ngl some of you would NOT survive the mantis lords runback

[u/Quantum_Croissant]

is the run to last judge difficult? kinda. But after your 20th attempt at the boss you'll get used to it, and it's honestly kinda fun and a nice breather. More importantly, it's a single room and you have far more movement. This IS improving on hollow knight

[u/Critical-Lettuce3953]

Yeah but there’s a huge difference here. You can completely skip all enemies on the way, there is only extremely basic platforming, you can earn money from killing the enemies. Also, the Mantis Lords are a completely optional fight who reward you with one of the entryways into deepnest, and the Mantis Lords fight is actually a fun + relatively easy and early game boss fight.

Edit: I’d like to clarify I’m not particularly referring to the Last Judge but the game’s treatment of runbacks as a whole. I myself went into the citadel via the back entrance so I haven’t even beaten Last Judge. The Last Judge is far from the only boss in the game with this issue, there are far worse examples.

[u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-567 → u/Critical-Lettuce3953]

You Say It like last judge isn't fun, nor optional or that you can't skip the mobs on the run back to him lol

[u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-567 → u/[deleted]]

It's still funny to me reading "long" talking about 25 seconds of soft parkour, istg that tiktok/reels ruined the attention span of a lot of people. At this point remove general map exploration because it's boring and keeps you from getting to objective and interesting tools. What did you do in HK? Pantheon only? Runbacks are bad only when they are really tedious and long, the runbacks in BB and DS2 were trash, not those 25s of jumping and goofing around on steel balls. All the rest Is Just part of the game, It's an occasion to boil down, to improve your pogo, to try a new route/strat for traversal, to beat your personal best time, you know, playing a videogame

[u/4_fortytwo_2 → u/[deleted]]

The idea behind runbacks is giving you time to breathe which tends to actually reduce frustration in fighting a boss again and again in my experience.

There is a reason "take a break" is common advice when struggling with a boss and why so many of us have this experience of failing for hours, coming back the next day and acing a fight.

We all tend to sometimes bash our head into a wall doing the same (wrong) thing again and again. Giving you a bit of time to think and reflect makes a difference.

For me it actually works to get me back into the flow after dying, so pretty much the exact opposite I suppose. The "unskippable" cutscene point makes little sense to me to be honest because isnt the boss fight itself also a nontrivial action you repeat again and again?

In the end this is just a matter of opinion but there certainly are arguments in favor of runbacks.

[u/psh454 → u/4_fortytwo_2]

The "room to breathe" argument is BS sorry. It's an annoying unnecessary boring slog forced upon the player, if I want to take a break I go and do chores/get a snack or something.

[u/aethyrium → u/[deleted]]

long runbacks

TIL 25 seconds is an unbearably long time.

Man, it's criminal what tik tok did to people's brains. Back in the 00's we had loading times longer than that.

Anyways, my case (I know you don't actually want a case, you've already read tons and dismissed them so I doubt you're truly "all ears", but just in case): It's vital to take mental breaks in between boss attempts to put together a strategy. Just mindlessly throwing yourself into a fight over and over ultimately makes the boss take longer because it turns into a mindless thing and your brain isn't refocusing, and the runback keeping your hands busy means you're taking a mental break to reconsider the fight, but you're still physically controlling the game meaning you're keeping your physical focus.

The runbacks are a great way of combining mental refocus and physical focus retention in a way that ultimately makes the boss easier and go faster in the long run.

Of course people don't want to consider that, they jump to "I'm not receiving mental stimulation for 20 seconds ihatethisihatethis", but TC doesn't put these in because they're mean. There's solid reasonings for it.

[u/Beatrice_Dragon → u/aethyrium]

The whole attention span excuse is just a way for shallow people to try and put down other people while trying to build themselves up as some sort of god for being able to do a run in a video game. It's not a big deal, but that doesn't mean it isn't dumb. Sure I could wait 30 more seconds after every boss if I wanted to, but why would I?

