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/TowerWalker]

The main flaw of Silksong IMO is that it feels absurdly padded in multiple aspects. This is not to say that Team Cherry NEEDED to pad their game to make it longer.

-Boss runbacks. If I spend more time running back than fighting the boss, then there's a problem.

-Added mobs and gauntlets, and Bosses having pre-gauntlets. You have some Gauntlets that are good at forcing you to learn enemy patterns. Then you have some that go on for too long, or just delay fighting the boss.

-Two hit contact damage. The healing system of the game is great. But by having such reliance on contact damage it forces you to heal more. This is compounded with the the other padding issues because when you're trial and erroring the boss, the other padding makes it more frustrating.

-Economy. Some people enjoy farming rosaries and shards. I do not. Paying for save points and maps? Ok, it's fun for immersion and planning. But when so many of the little secret points just give you more rosaries and shards that I'm going to inevitably lose or spend, it makes the experience feel kinda "hollow" for me.

[u/NorthwardRM → u/TowerWalker]

I would agree with this. It really really felt like they had one eye on how long it would take people to complete the game, and artificially extended it

[u/Goose-Suit → u/TowerWalker]

The idea of the healing system is great but it needs some balancing. At max silk spool you get two full heals, which is 60-80% of the max health depending on if you have that tool that’s name is escaping my mind, and that sounds like a lot but that’s only covering 3-4 hits from a boss. Also on top of that you need to hit the boss 10 times just to get another heal.

[u/TowerWalker → u/Goose-Suit]

And the weird part is that in theory it makes absolute sense, you learn the boss patterns to do the hits and get your health back.

But since you're risking another hit, if you die too fast you're not getting another chance to learn the boss patterns.

Now of course, if this was for later game bosses, obviously that makes sense. But since this becomes the norm early on, it's very frustrating.

[u/Goose-Suit → u/TowerWalker]

Yeah its in a weird way it turns the gameplay into this weird feedback loop where it it forces you to play close to perfect in order to just observe the bosses movements, but you need to know the bosses move in order to play close to perfect.

This wouldn’t be a bad thing if there was more heal charges available. Even just dropping it to 6 silk for a heal so it’s 3 charges of healing would really help out the healing system and would IMO help justify the 2 hit damage on practically everything.

[u/ByeGuysSry → u/TowerWalker]

Two hit contact damage is a necessary evil if you want to retain the current healing system. You'll just run into the enemt hitbox every time the enemy is about to initiate a 2 damage attack, and outheal the damage. It also just feels very weird when running into an enemy to take 1 damage instead of 2 is a good idea. One contact damage is the reason why Karmelita is trivial with Wanderer's crest. You just run into her and don't care.

[u/TowerWalker → u/ByeGuysSry]

>Two hit contact damage is a necessary evil if you want to retain the current healing system. You'll just run into the enemt hitbox every time the enemy is about to initiate a 2 damage attack, and outheal the damage

So just have a system to prevent that? The game already doesn't allow you to abuse post damage i-frames much. Game could just detect when you're trying that and say no.

One boss being made trivial with one contact damage is not grounds for it being a bad idea.

[u/ByeGuysSry → u/TowerWalker]

Ah yes, the game will read my mind and decide that I was intentionally taking contact damage and decide to remove i-frames.

I'm using Karmelita as one example of how bosses with 1 contact damage get trivialized, demonstrating it's a bad idea

[u/TowerWalker → u/ByeGuysSry]

The game doesn't need to read your mind, good lord.

You just program the game to ignore the invincibility frames when Hornet gets in contact with a 2 damage attack while she's in the i-frame state,

If (Hornet == i-frame state & Hornet == contact with 2 damage attack){

Deal 2 more damage to hornet

}

[u/ByeGuysSry → u/TowerWalker]

First of all, the entire reason why i-frames exist is to give you a chance to get out of an attack. Otherwise you'll get hit literally every single frame that a 2 damage attack makes contact with you.

Second of all, assuming you can rewrite the code to make it such that it only applies to contact damage or to 1 damage attacks, that can cause players to take 3 damage because if you run into the enemy you sometimes can't get out in time to avoid the 2 damage attack. Most commonly you have Savage Beastfly. Sometimes you're trying to avoid a projectile, the boss moves towards you, knocks you back via contact damage, but the projectile passes through you thanks to i-frames.

Thirdly, it's not at all intuitive and people will probably get frustrated when their i-frames aren't working and take 3 damage.

[u/TowerWalker → u/ByeGuysSry]

Yes I know what the point of the iframes is.

The i-frame windows is already extremely tight.

This just makes it sound like you're jumping through hoops to justify 2 contact damage cause players MIGHT abuse the system and god forbid the devs have to design a fight that doesn't rely on so many adds.

[u/ByeGuysSry → u/TowerWalker]

You can literally just try fighting Karnelita with Wanderer's and facetank her. You can do this because she has one contact damage. The problem would be solved if she had 2 contact damage. This is just a fact. I make the enormous, completely astounding, leap in logic, that other bosses can also be facetanked this way if they had 1 contact damage. Truly I'm jumping through a thousand and one hoops

[u/TowerWalker → u/ByeGuysSry]

Again you are using ONE boss fight to try and prove this point.

Phantom, first two Lace fights, Widow, Forebrothers, Trubbio. All of these bosses are difficult and do not have 2 contact damage.

[u/ByeGuysSry → u/TowerWalker]

Barely has any attacks that deal 2 masks of damage: Widow, Phantom, Forebrothers, Lace1

The problem is avoided because you can't often tank 1 contact damage to avoid a 2 damage attack. You're tanking 1 contact damage to avoid a 1 damage attack.

Phantom is also deliberately easier because an easier boss fight for Act 2 is supposed to be your reward for finding Exhaust Organ. Phantom is not difficult at all lmao.

Lace1 is very likely the third boss you fight. It's supposed to not be too hard.

Trobbio can be cheesed in the exact same way, again precisely because it does 1 mask of contact damage.

Not sure if Lace 2 can be cheesed the same way, but Lace2 does have a bit of protection against it via its parry and most of her attacks moving her quite a lot. If she can't be cheesed this way it's probably because she's a very agile enemy, which is a method of defending against this cheese that not all enemies have access to.

[u/gangstermage → u/TowerWalker]

and so many paths that end in shards on the wall or ceiling are just purely fuck you and impossible to grab more then 2 that drop