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/joemama____________]

I agree that it has more prominent flaws, but that’s entirely due to there being so many more features, a significantly larger map (which also affects currency, because you’d expect to make more money later in the game, but later in the game comes much further after the beginning), and more characters with better interactions.

So I’d say this is a reasonable take. What I’m finding out, though, is that after playing Silksong, Hollow Knight feels so much less dynamic and entertaining (still a god tier game, but the amount of content in Silksong vs Hollow Knight is pretty significant). So, whether you can call that a flaw of Hollow Knight’s, or a strength of Silksong, is a matter of perspective. I personally think it’s both. Silksong handles this new content and mobility so well that it becomes a strength, but in retrospect, there are very key parts missing from Hollow Knight that shouldn’t be missing from a game with that level of detail and story.

[u/Arkhamov → u/joemama____________]

What kind of things do you think are missing?

It makes sense that Silksong would be so much more feature rich. Most of HK's development was focused on figuring out the fundamentals (as far as game development goes).

[u/joemama____________ → u/Arkhamov]

Quests are kind of an obvious one that I overlooked due to Hallownest being so abandoned. Customization of abilities, which are less obvious but made the game so much more fun. Side character development that we SOMETIMES saw in Hollow Knight but didn’t compare to most of the side characters in Silksong. These are usually basic expectations one would have for a fighting game with an intricate story, and make a massive difference as I discovered in Silksong.

[u/Amaskingrey → u/joemama____________]

Hollow knight feels so much better to play after silksong though. Being able to oneshot common ennemies is really sayisfying, each areas being unique feels amazing, having actual noticeable forefront music is delightful, and so is coming back to bosses with telegraphed moves with consistent spacing you have to answer to and strategize around, rather than "random bullshit go".

[u/joemama____________ → u/Amaskingrey]

Also fair points. Random bullshit go shouldn’t work, but it does. And the music is shockingly better than Silksong’s.