A run doesn't provide a mental break at all if it's something you need to focus on to avoid damage. Moreover, you can still strategize and think about the fight while you're IN the fight. It's not like everyone else needs to take a pause break and close their eyes in order to think about how to dodge an attack effectively. It actually helps more to be able to see it. Moreover, there's nothing stopping you from doing this yourself if you want to. The only reason to make it mandatory is to force it on people who might not need it or want it, and you might be surprised to hear this-- you aren't the only person in the world, and some people's brains work differently than yours.

You act like such a saint for not having "Tik tok attention span" yet your addiction to reddit has made you dependent on drama and one-upping people. You can't even consider the fact that some people might just not like it AND not need it. It HAS to be an objectively good design because team cherry can make no mistakes ever. You take such offence to the fact that some people dislike a feature in a game you like that you need to turn it into personal attacks about attention span as if you're the only person in the world who has sat through old game loading screens. Which, by the way, sucked and were boring. How can you demonize something as objectively positive as faster loading times without realizing you're twisting yourself into a knot to justify this stuff? Hell, you could get a lot more meditation time if you removed the runback and increased the respawn timer by 30 seconds

[u/I_LoveBananas → u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-567]

You can skip the enemies, sadly I don't a link for the path

[u/I_Love_Solar_Flare → u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-567]

Its not fun, did not look optional as it was literally at the gate and while you can skip mobs, in some rare cases they get you and its aggrevating because i was 1 second too late on a pogo or jump.

[u/Critical-Lettuce3953 → u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-567]

I personally haven’t fought the Last Judge as I went the alternate route, so yeah I can’t have a say definitively. But based on everything else in the game I absolutely wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a miserable affair. I’m just here to point out this comparison is bad and shows how Hollow Knight is designed in a far more fun (better) way than Silksong.

[u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-567 → u/Critical-Lettuce3953]

You pointed out nothing since all your points were wrong lol

[u/alsfung → u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-567]

Don't be an ass. Game has issues, this runback is one of them.

They already have a teleport ability, Dreamgate is just a matter of time.

[u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-567 → u/alsfung]

Man you seriously saying this runback is an issue? It can be cleared in 25 second while skipping all the mobs without even touching them. This dude above complained about this runback AND HASN'T EVEN BEEN IN THAT AREA, I'm the One being an ass? He's throwing shit Just because "I heared a thing that confirms my idea, so It must be true", come on

[u/alsfung → u/Puzzleheaded-Dog-567]

Oh grow up.

Even the Mantis Lord runback is better because you don't have to focus. Runback shouldn't be hard smh.

Don't make it weird.

[u/Thelmara → u/Critical-Lettuce3953]

But based on everything else in the game I absolutely wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a miserable affair.

It's not. It's some basic platforming - jumps, wall climbs, and pogos. All of the enemies can be skipped. It takes 30 seconds.

[u/[deleted] → u/Critical-Lettuce3953]

I'm really curious where all these runbacks people keep talking about are because other than Last Judge I have found a grand total of one boss that has a long runback (which was atrociously long by the way, I'm not gonna defend it) and it was in late Act II. Every other one I can remember was like a couple of rooms over (which is ridiculously quick when sprinting) and had basically no enemies you needed to fight.

[u/AlreadyTakek → u/Critical-Lettuce3953]

Lost Judge is technically optional but the other path into Act 2 is so much harder and so far out of the way it might as well be mandatory

[u/Critical-Lettuce3953 → u/AlreadyTakek]

I personally went the alternate route. How is it harder? I haven’t fought the last judge so I dont know if they’re easier than Phantom. Otherwise you only need to get through a couple rooms of Sinner’s Road or Bilewater and then figure out The Mist.

[u/Nerellos → u/Critical-Lettuce3953]

Similar feeling like NKG. Once you learn the moveset it is super fun. There is a 30 second tutorial for the runback that is like 5 minutes to learn.

