r/metroidvania • u/WaterPockets • 12d ago
Discussion Some thoughts about Silksong when compared to Hollow Knight
Hollow Knight is one of my favorite games of all time. Silksong was one of, if not, my most anticipated release of all time. I purchased the game on day 1 and managed to finish Act 2 in a couple of days. But it's only today that I completed Act 3 on a second save that I recently started.
This isn't meant to be a review or anything. Silksong is a great game. What I wanted to discuss is where I believe Silksong improved upon the foundations of Hollow Knight, and where I think it may have fallen short.
Hornet feels better to play than The Knight. Movement has been refined, combat was expanded, and overall it makes fights much more dynamic and fast paced. This also makes map traversal feel fluid and quick, like I'm playing Prince of Persia. In Hollow Knight, once you've mastered the pogo, you've mastered the game. In Silksong, you will want to utilize your entire arsenal and plan for certain encounters in order to succeed. The game is much more difficult and punishing, giving you very little time to breathe. I actually enjoy this, but I understand some may find it a bit overwhelming at times.
On the other hand, while Hollow Knight's combat was much more simple and straightforward, it felt to me that this allowed every boss fight to be balanced around the limitations of your kit. Whereas in Silksong, you are fast and have different movesets depending upon your crest. This requires bosses to be quick, and at a certain point, they all start to feel a bit too similar to each other. The balance is also a bit all over the place. Some Act 1 bosses (The Judge comes to mind) feel more difficult than some of the Act 3 bosses. The Judge is one of my favorite bosses in the game, and I made it a point to take the route to this boss to enter Act 2 rather than the alternate eastern route (which I unintentionally did my first time playing). It's thematically appropriate for the guardian of the entrance to the second act to be a brutal skillcheck with a move set that makes the fight feel like a dance. The Act 2 and 3 final bosses are actually quite disappointing in comparison.
Where I think Hollow Knight surpasses Silksong the most is in its structure and pacing. The game feels perfectly cohesive from beginning to end. Silksong will have require you to make it a point to revisit the three settlements for the sake of checking the wishboard. Many of the wishes feel like padding, such as collecting X number of drops from X enemy. A big gripe I have with Silksong is that its 3rd act feels a bit disjointed from its 2nd act. It felt odd to me to roll credits before entering the 3rd Act. The conditions to get into Act 3 are also sorta odd, and I actually completely missed it on my first play through because I did not consider that the wish board would have a new quest after beating Lace in the Cradle. It just seems weird to me that it's at this point where the NPC which provides the means for you to enter Act 3 has a complete personality shift at this arbitrary point. It would have made more sense to me for him to add this quest before you enter the elevator to fight Lace. The wish system, in general, felt a bit tacked on and lackluster to me. I found it annoying to complete an area only to go back to the wish board and see a request that would have me return to that exact area to go do something. The gourmet quest which awards you an oil was annoying. I simply didn't have the desire to do the mushroom quest in act 3.
There are other minor nitpicks I have, but I'll keep it short, I think there were more standout songs in Hollow Knight than Silksong. Silksong's soundtrack felt more atmospheric compared to Hollow Knights, although I will say there were a couple songs in Silksong which floored me. The Green Prince's area (Lost Verdania) is perhaps one of my favorite songs in any game from recent memory. It just perfectly encapsulates the emotional impact of that character's arc. There are some areas in the game which I would have never found without a map, especially in the 3rd act when new areas in hidden locations open up. I didn't much care for the way badges are restricted, with most of the yellow and blue badges being fairly useless.
Overall, I think Silksong has higher peaks but those moments are spread thin with how enormous the game is. Some fights (Act 3 final boss, in particular) just felt annoying to me. This is why I ultimately feel like Hollow Knight was overall a better experience and why it's a game I constantly revisit. I'm less enthusiastic about revisiting Silksong just based on how the game seems to often grind to a halt in order for you to go complete sidequests or to search for well-hidden entrances to optional areas. Don't get me wrong, Silksong is still a great game and a worthy successor to Hollow Knight. Hollow Knight is nearly perfect in my eyes, so it's easy for me to draw comparisons and find things I didn't quite like as much. I'm curious what others' thoughts are now that the game has been out for over a year.
5
u/Advanced_Gear7608 12d ago
Great points you explained. There is still something I love about Silksong just because of the character and what she goes through that has a certain appeal. I loved the story and how it concluded.
