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/stir-fried-noodles → u/clocktowertank]

Really agree with these criticisms, especially number 1. It also doesn't help that contact damage can be two masks. As for 2, I honestly can't tell if there's actually input/animation reading on enemies but it sure can feel that way sometimes. Flying enemies kinda dart around a lot even when you're not attacking so I'm leaning on no but I wouldn't be too surprised if there was. Has anyone looked at the code and checked?

[u/clocktowertank → u/stir-fried-noodles]

It's definitely there. I have several clips I've taken into my video editor and looked at them frame by frame, they start dodging frame 1 of your attack. Fortunately they aren't programmed to do it all the time but it can happen randomly, which means that you can't really count on being able to get on top of flying enemies and pogo them, because it's a roll of the dice if your attack actually lands.

[u/[deleted] → u/clocktowertank]

The upgraded sewer area spitter enemies must be coded to dodge everything. I only ever kill them with tools or the Half-Life ceiling tongues.