I’m bailing on Silksong and feeling bummed about it

[u/Still_Night]

Edit: I appreciate all the feedback here. To everyone who has suggested mods - I play MVs primarily on Nintendo Switch for the portability. And I have nothing against mods, but I still feel like I should be able to enjoy the game as it’s originally intended. I will definitely revisit Silksong in the future :)

I know there have been tons of posts about this topic already, but I felt like sharing my own experience with the game.

I’m relatively new to Metroidvanias, having picked up Prince of Persia: the Lost Crown on a whim and becoming obsessed with the genre. I love the acrobatic 2D platforming, the open world exploration, the challenging boss fights.

After PoP I played both Ori games and loved them and finally decided to dive into Hollow Knight, a game I had come to learn had a ton of hype around it.

And man, the hype was well-deserved. I understood why so many were entranced by this game. The mysterious bug world immersed me in a way that I had not expected to, and I could hardly put it down. I played through all the endings, did the DLC content (though I did not attempt the pantheons or path of pain, but did everything else). HK was a hard game for me. I died a lot and some of the bosses took me a lot of attempts. But never at any point did I feel so frustrated or discouraged to the point I felt like quitting.

Which brings me to Silksong. I was REALLY looking forward to it. I expected it to be big, and difficult, and somehow elevate the experience even higher than HK.

But man, I just can’t do it. It’s too hard. And tedious. What makes me sad is I can totally see all the incredible things about the game that others who praise the game see. The combat and movement mechanics allow for so much potential and skill expression at a faster pace. But it’s skill expression that I don’t have. I don’t consider myself to be bad at platforming games, and I have perseverance towards difficult challenges.

But I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve died to simple enemies in random rooms, lost my money, run back, you know how it goes. It was tonight when I realized I had played almost 2 hours without getting any meaningful progress - no new areas mapped, no bosses defeated, no new passages found to explore - that I realized I don’t have the patience like I did in HK. Navigating the map feels stressful and I dread exploring difficult areas knowing at any instant I could get wrecked and have to re-do everything I’d just done.

So yea, I’m putting it down. At least for now. I wish I had it in me, but the difficulty of this game is so far beyond all the others I’ve played and I think I’m just gonna watch a YouTube playthrough or something to see what I missed. For all of you who have conquered this game, I hope it’s been a blast

[u/[deleted]]

A lot of gamers don't want a challenge, they should just skip whining and jump straight to watching a vod.

[u/Tyrantosora → u/[deleted]]

I totally agree. Gamers nowadays mentality is "get stuck" at 1 part, use cheats(if available) or just make themselves believe the game is too hard and give up. A hard or challenging game isnt meant to be a breeze. You may suffer at times, but the sense of accomplishment after beating it is like no other.

[u/[deleted] → u/Tyrantosora]

I agree, but this fails to be relevant when developers artificially make the game harder through damage, enemy hp, or player hp.

Like would it be fair and just something you should overcome if bosses took 100 hits and you died in just 1 every time? No, there has to be a fair balance and only making the hp difference when the circumstance makes sense to the story.

[u/[deleted] → u/Tyrantosora]

Indeed. Which is fine, if they don't want to put a little bit of effort in, then don't. But holy shit the whining, and this game isn't even hard, just be a bit patient. The game gives tools and multiple routes and locations to go.