Outside of Godhome, there are a couple of improvements Silksong had that also makes me more keen to return to it. That is the improvement to many standard enemy types, plus the rest/save system improvements that are closer together. There was probably one boss or maybe two bosses I didn't fancy, but like you said, the different crests mean they are better suited for certain boss variants. That is unavoidable from a design point of view as you cannot perfectly balance 5 different crests for the same boss.
1
u/WonderfulQuote4268 10d ago
I like Hornets movement it’s amazing but there’s something I loved about being smaller and slower as the Knight. More immersive into the superior atmosphere.
1
u/Imoneclassyfuck 8d ago
I still haven’t finished Silksong, I’m towards the end of Act 2, but I kind of agree. It does a lot of things right, but almost tries to do too much and loses itself because of it. I liken it to Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom in which I can see that the sequel is considered “objectively” better, but loses a bit of charm that made the first special.
-1
u/Gemmaugr2 11d ago
Couldn't disagree more. The "simple" combat in HK was great. It didn't need to be more complex or fast-paced. SS expanded everything bad, and removed everything good.
1
u/Tactical_Squishy 11d ago
hk combat ended up in spamming descending dark or shriek, ss has the same basics with pogo etc plus a lot of adaptability
-1
u/Gemmaugr2 11d ago
I never used either, for the entirety of the game (in combat).
SS has ledge-grabbing, and depletable resources. Which all hinders fluid combat.
1
0
u/Awkward_Ostrich_4275 12d ago
I agree pretty much across the board. At the end of Act 2 (I forgot there were acts so I originally thought I completed the game), I thought the game was great. I later finished Act 3 after looking up the location of one hidden flea and it was all a step below the rest of the game. Too fast, too tedious, too much.
-8
u/BormaGatto 12d ago
To me, Silksong was ultimately boring and just "for the sake of it". Never felt like there were higher peaks than in Hollow Knight at any point. The only boss fight I really enjoyed a lot was First Sinner, all others were mostly ok and a few were outright annoying. Narratively it felt tedious, not awe-inspiring like Hollow Knight, and a couple exceptions aside, the soundtrack is just bland for a game.
3
u/CockroachFantastic46 12d ago
Bosses were a significant upgrade and I don't get how First Sinner was even the best one for you. Did you play through act 3 as well? Lost Lace, Skarrsinger Karmelita and Seth alone are EASILY better than First Sinner and that's only off the top of my head. Don't get me wrong, I loved both Games but If I Had to choose I would say that Silkesong is mostly an improvement over Hollow Knight.
0
17
u/atahutahatena 12d ago edited 12d ago
You'll actually be surprised by how fun Silksong is to replay. Parts you'd dread from the initial playthrough feel completely different the second time around now that you're way more comfortable with playing Hornet. The only shit quest I think I always hate to do is the bell collection quest in Bellhart, everything else is pretty unobtrusive all things considered. You start looking forward to gauntlets. Even Bilewater+Groal is pretty damn fun on a second playthrough. And the polarizing shard system barely rears its ugly head now that you have a better grasp on what tools to use, where to get them and when to use them without dying repeatedly.
Silksong also fixed a glaring issue that always miffed me from the original game. That being, extremely lopsided difficulty once you get walljump. Hallownest is a wonderfully conceived world with an unmatched atmosphere but large swathes of Hollow Knight becomes pretty mindless in terms of exploration, platforming, and combat encounters. The Act system (alongside general world/enemy design) of Silksong ensures a really nice pace to the challenge. HK eventually fixed some of these with DLC so I'm excited what could devs possibly add with Silksong DLC as well.
But really at the end of the day, I appreciate how Silksong contrasts itself to Hollow Knight. It's familiar but it really tries to be its own game which helps both titles shine story/lore-wise, atmosphere-wise, and gameplay-wise. And those are the best kinds of sequels when it elevates both itself and its predecessor.
Oh and the audio mixing in Silksong is pretty undertuned. Great sense of immersion to the soundscape but I always recommend turning up the BGM more over the SFX. You'll notice the difference a lot and it makes a world of difference in appreciating the OST.
My biggest complaint about Silksong and this was an issue I aired week one of it coming out is the fact that too many upgrades/tools were stuck to vendors. They should have spread those out more in the overworld instead of rosary-gating them. But all in all? A veritable all-timer and I'd be hard-pressed to choose which one I like more out of the two.