Topic: Hollow Knight: Silksong

@chardir I agree that at first I thought that trade-off sucked... then I lost ~400 beads and the cost of 80 (to protect 60) is a bargain

I've been quite outspoken about not enjoying it across the site for a week but I finally sat down to play some more last night and can confirm grinding for tools makes the game less rage-inducing.

That bird room went from GOOD SWEET MERCY to Okay That's Fine.

@ROMhaiku Any tools you recommend? So far most things I've bought have been disappointing in terms of how useful I find them. And yes, it was the bird room that sent me off grinding for upgrades in the first place.

@chardir Thank you. Kinda strange that it doesn't make that clear on the shop listing.

@gcunit I'm still early game but Sting Shard was the game changer for me in the bird room. It allowed me to throw it and get hits in on the chicken/fencer dude without jumping in and getting my arse kicked.

Flew brea (reward for collecting all the fleas) has been useful in other areas.

From what I've peeped, tacks are apparently busted (in a good way). I'll be finding them asap.

I think I might bounce off Silksong. I’m in Act 2, and I was loving every minute of it. It wasn’t until yesterday and even this morning where I started to really be annoyed with the game design. Up until this point, I found the difficulty fair, but challenging. I never had any real issues hindering me from progression other than a boss battle taking me up to an hour. Other than that, smooth sailing.

Now, however, there are gauntlet challenges, some of which are mandatory to progress the story, that are downright not fun to play. And perhaps you’re expecting a typical gauntlet - 4 or 5 waves of enemies. You’d be wrong. How about 10-12 phases instead? Let’s top it off by adding a mini boss fight in the middle of the phases, and then if you are lucky enough to survive, fight three more waves and then fight two of those mini bosses at once, of which their attacks do AOE damage and their bodies take up the entire screen so you can’t move that well. And if you die? Sorry, you have to start all the way over, and do a run back.

These kind of roadblocks are happening way more frequently and it is not fun. I don’t want to say that the game is difficult - I don’t think it is in terms of mono vs mono, or even a duo boss fight. Again, that has been fine up until this point. The game is, however, incredibly unbalanced and punishing for the sake of ramping up the learning curve.

I don’t know; I’ll keep playing and see how my progression goes. I’ve unlocked the double jump and grappling hook. I’ve made really good progress. It’s just not fun anymore and that is really a shame. Maybe I am giving up, and maybe I need to “git gud”, but I believe there is a fine difference between punishing but fair, and outright cruel punishment where it’s not just about the act of dying, it’s the act of losing currency when you die and hope that you can make it to the same area without dying beforehand. There needs to be a balance instead of an unjust expectation of accepting bad game design.

Yesterday, I explored Whispering Vaults. I was having a lot of fun. Then I stumbled upon a strange room. Like an attic. I explored a corner in the upper right. Strange, I thought, it goes down here. So yeah, I jumped down, and fell, and fell, and fell .... into Bilewater. I was kinda shocked about this, and 5 minutes later I died bc you're constantle infested with those maggots in the water. I lost more than 3,000 rosary buds. I wanted to get them back, but on the way there I died again. So yeah, the money is gone, and I am so pissed like I was in Dark Souls 3 when losing a huge amount of souls ((

I appreciate the difficulty in this game - tho I wish it'd follow a few modern trends, like save points right before bosses to prevent long walking distances when you lose and have to head back. Elden Ring did the same, and yet it was challenging, too. So yeah, there's really no excuse by Team Cherry not to implement such things.

(Sorry for grammer issues, if there are any at all. I am German by origin and I hope my Englisg is sufficient enough to be understandable)

Kinda depressing revisiting this page, thinking I'd turned a corner on this game and was getting towards a conclusion, just to be reminded that there's whole areas of the game I've not even reached yet.

For people that have played this game organically (i.e. not following a guide or trying to post the fastest time for internet points) to completion, how long's it taken you?

@gcunit How far through are you friend? I've mostly played 'blind' until I reached the back-end of Act 2 and wanted to collect as many upgrades/tools as possible to ensure the best chance of survival in Act 3.

