With Hollow Knight: Silksong’s huge launch in full swing, community debate about its qualities and flaws has gone back and forth, with some players insisting their criticisms about things like the game's difficulty are valid and shouldn’t be instantly dismissed as "hate."
In my opinion, the game is not particularly difficult. That is, if you’ve played through the original Hollow Knight. Which most people haven’t. In fact, it looks to me like a lot of people jumping on the hype don’t have too much experience with metroidvanias and soulslikes.
It’s a sequel, so intended to be played after the original. Why do we care what people who haven’t played the first game think?
Sigh this shit again, if it’s the creators decision to have a game with finely tuned hard difficulty, so be it, that’s the creators creative decision and it should be respected
My biggest complaint is the sheer lack of rewards when I finish a fight. Give me any currency.
I have spent so much of this game broke, unable to buy the things I need to advance any side plots.
I’m currently stuck on the fight for the Music in the top left of the citadel. The double boss at the end is brutal. But because no enemy in that fight drops monster parts, I have to quit to grinding it to go grind more materials to build equipment, despite having slain 20+ enemies each run.
I’m about 10 hours into silksong and it’s amazing, don’t get me wrong. But the majority of the boss fights seem… cheap?
Like, their difficulty doesn’t come from their various attacks, or their environment. Instead, it usually comes from the fact that they do double damage, or the fact that they spam the same two attacks over and over way too quickly, or the fact that they can do the same add summon three times in a row and make what was a controllable situation practically impossible
Now, I’ve 112% the OG hollow knight and beaten true radiance, so I’m not against difficult boss fights. In fact I relish the feeling of learning their moves and patterns after every single death
But when the moves are “ram into wall. Then ram into wall again” it becomes incredibly annoying
Some of the boss fights felt amazing once you start learning their attack patterns, but then others were just… lacking. The savage fly one comes to mind. It wasn’t particularly a difficult boss itself. But when it summoned ads, it became a fight around rng. It wasn’t a fun fight at all. Felt like the devs realised it was too easy and chucked in ads then left it there.
Separately, why on earth the boss doesn’t receive damage for slamming down on the spiky enemy when its spikes are deployed… Missed opportunity!
The Beastfly in the Chapel isn’t too bad, since you can leverage its slam to take out any ads, however there is another arena where you fight it again and it spawns flying ads who shoot projectiles which deal double damage AND the boss breaks the platforms you’re standing on.
High difficulty is not good game design. Making a game more approachable through lower difficulty settings with additional checkpoints doesn’t make it worse for people who like a challenge. It just makes it enjoyable to more people.
Claiming it’s down to “artistic vision” just feels dishonest. You could claim Studio Ghibli movies should never be dubbed or subbed. You just have to learn Japanese to enjoy them, just don’t watch them if that’s not for you… but why? How is it a bad thing if more people can enjoy something?
Cup Head is a great example. It’s a fantastic game with an art style that younger kids love. But it’s too difficult for most kids, which doesn’t make the game better, it just locks them out from a game they’d otherwise love.
Why everything should be for everybody? And why artists should care about your opikion when they are creating what they want to create.
Cup head is great example. Everything in the game is meticiusly hand crafted. The big part why its so popular is the difficulty that forces you to focus on the aninations and sprites. The difficulty also is economical in game as labor intensive as cup head. Because every sprite was hand drawn devs could not just churn unlimited levels and the games lenght came from the difficulty. Making the game easy would ruin the pacing of the game.
Games are art form like any other. There are mainstream movies, plays, songs, paintings and games etc etc etc. that try to reach as large audience as they can. But there is also obscure art pieces that only small group of people can enjoy. And both ways are fine
I find it obnoxious when people bitch about desing choices that devs have consciously made. Its not like they have any obligations to make a game in one way or another.
Studio Ghibli movies should never be dubbed or subbed. You just have to learn Japanese to enjoy them, just don’t watch them if that’s not for you…
I feel this is a false equivalence.
If you wanted to make a movie analogy, I’d say it’s more like a movie having subtle subtext or context which would make it’s message or intent more difficult to comprehend.
