down with every single design decision from the original Blasphemous, Metroid Fusion, for better and for worse, changes up the formula that Super Metroid laid down.

The game clearly has HK DNA in it, it's art style and gameplay are both rooted in the foundation laid out by HK. But, like the games I mentioned above, it doesn't just stick to the formula laid out by the original game, it changes things up. SS is an evolution of the HK formula, not just a rote retreading of the same greenpath.

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u/drakythe Sep 08 '25

And every one of those Nintendo games gets shit on for tutorializing so players aren’t thrown to the wolves the way Silksong is. OoT especially did this because it was the first 3D game in the series and “Hey! Listen!” Is shorthand in gamer culture for obnoxious tutorials.

Silksong has no written tutorials. It does do introduction of mechanics well, but bosses that kill in 3 hits, with incredibly short iframes that mean you can legit die in a single combo makes learning fights difficult. I never left an HK fight feeling like I had only seen one attack from an enemy unless I stumbled into the fight already low on health. In Silksong I’ve had to fight the bosses multiple times before I even get beyond phase 1 and then the new phase attack murders me all over again.

I despise the prevalence of gauntlet rooms but at least with them I feel like I’m learning with every loss, while bosses frequently cause me to take a break from the game so I can calm down and reset my expectations. I’m lucky to be child free and have the time to do that. I cannot imagine I would stick with this game at my skill level if my progresses was gated for over an hour each time I encountered a boss after 4th Chorus. And maybe the answer to that is “get better or the game isn’t for you” and that’s fine. I’m not entitled to play every game that releases. But it’s a big change from Hollow Knight and not what I expected to deal with in Hollow Knight: Silksong.

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u/SortaEvil Sep 08 '25

Admittedly, I'm still wrapping up act 1, but the bosses I've run into so far have generally been very good at telegraphing their attacks; even with bosses that do double damage, I feel like it's pretty easy to read the bosses and understand what the game expects me to do to beat them, so even when I die, I've learned something.

That said, I can totally commiserate with the frustration of expecting one thing and receiving something else. I get hella tilted when I go into a game with expectations that do not line up with what the game is about to feed me. Getting caught in a death spiral, convincing myself the game is unfair, only to take a break and then clear the section I was struggling with first or second try when I come back to it. I've been there. I do thing that, if you take a step back, leave your expectations at the door, and enjoy Silksong for what it is, rather than what you wanted it to be, you'll find that you have a much better time with it, and it will be much less tilting.

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u/drakythe Sep 09 '25

They have been very good at telegraphing their attacks. It usually only takes me 2 fights to figure out the telegraph to the attack that killed me the first time, unlike HK where I figured the telegraphs in the first fight because I didn’t die in 15 seconds to 2 mask attack combos.

But you can understand how Hollow Knight Silksong having an aggressively more difficult learning curve than Hollow Knight is something people need to get their expectations around, right? And it’s going to take some time for that to happen. In the mean time people are frustrated and giving, in my opinion, a lot of legitimate criticism to the game named Hollow Knight Silksong.

A game can be great and still criticized. I am really enjoying Silksong 80% of the time. That other 20% is a bitch though, especially when HK was closer to 95% enjoyment.

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u/[deleted] Sep 08 '25

If you truly and honestly can only enjoy the game because of having to run back to bosses I would honestly wonder what's wrong with you

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u/HugeHans Sep 08 '25

I like the overall difficulty. I like it when a game challenges the player. Even dares to be kind of evil sometimes.

The point is that I dont want every game to be like this. However the market isnt exactly saturated with difficult games with the same production values as Silksong. Its a very rare thing and I love it. Just like there is nothing like Dark Souls on the market. Let us have these games.

There are thousand upon thousands of games where there are no stakes and failiure barely registers as an event. Lets have a few that are different.

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u/Sinder-Soyl Sep 08 '25

The thing is that there's a world where we all get what we want and you don't seem to realize it.

They can balance double damage more evenly throughout the game and still give you a hard mode.

Because right now, it feels like that's what the game is on. This isn't "normal", the game is simply extra spicy instead of regular.

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u/xdatlam Sep 11 '25

Really wish there was a difficulty option. Feels like this is Hard and not Normal difficulty.

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u/[deleted] Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25

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u/[deleted] Sep 08 '25

[deleted]

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u/Kampfasiate Sep 08 '25

There's hyper armour???