I have a love/hate relationship with this game. Delighted that TeamCherry made 'the game they wanted to make' and didn't compromise on their vision.... but I genuinely think that the irritating elements of difficulty (run backs etc) could have been dialled down.

I generally like hard games, but Silksong just seems quite... frustrating? Oppressive? Almost to the point where I don't think I am having fun a lot of the time whilst playing.

Positive notes - some of the boss battles really pop, First Sinner is utterly fantastic

@gcunit My first playthrough without a guide or anything took me about 55 hours. I’d say 10 of those hours were stuck on various bosses. Funnily enough, I found this Metroidvania easy to navigate in terms of finding where you need to go. I’m not a big fan of the genre because of that reason, but this title felt more like a 2D action platformer. It may have helped that I took copious amount of notes. The only real negative I can say the game has is its run-backs; but that can actually be remedied because a lot of these places have crafty shortcuts that make the run-back quite easy.

@CJD87 I keep seeing players refer to Act 1, Act 2 etc., but if I hadn't I wouldn't have much concept of there being Acts in this game. I guess that means I'm still on Act 1, but there's nothing telling me that in-game or on the main menu.

I've just reached the Great Concheflies on the Blasted Steps. I've lost patience with the game in terms of organically learning boss patterns, so once I experience my first or second death to a boss I'm just jumping straight to Youtube to watch a boss guide video to speed things up. Any run-back whatsoever (which they all seem to have) just makes the process of self-learning incredibly frustrating after a while. I've played 28 hours and am slightly fed up at the repetitive nature of there being some form of boss fight round every corner - I've reached 'tiresome' in that respect.

@Kraven I don't like the run-backs. I don't find the fast travel stations very helpfully located. I don't like the way exploring new areas requires you to beat a challenge before gaining access to a new save bench. It's like they've purposefully designed the game to penalise anyone much below perfection in skill level.

Hollow Knight was brilliant because it was new and beautiful, with quirky characters, so the challenging bits are worth persevering with. Silksong doesn't really bring much new to the table, so I'm finding it less interesting. Instead of new and interesting, it's giving me frustration and repetition. Perseverance just rewards me with more punishment and run-backs. It's certainly putting me off ever playing a Hollow Knight 3.

Rolled credits on Hollow Knight: Silksong today after over 83 hours with 89% completion. What an incredible game. Hornet is such a wonderful character; she's so much more elegant and has more flair than the knight from the first game. Her little flips that she does, while they're a small detail, just show how cool and flashy she is and I think they show off her character well.

I've absolutely loved this game and I've enjoyed every minute of it. Except for when I was in Bilewater. It can get in the bin.

Time to continue my Switch 2 playthrough!

It annoys me to no end that I can't do the Roach guts wish (and thus also miss the Roach guts item in the Materium) because I missed it. But even worse, I can't fight Shakra anymore (I am pretty sure I encountered him at the entrance of Greymore, in Act 3). Everyone says you can't fight him in act 3, but I did and I did lose. Now that I wanted to retry him, he's gone. Hitting his rings doesn't summon him anymore. He just stays in the upper right corner of Bellhart. I missed my chance to defeat him, sadly. Hopefully they fix these things (especially Shakra) in a future update.

Oh, and I also seem to have missed the first Garmond fight. Annoying!

Update: More then 100 hours in, 94%. Trying to get most of the remaining stuff (and trying the endboss). It was a very meaty game and very good. I voted for it in the Game awards and the indie awards.

Pro's

Awesome artstyle and graphics
Silky smooth controls
Very challenging (especially the bosses)
Very big, with lots of awesome bosses
Terrific sound design

Con's

Those awfull runbacks

Stuff can be missed (especially if you enter chapter 3)

The way they handled the Seth records. If you set a very high record before Seth does, there's no way you can beat him in the flea caravan challenges

Broken skull doesn't reset outside of benches (but they do reset at the start of memory areas/bosses, as do the tools)

Strangely they decided to make the compass a item you have to place in your crest, filling up one space.

Update: Seems I also missed the dice-game.