Imagine if someone watched The Cabin in the Woods (satire movie about horror movies) and said it was a bad movie because it wasn’t scary.
I think its fair to say that person would have low film literacy at least.
How do we compensate for that? Should movies start offering accessibility features so every viewer can have the ability to know foreshadowing, film cliches, or meta-narrative devices?
I feel like giving viewers an option before a movie to say “i have low media literacy”, which would result in popups during the movie to say “hey, this is a callback to the Hellraiser franchise” would be insulting to the creators.
The film wasn’t made for casual movie viewers, it was made for a specific audience. The creators aren’t obliged to make it more easily digestible.
Edit:
Satire falls apart when it’s spoon fed.
If difficulty is part of the games design, then reducing it is functionally similar to explicitly stating irony to a viewer.
But The Cabin In The Woods is exactly what I’m talking about. A product with mass appeal that still caters to a small group of people. Much like Paul Verhovens old movies. You can watch them as dumb action or social criticism.
And movies have several accessibility features. Things like subtitles, which often translate cultural references or jokes that don’t directly translate to viewers from foreign countries. Descriptive audio tracks for visually impaired, directors commentary to learn things behind the scenes. Many services and devices also allow you to even out dynamics and enhance speech.
The problem with games that have a too high difficulty threshold isn’t that you’re missing out on some hidden subtext. It’s that you will never get to see 70% of the game, for absolutely no good reason.
Cuphead is such a good example of this, according to xbox achievement stats 31% never made it past the first part of the game, 72% never got to the end of the game.
Accessibility in film delivers the same work to more people. Accessibility in games can cross the line into creating a different work entirely, because the interaction itself is the art, not just the visuals or sound.
Saying “most players never saw the end of Cuphead” isn’t proof of failure; it’s proof of selectivity. Just like not everyone finishes Infinite Jest, but it doesn’t mean Wallace failed as a writer.
Cuphead was made to invoke arcade game feelings. The gameplay is brutal by design. That’s the point.
It’s like watching Terrifier and throwing up half way through, storming out of the cinema and saying “the acting was good but it was too violent, I wish I could watch a version of the movie without the gore”
But it doesn’t, accessibility in film does not deliver the same work to more people. Films are translated, dubbed and subbed to be approachable. Adding voice acting from talent that were never involved in the original film. It’s all about adapting the film to fit a wider audience.
The fact that gamers think games are somehow different and the “git gud” approach is just pointless elitism. How would Cuphead, Super Meatboy or Silk Song be a worse game if they had an easy game mode where you had more life and/or checkpoints? How does that setting change the experience of someone playing in normal, veteran or hardcore mode?
“How would the game be worse if it had an easy mode?”
Adding an easy mode changes the experience even for hardcore players because:
Design intent shifts. Once multiple difficulties exist, developers design around them. Balancing, encounter pacing, even story beats get shaped by the lowest common denominator.
Cultural meaning shifts. If a work is known as “brutal but fair,” its identity collapses when an easy bypass exists. (Dark Souls without consequence isn’t Dark Souls; Cuphead without punishment isn’t Cuphead.)
Easy mode doesn’t just let more people in; it makes it a different game. Saying “just don’t play easy” is like saying “why not release a PG-rated Terrifier with no gore? Horror fans can still watch the R version, so what’s the harm?”
Terrifier is available in several cut versions for specific regions / services. Which is incredibly common for movies in general and have been since the 70s. Which you do to reach a wider audience.
Both Silk Song and Cuphead already have additional difficulties. They’re already balancing difficulties, they’ve just decided to gate keep gamers who are not able to play difficult games.
If Gears Of War and Call Of Duty had hardcore and veteran as the only difficulty setting, it wouldn’t make them more interesting games or make a statement about the horrors of war and the fragility of man. It would just make less people enjoy them, for no good reason.
A high difficulty threshold is bad game design. And it’s exclusive to people who have physical disabilities or limitations, or other reasons to why they can’t play overly difficult games.
And I say that as someone who loves to beat games in the higher difficulty tiers. But as someone who also wants more people to be able to enjoy the games I enjoy and who’s happy game design has improved since the 80s.
