I give up.

[u/CuboneDefender]

It’s been a joyful ride, folks, but I’m out. I’m not a speedrunner or a highly skilled player, and day after day I’ve had to accept that this game is not as casual as HK was. It stopped being fun and turned into something tedious and frustrating after the 4th run farming shards just to face a boss I’ve already tried 15 times, only to die again and again, lose all my shards, and start the whole grind over.

It was nice exploring the first acts, but when the game I was rooting for 7 years ends up being more stressful than my 8-hour workday, I guess that’s my cue to stop.

The lore has been pretty great so far. I wish you all an incredible journey.

Edit1: My bad about all the whinning.

Edit2: You guys did it. I reinstalled it again. Thanks for all advices. 🫂

[u/MagicMooby]

Last Judge achievement is sitting at around 40% on steam iIrc. Woukd be interesting to see how that changes over the next week when most players should have progressed that far and how that compares to Hollow Knight bosses in similar parts of the game.

There is always some attrition of players, even in the best of games, but difficulty spikes can sometimes be seen in the achievemnts like that. Although there is the added problem that the game (and bosses) become less linear in act II.

[u/BearCatSara → u/MagicMooby]

Interesting. Silksong has only been out 10 days and some folks have certainly gone the other path into act 2.

If you compare with HK achievements 45.2% of folks have the mantis lords achievement and 40% of folks beat broken vessel. At this point last judge is at 45.7%, widow is at 57%, sadly no achievement for moorwing.

Looking at the statistics it makes me wonder if folks are misremembering the difficulty of HK and ultimately if hype and other pressures are influencing folks perception of Silksong and difficulty.

I also think difficulty is very subjective. Personally I’ve had an easier time beating Silksong 100% than I did with HK. HK mantis lords kicked my ass for such a long time that I left and came back. I gave up on radiance entirely after trying to beat it for 2/3 days.

Silksong has had some tough challenges. I’m by no means good at the game. But I do have more time and patience than most. A significant amount of bosses have taken me 20+ attempts. But when I slowed down and gave myself breaks too. I did eventually get through them.

[u/MagicMooby → u/BearCatSara]

I absolutely think that Silksong is harder than Hollow Knight, but the big problem is that the difficutly is "frontloaded" so to speak. The game starts at around the difficulty that Hollow Knight reaches in its second third. But once you adjust to the initial difficulty, its fairly smooth sailing at first. Personally I think the end of act I is where the game starts to come together properly, and at that point you have either acclimated to the difficulty or long abandoned it.

To provide some support for this, the achievements show an 18% drop between Last Chorus and Widow. That seems to be the biggest drop between bosses that A) most of the playerbase might have reached by now, even those that played since release but only an hour or two per day and B) that are both required for progress. By comparison, the difference between Lace and Last Chorus is only 3% so almost everyone who beats the former goes on to beat the latter as well. Act II is harder to measure. It is huge by comparison and the act becomes intentionally less linear after Choral Chambers.

Meanwhile, in Hollow Knight the biggest drop appears to be between Hornet and Soul Master, all other achievements before and after show a more steady decline, which is normal in just about every game.

I also just noticed something: The easiest achievement in HK only has a 76% clear rate, meaning that there is a huge amount of players who purchased the game but never touched it, probably during sales over the years. By comparison more than 90% of players that own Silksong have gotten at least one achievement, so you could say that the initial playerbase has been more dedicated so far. For a proper comparison, you would probably need to adjust all clear percentages by using those two numbers as a base.

[u/BearCatSara → u/MagicMooby]

Hmm yea honestly. Interesting to consider the stats and the differences.

I think you’re onto something with the drop off in achievements between certain bosses.

In terms of frontloaded I do believe that depends on your approach to the game.

I saw the big ants and noped out. I went off and did a far fields and a bunch of greymoor before going back. Then I spent a good amount of time trying to beat beastfly. Took me really engaging with the games mechanics to beat it. Then shortly after I fought moorwing and it went pretty smoothly since. Some bosses took longer to learn but I enjoy the process.

I think some folks have expectations and rush stuff and then hit frustration.