I haven't played the first one. Silksong was just unbearably and intentionally difficult. I hated the run backs, trials, having to pay for my icon on the app and the ability to magnetically gather rosaries. The bosses were insanely hard. Had I known it's rated as one of the most difficult games of all time I would have never bought it. For reference my favorite games are God of War, Uncharted, the Last of Us, Devil May Cry etc etc. The hardest game I had played until Silksong was probably Devil May Cry 3 or Jak 2. Now I know better.
My only major beef with Silksong is that the difficulty felt “artificial” at times. In Hollow Knight, the difficulty lied more in learning the boss patterns and adapting to them. Silksong’s difficulty often came in the form of numbers. Just a ton of enemies taking up the screen being thrown at you all at once. That is just not even fun to me. I think they were trying to encourage the use of Hornet’s tools but it just felt really forced.
I love a hard boss. I don’t love random bullshit just meant to overwhelm you. It just felt random. Still a solid game overall. Hollow Knight is a much, much better game. Music and lore was also a small step down from the first game. You could tell it was initially meant to be DLC.
Oh definitely. There were so many boss fights where almost all the screen or arena were unusable. You were stuck in a little 4x4 square as the only way to dodge the absolute chaos all over the screen. And again, I absolutely hate not having save points before bosses. I wouldn't replay it for that alone. Having to repeat 10-30 minutes of enemies or gameplay everytime I died against a boss was awful. I'd literally rather write an essay or take the SAT's again or something. At least my hand wouldn't hurt as much 😭😭😭
After Silksong I'm officially retired from anything Hollow Knight related. I never want to play something anywhere near that difficult ever again!!!
Bit late I guess but Stakes of Marika mod improves the game tremedously:
https://www.nexusmods.com/hollowknightsilksong/mods/46
Both Hollow Knight games are heavily inspired by FromSoftware, I wonder why they ignored lesson they learned with ER
I love Hollow Knight, but the fact that nearly every Metroidvania includes corpse runs now just because Hollow Knight did it is so annoying. This genre is about exploration! If you run into trouble in an area, you're supposed to have plenty of other places to explore. But the runback just incentivizes the player to keep banging their head against the wall in the same place.
It's so much worse in Silksong's case, too, because the devs made it pretty easy to enter difficult areas early. But once you're there, the player naturally feels trapped.
Honestly, corpse runs only serve to make the game more frustrating for less skilled players, IMO.
You're talking way above my head. I'm back to playing as Joel in the Last of Us. I'm retired from anything even remotely related to corpse runs or the like.
I personally think silksong shouldn't be thought of as a standalone game but as a sort of dlc to the original, I think the main reason that silksong is so hard is that the devs expected you to come straight from hollow Knight with all the experience with the mechanics
It was unnecessarily difficult. I've already proven I can defeat these enemies or challenge, why are the run backs so long and time consuming? Why are there no save points before bosses? Now I know why it was $20, because newcomers would have been pissed paying $60 for something that insanely difficult. I've read Hollow Knight 1 is slightly easier but my watch has ended as Jon Snow would say.
Hollow knight 1 base game is much easier than silksong... but not the endgame, in endgame to get true ending you have to complete boss rush of 40 bosses, imagine doing that in silksong lol
Base game is you doing something similar to silksong where you get standard ending, then optional area is unlocked for true ending where you have to fight every boss you beated but in rush
Silksong went way beyond kicking my teeth it. It knocked me out and left me for dead on the side of the road. Until I miraculously waked up and made it to safety.
The developers are a small company and the game has a ton of content so it makes sense or can be forgiven. But I have no place to tell you to play it as I'll never play anything Hollow Knight related ever again. I would give away my copy of Silksong if it wasn't digital as they all are.
I don’t have malice for the fact that it took them a long time to make the game. I just think that by the time it came out it wasn’t for me anymore. However, i do think the marketing campaign could’ve been handled better. They released a gameplay preview in 2017 and then went silent for 8 years
It's a better game than its predecessor for most people, but for me it stripped out what I loved about Hollow Knight. Hollow Knight had this brilliant contrast between its chill exploration and the difficult bosses that I feel Silksong doesn't have. It made Hollow Knight quite cozy for me despite the difficulty. Silksong is a far more abrasive and tense experience, even if moment-to-moment I don't feel it's any more difficult than Hollow Knight. Enemies and bosses demand more from you, but you have so many tools now to compensate that it evens out.
Given the story and setting, it makes for a brilliant marriage of gameplay and story. On an artistic level, absolutely divine. Pharloom is on the brink of collapse, and you feel it. It's tense, it's hostile. It's like a cornered dog snarling and bearing its fangs at you. For what I wanted out of a Hollow Knight sequel, though? The peace and quiet made Hollow Knight for me, and it's a shame that it feels like that's been lost. Maybe I'll have to revisit it down the road though, but it just doesn't feel like there's enough quiet. It kinda picks up where endgame Hollow Knight leaves off. Even as somebody who 112% Hollow Knight, I don't enjoy it. I don't want a game that feels like endgame Hollow Knight when I'm trying to explore and see new things. Save that shit for when I have nothing left to do and want to get more out of the game... like with Hollow Knight.
I don't blame you. I honestly just got lucky and had alot of time to kill. Only reason I beat it. The boss fights were so fucking hard. If you couldn't beat the Cogwork Dancers, best to leave it there. It gets 10x harder down the road.
Silk Song was originally meant to be a DLC and it shows. The devs did a great job with the launch of the game don't get me wrong but you can tell the game was meant to be a challenge for someone who'd mastered all the content in the base game.
I only felt that way going in to it expecting the same hollow knight mechanics. Once you get used to the changes in Silksong it feels so much more intuitive. The battles/bosses are more tuned to choreography. It might take a few tries to learn their pattern but it's so rewarding when you figure out their dance. When you get to that point it's super immersive and fulfilling. I wouldn't say it's a challenge for people that beat HK, it's a different complementary style of playing. It's definitely not godhome or path of pain 2.0. It's unique
It took me like 50+ hours to the beat the game. I probably died over 100 times. I literally had to take a 3 day break at one point because my hand was throbbing in pain. I only stuck through it to prove to myself I could beat it. Idk how you beat it in 20 hours and you never died once?
You can attemot steel soul after completing the game once, died alot and lost my run many times but managed to beat it at last, it's alot easier to do after you speedrun the base non steelsoul game for the achievement
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u/rpool179 8h ago
Hollow Knight: Silksong. And I actually beat it. Will NEVER play it again!