Like the article mentions, a lot of points of criticism would just as easily apply to Hollow Knight. Hollow Knight had combat that required good reaction and precision. Hollow knight had platforming that required a lot of precision. The difficulty was also pretty punishing in hollow knight where you could easily get beaten by a regular mob if you playing sloppy. Missing maps and runbacks were in Hollow knight. If you’re stuck on a boss the amount of upgrades you can find and grind is limited and if you’ve found everything up to that point the only way to beat the boss is to “git gud”.
Credit to Team Cherry where credit is due. While runbacks are annoying they’re much faster in Silksong due to the character simply being faster. Healing 3 “hearts” at once and, possibly more importantly, letting you heal in the air makes healing far more viable during a fight. I remember in Hollow knight I pretty much gave up trying to heal in most boss fights because it was simply too slow and you’re pretty much a sitting duck. And the increased mobility has definitely made it easier to avoid damage. I think a big reason people complain about taking a lot of damage is because they don’t use the full toolset.
But that isn’t to say there isn’t a legitimate issue here. I think the game has something of a scaling issue. You start the game with 5 masks and if you get hit you lose a mask, which means 5 hits and you’re dead. But by the time you’re in act 2 most hits take 2 masks which means you’re effectively playing with 3 hits and you’re dead. Which again would be fine if by that time you also had roughly double the amount of health, but unless I’ve missed something you’re most likely going to get only 1 extra mask at the start of act 2, which does very little to alleviate the damage because with 5 masks it’s 3 hits and with 6 masks it’s still 3 hits. The game goes on but in terms of health you get weaker. You do get some tools to better evade damage, but since that requires adjusting your playstyle to use those tools (how many people use floating during a boss fight?) I think for most people the extra tools are not offsetting the extra damage they’re taking.
So the game might not be significantly harder than Hollow Knight, but it can feel like it due to it playing very differently to Hollow Knight. In Silksong you kinda have to evade every attack because you’re a glass pistol (not really a cannon), in Hollow knight you could choose to just tank some attacks because one attack doesn’t leave you half-dead. It also means in Hollow Knight you get more chances to make mistakes but those mistakes have a longer lasting effects due to healing being much harder. Maybe the best way to describe it is: “Hollow Knight is like Dark Souls, Silksong is like Dark Souls 3”.
About the HP thing, your point seems to be that because people do not use the tools given to them (that would make the fight easier if used properly) things get too hard later… If people are kneecapping themselves by thinking ‘all I need is dash and slash’, well they kinda had it coming.
The issue is that most people are people of habit and habits are hard to break, especially when they also kinda work. Most bosses in both games can be solved by dashing and slashing better. It’s a strategy that works so it’s a strategy people will apply even if there’s potentially is a better strategy that would make the fight easier.
And so instead of experimenting with different tools to find what works better people will beat their head against the harder option because eventually the harder option will work too (or you give up and call the game too hard). I do the same thing with some Silksong bosses because sometimes I just don’t feel like experimenting.
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Like the article mentions, a lot of points of criticism would just as easily apply to Hollow Knight. Hollow Knight had combat that required good reaction and precision. Hollow knight had platforming that required a lot of precision. The difficulty was also pretty punishing in hollow knight where you could easily get beaten by a regular mob if you playing sloppy. Missing maps and runbacks were in Hollow knight. If you’re stuck on a boss the amount of upgrades you can find and grind is limited and if you’ve found everything up to that point the only way to beat the boss is to “git gud”.
Credit to Team Cherry where credit is due. While runbacks are annoying they’re much faster in Silksong due to the character simply being faster. Healing 3 “hearts” at once and, possibly more importantly, letting you heal in the air makes healing far more viable during a fight. I remember in Hollow knight I pretty much gave up trying to heal in most boss fights because it was simply too slow and you’re pretty much a sitting duck. And the increased mobility has definitely made it easier to avoid damage. I think a big reason people complain about taking a lot of damage is because they don’t use the full toolset.
But that isn’t to say there isn’t a legitimate issue here. I think the game has something of a scaling issue. You start the game with 5 masks and if you get hit you lose a mask, which means 5 hits and you’re dead. But by the time you’re in act 2 most hits take 2 masks which means you’re effectively playing with 3 hits and you’re dead. Which again would be fine if by that time you also had roughly double the amount of health, but unless I’ve missed something you’re most likely going to get only 1 extra mask at the start of act 2, which does very little to alleviate the damage because with 5 masks it’s 3 hits and with 6 masks it’s still 3 hits. The game goes on but in terms of health you get weaker. You do get some tools to better evade damage, but since that requires adjusting your playstyle to use those tools (how many people use floating during a boss fight?) I think for most people the extra tools are not offsetting the extra damage they’re taking.
So the game might not be significantly harder than Hollow Knight, but it can feel like it due to it playing very differently to Hollow Knight. In Silksong you kinda have to evade every attack because you’re a glass pistol (not really a cannon), in Hollow knight you could choose to just tank some attacks because one attack doesn’t leave you half-dead. It also means in Hollow Knight you get more chances to make mistakes but those mistakes have a longer lasting effects due to healing being much harder. Maybe the best way to describe it is: “Hollow Knight is like Dark Souls, Silksong is like Dark Souls 3”.
About the HP thing, your point seems to be that because people do not use the tools given to them (that would make the fight easier if used properly) things get too hard later… If people are kneecapping themselves by thinking ‘all I need is dash and slash’, well they kinda had it coming.
The issue is that most people are people of habit and habits are hard to break, especially when they also kinda work. Most bosses in both games can be solved by dashing and slashing better. It’s a strategy that works so it’s a strategy people will apply even if there’s potentially is a better strategy that would make the fight easier.
And so instead of experimenting with different tools to find what works better people will beat their head against the harder option because eventually the harder option will work too (or you give up and call the game too hard). I do the same thing with some Silksong bosses because sometimes I just don’t feel like experimenting.