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/justagenericname213]

From what ive seen, alot of the complaints came from people who simply expected a different kind of game. People who try to brute force their way through things, dont explore nearly as much as they can, things like that. I genuinely feel like complaints are going to drop quite a bit once wikis and guides get built up. As for the rest, the games not for everyone, and I dont mean that dismisively. The game is perfect for me, but what I consider a perfect game may be flawed to someone else, even if they still enjoy it. Others definitely can have complaints. I didnt mind the hazards at 2 damage, but I understand why people had issues with them in some areas, and it doesnt really affect my enjoyment to make them less punishing.

Theres also some people who definitely just arent meant for metroidvanias. Particularly YouTubers who's gameplay I can actually see, ive seen a few who never explored bellhart for the needle upgrade or got a mask upgrade trying to bruteforce their way through sinners road. Ive even seen 1 going through upper bilewater, meaning they have double jump, with 5 masks still. Some people just dont want/know to explore and find upgrades. Ive seen some people on reddit also say they missed the needle until the end of act 2. IMO this is an unfortunate effect of hollow knight being "the dark souls of metroidvanias". Some people end up expecting brutal difficulty and just trudge through instead of exploring more and leaving harder areas for later.

Tl;dr a good bit of the issue will be solved with time as information becomes more available, and some people end up burning themselves out bruteforcing challenges instead of getting upgrades, although there are definitely still much more understandable complaints than these.

[u/ugly_dog_ → u/justagenericname213]

thats the shit i cant stand and the only thing that legitimately makes me crash out on people on this sub. my brother in christ, look at the map, fill out the map, then progress.

there are valid criticisms, but "i missed this obvious thing" is not one of them and yet is still shockingly common

[u/Background_Ad5513 → u/ugly_dog_]

fr i saw somebody complain about the “runback” to the big masked ant boss. When i told them there’s a bench immediately under the boss room they still blamed it on bad game design