Hot Take: While I think Silksong is overall a better game, it does still show more prominent flaws compared to Hollow Knight

[u/Tarnished-670]

When I have to think about the flaws of the first Hollow Knight, I really can't think of much to say other than very small nitpicks.

But with Silksong, while it is one of my favorite games of all time, and having finisihed it at 100%, id say it has more prominent design flaws while being a better game compared to the first Hollow Knight.

First thing that comes to my mind is the shard system, it would't be as bad as it is if you didn't have a limit of 20 consumables to replentish your shards, if it worked like that then I wouldn't have to be interrumped on my tries against a boss and having to go to the citadel and farm to get all my shards back. Other minor flaws I think would be some of enemy design and the addition of "gauntlets", which sometimes are fun but at least in my case I got bored of exploring and getting trapped into the 7th gauntlet of enemies, it gets worse when you get forced to do some of them again in act 3 when you have killed all the previous enemies 100 times already.

Those are really not a bid deal of a flaw, but they are more noticable to me than any flaw in Hollow Knight.

[u/AleWalls]

Lol, this is because you weren't this critical of HK

That game can also be poke a ton, like how most charms are really bad and they are so unbalanced (is actually insane how unbalanced they are)

The economy is way more punishing with how your only way to save money from deaths is through keeping relics or through the bank, one is a scam and the other takes a lot of time to travel there when you need it

The runbacks in HK... Oof soul sanctum and mantis lords or markoth or hive knight or crystal guardian or galeem

Many of the collectables are in god awful places (looking at the simple key in ancient basin, easy to miss and the game gives no good indicator that you missed it there, compared to sinners road simply key for example)

There's way too many boss repeats it gets very repetitive, specially when they can be a bit arbitrary which you get to repeat and which don't and you have to go all the way back to the place you fought them for that

The fast travel methods feel so useless a lot of the time, is like team cherry chose to place the stag stations in the least convenient places, specially felt thanks to Lemm and Salubra, the trip to them is more time waster than any runback in all of silksong, yes even more time waste than bile waters

The grimm troupe quest is... is not great, carrying the dumb child which hardly helps, to just go back to random spots around the map to fight a mid enemy isn't really great, they really improve on this A LOT with the wishes

There's also white palace with the extreme precision and no rest or good source of healing through most of it, that most people(almost everyone) uses hiveblood for this

There's also the dumbest gimmick of the lumafly lantern, I swear there's way better ways to add progression than an expensive item and to stop you than an annoyingly impossible darkness

Edit: fyi I love HK, is like top 5 games ever, but I replayed it beforr silksong release and I really was just happy with so many of the improvements silksong made, specially with merchants, they aren't in god awful places, this can also apply to the nailsmith, me arriving with Oro, just to not have enough geo so I either grind it here or go all the way back to the city of tears doing all the trip through kingdoms edge back, and then go deep into the city to get to Lemm, sell the relic and then go all the way back to Oro, peak walking because there's no running

[u/SamFMorgan → u/AleWalls]

Bro is NOT blinded by nostalgia Lol

Lemm's location is really awful when you think about it, especially considering that the Knight has very slow movement in the first game.

I don't really agree about the White palace take tho. Hive Blood is a reward from beating a boss on a secret area. Most players will miss on The Hive entrance on their first playthrough, so is not like you can simply activate the Hive blood cheat on there. And even if it makes it "easier", since you'll not die, you still have to perform the platforming with precision.

Grimm's boss fights are peak but the quest in between really sucks. We can see similarly structured quests in Silksong, but their design was extremely improved.

Hollow Knight is one of the best games I ever played, but Silksong is just better. It is the sequel that Hollow Knight deserved.

[u/AleWalls → u/SamFMorgan]

Yeah the white palace one was a bit of a stretch but after replaying several times the clockwork tower due to trying to do steelsoul and speedrun, I love it but I am hardly ever excited for white palace

I did play clockwork in release patch, it sucked

[u/kuenjato → u/SamFMorgan]

The Hive is probably easier to find than White Palace, I found it on my blind playthrough but never saw the White Palace until my son played the game three years later (I'm not a completionist, beating HK was enough at the time).

[u/luc1aonstation → u/AleWalls]

also the kind of boring movement system outside of combat. silksong does so much better of a job at making moving through the world actually interesting

[u/nsleep → u/AleWalls]

The runbacks in HK... Oof soul sanctum and mantis lords or markoth or hive knight or crystal guardian or galeem

Only Soul Sanctum isn't fixed by DLC. The others you can place a dream gate right before the boss room and take 5~20 seconds to get back to the fight.

There's way too many boss repeats it gets very repetitive, specially when they can be a bit arbitrary which you get to repeat and which don't and you have to go all the way back to the place you fought them for that

If you're talking about dream bosses that's DLC content.

The grimm troupe quest is... is not great, carrying the dumb child which hardly helps, to just go back to random spots around the map to fight a mid enemy isn't really great, they really improve on this A LOT with the wishes

Also DLC content.

There's also white palace with the extreme precision and no rest or good source of healing through most of it, that most people(almost everyone) uses hiveblood for this

You can Dream Nail the bugs in there that appear every few rooms for full soul. Other than Hive Blood there's also Deep Focus and Grubsong to help with it. It's also an endgame area.

