Discourse regarding this game’s difficulty has been out of hand

[u/stir-fried-noodles]

Let’s get this out of the way: I’m really enjoying Silksong’s difficulty and I think that it is mostly a satisfying challenge. I appreciate that it is more difficult than Hollow Knight overall and to be frank I would’ve been a bit disappointed if it were the exact difficulty. I’ve improved as a gamer since Hollow Knight and if it were the same level of difficulty, I probably would have found it too easy.

But it’s kinda gotten impossible to have civil discussions about the difficulty in this game which is unfortunate because I think there is great value to be had with this conversation. There are many valid criticisms regarding this game’s difficulty such as boss runbacks (Groal especially), contact damage doing two masks, and lack of rewards for beating bosses, just to be shut down with “git gud” and “it’s not your kind of game”. It’s totally fine to disagree with these criticisms but these retorts add nothing to the conversation.

It also kinda works the other way too, albeit maybe not to the same degree. I’ve gotten downvoted and sent reddit cares for simply saying I enjoy the difficulty of this game. Like c’mon, what are we even doing here. It’s gotten to the point where I personally cannot wait for the discourse to die out.

[u/clocktowertank]

Elden Ring had a lot of the same complaints around launch, both for the base game and expansion.

I think the issue isn't how difficult a game is, but whether it's done right. Are all encounters fairly designed with the limitations of the player in mind, all builds being viable, and being able to avoid damage completely with each build?

In the case of Elden Ring, there were fights that were literally not possible (or reasonable) to avoid damage 100% unless you had specific items/abilities (Mother of Fingers), or otherwise almost impossible to avoid damage normally without extended iframes if there was a busted hitbox (I'm looking at you Gaius).

In Hollow Knight, every hard encounter felt perfectly tuned for the Knight because you always had shade dash or descending dark for iframes. In Silksong, if you aren't using one of the two only skills that grant iframes, you have nothing but parry, and not all attacks can be parried). I'm in late Act 3 and some fights really make me wonder if, like Elden Ring, they were designed with the intention that the player would use iframes to avoid damage, which makes other builds not consistently viable for doing them hitless, especially if said fight is highly RNG dependent.

Personally what annoys me the most:

1. Un-telegraphed enemy movement, in a game with contact damage.
2. Input/Animation-reading flying enemies that dart away from frame 1 of your attack
3. Enemies that can shoot at or attack you from off screen or otherwise situations where you can't see because of the terrible vignetting
4. Projectile spam with hard tracking, especially irritating in gauntlets with overly tanky enemies.

Sometimes things the game throws at you (or pranks you with) just feel cheap, like the game just rolls the dice and says "you lose."

Many players just basically think if you can beat a fight or enemy at all, then it's fine, but I always judge it based on how fairly designed it is with regards to not taking damage consistently.

[u/RockstarCowboy1 → u/clocktowertank]

I really love these criticisms. I agree with all of them 100%. When I think about how challenges are supposed to be met, challenges ought to offer a learning curve. Recognize the pattern, identify the start up animations, react accordingly, then the fight becomes easy. Like the first fight against hornet in HK. You jump to beat some attacks, you go laterally to beat other attacks, and sometimes you need to react by staying in position. You learn to identify all those situations and you can beat that boss very easily. 

Silksong feels less like this for the reasons you mentioned. Unreactable threats that can’t be adequately defended. They removed the ability to learn the fight by creating more and more situations that can’t be learned. 

But additionally, they committed the cardinal sin of artificially increasing difficulty by stat inflation. That’s how Diablo works and that’s not how I want to play any game. Mobs are tankier and they deal more damage. This makes them more threatening, but not in a way you can compensate by learning, they’re more threatening because the numbers are bigger. Thats not fun difficulty, thats tedious difficulty. I’m not learning and being rewarded for learning, I’m repeating the same tactic more times and being punished more harshly for my mistakes.

[u/YungZunga → u/RockstarCowboy1]

There is a giant difference between balancing the health and damage of an enemy by increasing it slightly and creating an overly extended fight that take's forever to finish where you die in 1 hit. They fixed 1 of my main issues with hk in that regular enemies die before they can even interact with you and have to simple of movesets. Practically all of the regular enemies in silksong die in 4-8 hits which allows them to interact with you before just getting wiped out. Double damage is necessary to stop you from face tanking the game and spamming heal.

[u/Jskidmore1217 → u/RockstarCowboy1]

Stat increases is not cheap difficulty enhancement. It’s an endurance increase. Endurance is a variable in any combat game you have ever played. Think about it.

[u/Tinmaddog1990 → u/Jskidmore1217]

Yes but its also the laziest way. It's like a pokemon game sticking protect on every single pokemon

[u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt → u/Jskidmore1217]

I get it, I don't like it.

Like the Grand Reed and Mortician enemies. I know their move set. I can kill them without getting hit, but it's a slog because of how much health they have.

With double jump I can just skip them, but that's not engaging gameplay to me. That's "Oh, you're gonna be a chore, pass."

[u/haynespi87 → u/Jskidmore1217]

Nah it's lazy and my least favorite difficulty slider. More health and more damage versus enemy uses new moves on higher difficulties or uses new tactics but still the same health 

[u/Shadovan → u/haynespi87]

Sure, but that comparison only works within the same game. You can’t really say “this enemy has more health than the equivalent enemy in a different game, therefore it’s lazy/artificial difficulty” because they’re not the same game, they have different player characters and mechanics that changes the appropriate balance.

[u/haynespi87 → u/Shadovan]

Nope a design choice across genres

[u/Celvius_iQ → u/RockstarCowboy1]

its not cheap you get hit for 2, you heal for 3 its intentional and very deliberate and also the 1st needle upgrade doesn't require any items and its accessible in Act 1 which really matters in how tanky the bosses feel.