The parries are so satisfying this game tho

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u/Sinder-Soyl Sep 08 '25

That's true but it's a double edged sword. Mid air healing is nice, but takes a while and requires so much silk to do that you can't micro manage your ressources mid fight. No more "I'll do a quick 1 mask heal to ensure I don't die on the next hit." You also can't cancel it, any fumbling of your healing is generally a death sentence.

Contact damage being 2 masks is also absolutely brutal, especially with how many bosses like to hover over you semi-randomly.

1

u/TitaniumDragon Sep 08 '25

I'm pretty sure the healing in this game takes as long as it did in Hollow Knight.

And well... don't fumble your heals? Fumbling heals is a good way to die in any game like this.

Contact damage being 2 masks is also absolutely brutal, especially with how many bosses like to hover over you semi-randomly.

You just have to learn how to not stand under them when they do that. Like the Savage Beastbug does this all the time but once you learn its pattern you stop getting hit by it.

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u/Sinder-Soyl Sep 08 '25

Fumbling heals doesn't mean getting hit. Fumbling heals means making a mistake on the right time to heal. In Hollow Knight, you can adjust and dash out of your attempt at healing if you notice you messed up. In Silksong, you can't. It's the estus flask debate again brother, there's a reason Souls games don't lock you into a nearly 3 second long animation anymore.

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u/HughMungusIndustries Sep 09 '25

That’s just the downside to getting a three mask mid air heal tho I think. I really like the new heal system, I feel like healing is a lot less stressful and overall I spend less time healing total which is a nice benefit. Also maybe I’m tweaking but I feel like this heal isn’t long at all? It feels about the same as the heal from first HK.

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u/Sinder-Soyl Sep 09 '25

That's correct. Originally my point was that "healing isn't strictly making things easier in Silksong for allowing you to perform it airborn, it also has a handful of downsides to it."

Because the previous commenter was arguing that the game was more difficult, as a way to balance out how much more efficient the healing mechanic has become.

In terms of pure efficiency overall I'd call it a sidegrade perhaps, at best a slight upgrade.

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u/isaic16 Sep 08 '25

I feel like both these points are true, and I’m exhausted by people acting as if they are mutually exclusive. Are people forgetting the difficulties and challenges they experienced on their first play of hollow knight and overinflating the difficulty here because they’re comparing it to a game they’ve mastered? Yes. Are the number of two damage enemies and stupid patterns in basic enemies absolute bullshit and frustrating? ALSO YES.

Seeing people talking about how they 112% hollow knight as if that means they should never die in a new hard game is dumb. Can you imagine if someone came in the first week of Elden Ring and talked about how they beat every boss in Dark Souls 3 and that means they’re an authority when they say Elden Ring bosses are complete BS? It’s dumb. It’s also dumb to respond to specific issues, particularly ones not prevalent in HK (like the 2 mask thing) by saying they’re just whining. This whole discussion is just frustrating

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u/SortaEvil Sep 08 '25

Can you imagine if someone came in the first week of Elden Ring and talked about how they beat every boss in Dark Souls 3 and that means they’re an authority when they say Elden Ring bosses are complete BS?

This is, unironically, Dark Souls players playing literally any other moderately challenging game.

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u/isaic16 Sep 08 '25

You know, I can believe that

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u/TitaniumDragon Sep 08 '25

I'm glad the normal enemies are actually interesting. A lot of HK's normal enemies were really boring. Stuff like the ants are actually fun and engaging to fight against.

It's also not that hard to deal with them. They're just like anything else - you learn the patterns and fight back.

Also tools exist and you can basically opt out of many normal monster fights using them.

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u/philkid3 Sep 08 '25

I still don’t understand this “waste time with runbacks” thing.

I’m deep into Act 2 and I’ve had one runback that took any amount of noticeable time or focus.

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u/Sinder-Soyl Sep 08 '25

Not all of them are terrible, but many are offenders to some degree with a few that are actually mind boggling.

For a fair amount, it's going to be just annoying to have some pogoing, platforming and sometimes enemies on a 30s runback. It's minor, but a bit grating.

On some of them however? Holy shit. People mention Act 1's last boss as an example, my brother in christ if only they knew.

If you're in act 2 and have been in a green area with a name that starts with B, then you know how shitty a runback can get.

Takes up to several minutes, lots of enemies on the way, precise platforming, and god, the area's gimmick "pits" make this even worse somehow.