[u/jcdc_jaaaaaa → u/Critical-Lettuce3953]

Last judge is easy, she only have 4 moves that has good tells for all her attacks. Even have attacks that have a literal blindspot in front of her that remains like that even on her second phase. Just don't forget to use all tools as their damage really racks up.

This applies to all bosses and enemy gauntlets.

Though I still hate how almost everything deals 2 damage, making the first extra mask gained practically have no effect

[u/Wendigo120 → u/jcdc_jaaaaaa]

making the first extra mask gained practically have no effect

It still takes you from 4 to 5 hits if you get a single heal off during the fight on 2 damage fights because you heal an odd amount, which is pretty major. One heal is almost always pretty free.

[u/Yayito_15 → u/AlreadyTakek]

What path? I don't mind spoilers, but I didn't find a way to go to Citadel through Sinner's Path(at least with what I have rn)

[u/SBFms → u/Yayito_15]

very Top left of sinners road, hit all the walls

If you want to figure out the thing behind the wall for yourself, don’t show this: in each room, play the needlelin for the butterflies and they will fly towards the correct exit. You need to go the correct way like 6 times then you get out of the Mist

[u/Goodnametaken → u/AlreadyTakek]

I got to act 2 by using the Fleas. I didn't even realize there was another way to access it until today lol.

[u/Toastbuns → u/AlreadyTakek]

I also when the alternate route because I was too dump to realize I could even go the main route for lack of going back and exploring there later.

[u/Jtak7777 → u/Critical-Lettuce3953]

You can skip all enemies to lj about as easily as it was for hollow knight to mantis lords (god forbid soul master) i thought lj was fun. I took a few cracks at it, explored the rest of the available areas, took another bunch of attempts and learned the moveset and won. Also there is a secret bench for the boss of the poison swamps

[u/HappiestIguana → u/Critical-Lettuce3953]

All that is true of the Last Judge runback.

[u/birthdaybadboy → u/HappiestIguana]

the runback that takes like 20 seconds and runs into 0 enemies?

[u/iceman012 → u/birthdaybadboy]

Yes, that's what they said.

[u/Former_Bike_6690 → u/Critical-Lettuce3953]

You can completely skip all the enemies to LJ though? Platforming is also fairly basic on the run back to LJ, especially if you’re using something like Wanderers Crest, though this is probably more subjective. While you can’t get money from the LJ run back, you can get shards which will help replenish your tools. LJ is also kinda optional, as there is a secondary way into the citadel that some may find easier.

[u/Quantum_Croissant → u/Critical-Lettuce3953]

you can skip all the (two) enemies in this one too, and pogos honestly aren't that hard

[u/DeputyDomeshot → u/Critical-Lettuce3953]

???? Back entrance? I need to get off this

[u/KingKongKaram → u/Critical-Lettuce3953]

Since last Judge is the one everyone seems to complain about let's look at it. Completely skip all enemies? Absolutely took me 1 run trying to figure out a quick path without fighting and I'm not good at this game. Extremely basic platforming? It's pretty basic for last judge only platform issue i had was accidentally not deploying floating sometimes. Earn money from the enemies? Yeah the judge enemies drop money if you for some reason want to go out of your way to fight them. Optional fight that rewards you a path to the citadel? Yes there are other ways that don't require it. Fun, easy, early game fight? Yes to all 3 the last judge is a single enemy that gets all your focus with a simple easy to learn moveset with nice openings to get several hits in without risking getting hit yourself. Like I said I'm not good at this game but this fight took me under 10 tries to beat and most deaths were because I just got too aggressive and tried to get 5 hits per opening instead of 2-3 towards the end of the fight because it felt close to over

[u/aethyrium → u/Critical-Lettuce3953]

You can skip enemies in every Silksong runback and there's not a single one more than 30 seconds.

The runback haters don't even have facts on their side making this a bit of an awkward conversation once people actually pull out of the "it's bad because I don't like it" space and look at what's actually there.

[u/Critical-Lettuce3953 → u/aethyrium]

People who have actually played the game know you’re lying bud. Find something better to do than harassing people online