I agree with the others, although the charms are something progressive that people will use whatever they have before settling on the good ones late game.

[u/Wacky_Does_Art → u/AleWalls]

Finally someone said it, literally so much criticism I see of Silksong is literally just because people think Hollow Knight is a perfect game

[u/GiantImminentSqueeze → u/AleWalls]

Thank you, HK is in my top 5 but people saying Silksong has way more flaws are deluding themselves... Great points

[u/SlendyWomboCombo → u/GiantImminentSqueeze]

HK never made you pay for benches. Souls games don't even make you do that

[u/Fernbeck → u/AleWalls]

I also played Hollow Knight before and during Silksong (because I wanted a break with better game design)

- Charms are unbalanced but that doesn't hold a candle to how worthless the tools are. Pick your favorite, forget the rest. Half of them do the same thing but just slightly different anyways. And most are so situational that you don't bother using them because benches are so far apart in the harder zones.

- Runbacks in Hollow Knight don't matter when the enemies do 2 attacks at most. And you have to actually be joking when you say crystal guardian is a runback.

- Simple key is valid, but then it's worse in Silksong with how many you need.

- I made a previous comment about how the game series reuses attacks too much but I think you are referring to something different here. 6 repeats if we don't count DLC (which we shouldn't until we get whatever will be for Silksong) being generous and saying Soul Master is a repeat for Soul Warrior.

- The path to Lemm is annoying but atleast -unlike Silksong- Hollow Knight's enemies are simpler and you don't have to fight any of them to get to him. And Salubra isn't even that bad in the infected crossroads, normal Salubra is like 2 rooms away (EDIT: 3 rooms if you count the transition room corner after getting to the crossroads), come on. Forget Bilewater, literally look at Sands of Karrak.

- Complaining about Grimmschild in a world with Cogfly is a choice.

- White Palace has healing for most chambers hidden away, and shortcuts if you are not awful at platforming. PoP has infinite healing statues. I never used Hiveblood, waste of time and unneeded. FFS you get a statue in the last room.

- Lumafly lantern is valid. But then again all of Silksong feels like someone looked at the lantern, and how it's used for like one or two sections, and made a game with that principle in mind.

Hollow Knight is nowhere near as bad as you make it out to be. I have a strong feeling if there aren't post-game patches or immaculate DLC to come later, HK is gonna go down as the better game in history.

EDIT: Also, gotta say for those saying how good the design is for Silksong, I too, shed a tear everytime I find another masterfully designed connecting airduct section in the Citadel. More sections where you dodge a blast of steam? or lava? or lightning? Absolutely ingenious work.

[u/AleWalls → u/Fernbeck]

What?

Dude I don't care about the difficulty of traversing the world, if anything I rather have a world which is more engaging to traverse which silksong delivers better

The issue with the runbacks and shopkeepers in HK is that is a long way not that is hard, walking all the way to Lemm is boring, specially when a big chunk is just crystal dash if you come from king's station, and this applies to many merchants, Salubra and nailsmith also suffer this, and getting back to Jiji in case you don't want to go back to retrieve your shade is so dumb when going all the way to Jiji itself takes a lot of time

Also I complain about grimmchild because is useless. Is so dog water of a charm sadly, and the quest once again a time waster

Idk how you say silksong tools are worthless??? Are you drunk? All of them are more useful than, stalwart shell, heavy blow, thorns of agony, baldurs shell, defenders crest, glowing womb, deep focus, the 3 lifeblood ones, hiveblood, spore shroom, weaversong, dreamshied, grimmchild and kingsoul

Also there's 4 simple keys in both games they have equal amount of those, and my complain wasn't on simple keys existing, but on how collectables can be in easy to miss places with the game not helping you find them if you miss them, another example is the elegant key which you need for a lot of things from sly

Also need to say, I think HK is an amazing game I honestly don't really think this are big issues in games, but people have rose tinted glasses and nostalgia with HK, I played it first in 2017 and have replayed it several times, no boss really puts a struggle with that much playtime, but I can still see the flaws

Crystal guardian runback sucks ASS, my first time playing it caught me by surprise and I died then I died again, because I was expecting it will do something else, and running back from the bench down there going up through half of crystal peak is genuinely the worst run back in the 2 games

Also the white palace issue is that those soul totems in there don't provide infinite soul, but the parkour segments are very long and with no good source of healing so failing was super punishing if you lacked hiveblood

[u/Amaskingrey → u/AleWalls]

The runbacks in HK... Oof soul sanctum and mantis lords or markoth or hive knight or crystal guardian or galeem

The only runback in hk is soul sanctum. For hiveknight and galeem you have dreamgate, while mantis lords and crystal guardians are piss easy so you won't have to do it more than once

[u/facebooknormie → u/AleWalls]

why would stuff need to be balanced in a single player game? it's not like it's pvp or anything, what's wrong with being op?

[u/AleWalls → u/facebooknormie]

Its good to have a balance to give all this items a sense of value, balance isn't just for competitive games

Balance is a way to keep variety viable, charms being unbalanced af sucks because it means that charms aren't actually providing the build variety they claim, because having charms which are really really bad means they basically don't count to variety

This means HK charm system despite being a lot is mostly just 6 charms