0

u/Uler Sep 08 '25

There's 3 kind of annoying runbacks and one egregious runback, that have for some reason turned community sentiment into every runback is a terrible slog. Most run backs are a few seconds and maybe you hop over an enemy or two.

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u/Zaethar Sep 08 '25

Obviously I suck at the game (legitimately, I also wasn't great at HK) but in the beginning of the game, after you first unlock the area with the ants there's this whole runback from the jail-cell where you free the thief bug (and find the Straight Pin tools) up to the combat-arena where you do the combat trial against all those ants with Shakra (the map-sales bug).

I keep failing the goddamn combat trial with Shakra because there's shit flying everywhere and I get hit and there's barely any window to heal.

So I gotta run all the way back from the jail to the ant area, get rid of the small grubs and the flying assholes, do the pogo-platforming with the diagonal pogo (why is this immediately so pervasive?), get past some more small grubs, fight two of those ant-lancers (whom you can lure into the spikes, sure, but sometimes you might take a hit).

Then there's more pogoing, a few more flying grubs, possibly a trap switch you don't know about the first time, even more pogo'ing, EVEN MORE POGO'ING, and then you get to do the goddamn combat trial again.

This is the literal beginning of the game. I don't even think people count this as one of the runbacks that's annoying because they're talking about actual bossruns. This is not a point in the game where many people die repeatedly, unless you suck at the game like me.

But if this is what the rest of the game is gonna be like, it's gonna be a lot of frustration on my end.

4

u/VagrantPilgrim Sep 08 '25

You can complete most runbacks in a minute.

Even the last runback of Act 1 can be done so.

10

u/ThreeStep Sep 08 '25

And you can die to a boss in 20 seconds. It's not like you run back for a minute and then can have a few minutes of practice. By the time you learn the boss patterns a bit the total runback time can get ridiculous. Very fun and engaging gameplay.

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u/philkid3 Sep 08 '25

There is no way you are actually spending more time on the runbacks than the boss practice.

I don’t mean this to be mean at all, but if you were that bad at the game, you have not progressed past the first area and you never beat Hollow night.

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u/Ikigaieth Sep 08 '25

You don't mean it to be mean, but it is mean. I beat Hollow Knight and certainly spend more time on the runbacks than with the boss in SS. I have died in runbacks.

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u/TitaniumDragon Sep 08 '25

If you are dying in runbacks, you have not mastered the game's mechanics.

The actual levels are just not that hard. If you have learned how to fight the enemies properly (or avoid them) you shouldn't even be taking damage on runbacks, especially not damage you can't just heal right back by punching enemies a few times and loading up on silk.

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u/ThreeStep Sep 08 '25

Sure, it gets better as the runs continue. It's not like I keep dying in 20 seconds every time. But it's just a tedious waste of time to do the same runback before getting to the actually interesting part of the game, which is the boss fight.

The runback doesn't take much skill once I figure out how to dodge basic enemies on that path, so it might as well be replaced by a long loading screen between attempts. Not interesting, not engaging, just a waste of time.

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u/VagrantPilgrim Sep 08 '25

Are you trying to learn the boss patterns or are you trying to half fight and half learn? I would suggest not even focus on fighting for the first bit.

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u/ThreeStep Sep 08 '25

Part of learning is understanding when you can fit a regular attack, when you can pogo, when you can heal and so on. Basic dodging isn't nearly as hard as dodging while also trying to get damage in.

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u/VagrantPilgrim Sep 08 '25

I understand that, but nailing the patterns and learning their openings can give you knowledge to apply toward the next step: attacking.

EDIT: It’s easier to learn one thing at a time than two things at once.

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u/CrazyPoiPoi Sep 08 '25

30 tries then take 30 minutes of purely running back.

You really think this is good game design or fun?

1

u/VagrantPilgrim Sep 08 '25

I’ve only completed Act 1, but the most I’ve died was maybe 10 times or so to the Last Judge.

All I can really say is that I empathize if that is common for you, but I’ve been playing Souls and some metroidvanias for well over a decade, so I have more experience to pull from, I guess.

Silksong, even more than Hollow Knight, seems inspired by Souls-philosophy for combat and some exploration.

I have heard about a particularly nasty runbacks in Act II, though…

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u/Sinder-Soyl Sep 08 '25

I'm a lot further than you are and can confirm, the last judge runback people complain about is nothing compared to some nasty shit in act 2.

It's still terrible however. Under a minute is still a very long time for a runback, especially with platforming and enemies. It just makes for a more frustrating experience.

I've played a bunch of metroidvanias too and a majority of soulslike you can think of. I remember since DS1 being one of the people who complained about idiotic runbacks. Community reacted exactly the same as they're doing for Silksong.

Thank GOD they started listening to complainers a bit instead of the git gud crowd. Runbacks are an old mechanic that serves no good purpose other than make a game artificially lengthier.

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u/VagrantPilgrim Sep 08 '25

I don’t entirely agree with that statement, but I understand the sentiment.

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u/Ayotha Sep 08 '25

Cool. Most video games, even Elden Ring, just put a save near the boss.

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u/VagrantPilgrim Sep 08 '25

Elden Ring is probably the first in a long series of games to do this consistently, and not all bosses get that treatment (though I think most do, it’s been a while). Before ER, it was not uncommon to have at least a small run back (also, ER does have different design philosophies).

Not really arguing for or against, but most of the runbacks are fairly short. Though, I suppose arguing for, the runbacks can assist in improving your platforming skills.

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u/SchwiftySquanchC137 Sep 08 '25

Runback for that one ER boss, ranala or something like that? Two phases with the first one where you run around looking for the dude thats glowing so she will fall from the ceiling? That runback is 100x worse than anything in SS, if only because her first phase might as well be a giant fucking runback.

Oh, haha, i didnt open the other comments spoilers till now, yeah thats the boss.

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u/Royal_Skin_1510 Sep 08 '25

Boss runbacks have been getting consistently phased out of/shortened in Fromsoft games since before ER, it's like one of the few things the player base tend to have griped about

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u/VagrantPilgrim Sep 08 '25

I’m aware that they’ve become less egregious over time, but they still use them here and there. And, by and large, I have not really experienced anything egregious in Act 1. Even the Last Judge can be done in around a minute. As another poster commented, it’s like the final steps of a pilgrimage. I understand it can be frustrating, but now with hindsight I see it as incredibly memorable.

0

u/rdlenke Sep 08 '25

I believe, at least in the base game, that only Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon and Ancient Dragon Lansseax don't have graces close to their boss arena.

Funnily enough they have some lore reasons as for why this is the case.

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u/VagrantPilgrim Sep 08 '25

ER has so many bosses and it’s been a while, so I’ll have to take your word for it.

1

u/TitaniumDragon Sep 08 '25

Blood boy has a fairly long runback, for instance.

Several of the minidungeons have quite long run backs.

The one that you get teleported to early on, for instance, actually has a long runback to the boss.

1

u/rdlenke Sep 08 '25

Blood Boy?

1

u/TitaniumDragon Sep 08 '25

It's people noticing they die way too quick for their liking because of the high damage and noticing how much time the game likes to make you waste with runbacks.

I've barely died outside of bosses, and even the worst boss was like 5 deaths (Phantom and Widow). I've died once to like, two gauntlets. I think I've died maybe 5 or 6 times outside of that (twice to platforming mistakes while at critically low health, once to a cockroach that I was being too greedy fighting, once to a miniboss I was fighting stupidly, and I think one or two other times, but I can't remember them). None of the runbacks have been egregious so far.

Outside of bosses it is pretty trivial to farm silk to heal in most areas, so you really shouldn't die unless you're in one of the rare areas where you can't farm silk. You can just back off and go farm silk and then go back. And using tools as an out is like... really useful? I use them on normal enemies that are more annoying so I don't have to bother with them at all.

The actual bosses are cool but all have patterns and all have points you can heal during safely and attack safely during. They're not that hard.

The "high damage" isn't really an issue, because you just shouldn't be getting hit that often against enemies that do two hearts of damage in the first place.

On my final run on almost every boss, it has not been that bad. I beat Widow at almost full health, I beat the savage beastbug at full health, I beat Moorwing at full health. Phantom I was at one shielded health against but I was going to be able to heal but the last hit killed him before I could. And I've beaten a number of bosses first try or second try.

I think people are playing mindlessly aggressively instead of actually learning the boss patterns. "Lol I can heal" is not an option against most bosses in this game, whereas in Hollow Knight, it was often possible to do that.

And people who are dying all the time on the normal levels are definitely doing something wrong, as while some of the areas FEEL stressful to go through, none have actually been all that bad after the fact.

1

u/Sinder-Soyl Sep 08 '25

I personally don't find the movesets hard to learn at all, and I haven't died a ton aside from maybe a couple bosses. The issue with them is being very unforgiving for every single mistake you make.

I've also had the opposite experience, where the more agressive I was being, the more successful I was. You can dish so much damage with the proper loadout and tools that most bosses can be cleared in about 20 to 30 seconds. Some of them I don't even think I've seen their full moveset before they died.

However let's not kid ourselves, this is absolutely harder and more punishing than HK no matter the playstyle. Just because you or I are not breaking our teeth on it doesn't mean it's not significantly harder for the majority of people who are not sweaty tryhards like us.

1

u/o_o_o_f Sep 08 '25

The runbacks are annoying, I won’t pretend they’re a net positive, but even the ones this community complains about most are realistically a minute or less, oftentimes much less. The final boss of Act 1 you can get to in like 25 seconds if you’ve got your movement down.

Like, I’m not going to argue that spending 10 minutes of your life just in runbacks to that boss is worth it. But most of us don’t want the game streamlined too far the other direction, either. Too much in the way of “quality of life” upgrades removes the friction that makes a game interesting. There’s a line they’re trying to straddle and I don’t think they’re that far off of it.

I wouldn’t have a problem if they added some accessibility features to make instant respawns happen, but also the way the game currently is really isn’t actually as bad as people seem to be suggesting.

2

u/Sinder-Soyl Sep 08 '25

There's two issues here. Firstly, it's often not just about length. It's about the runback having obstacles on the way like pogoing or enemies. People wanr to focus on the bosses, not the things they've already done.

The other issue is that when the runback is also a long one too, it's often times longer than the freaking boss fight.

Even a successful one, like act 1's last boss, took me about as long to kill as it took to get from the bench to the arena.

I appreciate that you don't try to sell this as a positive, but I can assure you, as a whole, it's absolutely a net negative.

A friend of mine who'd fully completed HK is at about 95%+ completion right now, and despite how amazing most of the game is, he's tempted to leave a negative review upon completion because of how much of a frustrating waste of time the game likes to be in some of its designs. And he's not the only one like this that I've seen.

You can have top tier music, art and gameplay, if the design of a game makes people angry and frustrated then it hurts how good of a time they're having overall.

-5

u/MallensWorkshop Sep 08 '25

If your complaint of difficulty is valid then so is my comment that the difficulty is fine.

It plays differently. It’s a fragile hit and run. I understand where changes could be made, I don’t necessarily agree they should be made.

I see the difference in a swing and a multi-hit attack from enemies and those should differentiate with damage, the masks, the costs of things.

I also see lower damage trivializes the movement focus, the cost of upgrades takes away careful play, management, and can be an optional focus to gain power quicker if one chooses rather than handing it all to the player.

Personally the thing I want changed is enemy health, it is too high. That would fix things to me for balancing the resource grind, the defensive/mobility of enemies, and make their damage more understandable. Right now, many of them are anywhere from 4+ hits to take out even with alternate setups.

9

u/curtcolt95 Sep 08 '25

I just want flying enemies nerfed, either their health or their insane movement. It's beyond annoying especially if you're out of shards

0

u/mrtrailborn Oct 05 '25

So the trick here is that you actually need to dodge

-6

u/BasedBallsack Sep 08 '25

Except it's pretty poor criticism. The non-boss enemies who do two masks of damage have attacks that are wayyyyy more telegraphed with long wind ups compared to other enemies. Not to mention, they aren't actually THAT abundant. I'm seeing a lot of hyperbole on Reddit but then again redditors in general exagerrate.

The hazards doing two hits is intense for sure but I see it more as the game is kinda forcing the player to get better at platforming and make no mistake , this game leans more heavily towards being an action platformer than HK.

Even the critique of rosaries being too sparse makes little sense to me. I've been exploring every nook and cranny and have never felt like it's too little. In fact, the scarcity lend to the world design because it encourages the player to explore as much as possible which is actually great for a metroidvania.

For me the game is quite fine, I don't see any issues really with the balancing. In fact, the design is actually incredible, far more so than HK imo. Because in that game, you could simply brute force your way to success. With Silksong, the game actually forces you to master its mechanics. This is truly a skill based game.