“But as someone who also wants more people to be able to enjoy the games I enjoy”
Its really not about you is it? I get where you are coming from but in the end its people who make the games who decite what kind of experience they want to make. Sometimes their visio does not click with everyone and that is allright.
Subtitles/dubs are translations. They adapt language, not pacing, cinematography, editing, or structure. That’s fundamentally different from altering a game’s difficulty, which changes the mechanics, the thing the art is built from and differentiates it from other mediums.
A better analogy:
Subtitles are like adding glasses so more people can see the same painting.
Easy mode is like repainting sections of the canvas so it’s “clearer.” You can call both “accessibility,” but one preserves the work, the other mutates it.
Furthermore, language isn’t a good metric by which to compare analogies because games are also translated.
I’ll write my response as if you’re being sincere;
Cabin in the Woods is one of my all time favourite movies, but the entire premise is built around horror movie tropes.
The “gods” mentioned at the end of the movie are the movie viewers themselves. They “demand blood” (watching a splatter movie for the sake of watching people get killed).
It’s a requirement that “the virgin” be the last one killed, but the death is optional (this is a staple of horror movies; the ‘Final Girl’)
One of the literary devices the movie toys with is the idea that ALL the horror movies we’ve seen are part of the same universe, and the guys in the offices are the ones pulling the strings to entertain us.
The entire movie is one giant nudge-nudge, wink-wink for people who love to get meta with horror movies.
If you enjoyed it regardless, that’s fine, but my point was that it would be a bad product if it tried to accommodate for viewers such as yourself.
No I really did like the movie and yes it was full of stereo types like the chad, the stoner, the girl etc but I never came to think of it as satire or that we are the gods demanding the blood. But it was a good movie, I liked it.
Small aside: the characters aren’t stereotypes, they’re archetypes. This is another example of the satire, as well as the gas station attendant from the start (I think he was called the Harbinger?)
Runbacks are a lame attempt at artificially increasing difficulty. I’ll happily die on that hill. I love difficult games, but there is a fine line between frustration and difficult.
Elden Ring (at least all the bits I played through) and Sekiro absolutely nailed it. None of the run backs were particularly egregious, and it let me really focus on experimenting and learning to feel out the difficult fights. Celeste is another good example. I have dropped hours on some of the later levels trying to master them, but never once got frustrated.
Hollow Knight I never finished because I got stuck on a boss and the runback was just way too long and annoying. I loved everything else about the game and want to finish it eventually.
Edit: I think they have their place as “mods” that you could enable to increase difficulty, and i’d actually probably enjoy it that way. Just designing the game around them is where i draw the line.
To me it feels like “if you don’t survive the journey, you’re too weak for the boss itself” it brings me down and makes me calmer until I reach the boss.
I like them because it forces you to try to salvage a fight instead of just conceding after a bad start. The time spent getting to the boss is investment you don’t want to waste.
I think this is really just an issue of the tools and abilities not being inherently linked to the related bosses.
FYI quickhop attacking is faster than ground combos and you can weave in the trio dagger throws when you are dodging away from close attacks. Also your attack will negate enemy attacks weapon hitbox(but you still have to dodge bodily contact). The poison tool upgrade is overbalanced and makes a lot of fights a joke.
To be fair, From has like many games to learn from that while Cherry only has HK. I’ll never forget the sheer pain of the Frigid Outskirts from Dark Souls 2.
I think this discussion has more merit when framing this from an ableism viewpoint. Games having accessibility sliders to either slow down puzzles or enemies helps players who have a disability.
A game that comes to mind is Crosscode! You had options that could change the speed and damage for various things in the game. Was nice because sometimes I’d change the settings when I had been stuck and frustrated on a puzzle which made the game far more enjoyable.
The main goal of a game is to be fun, not to be a bragging right; even more in a single player game.
If someone, for any reason, prefers a more casual experience, let them have it. On the other hand, if you prefer to brag, go for it and cramp up the difficulty.
There us no point of gating a single player game. Single player games should be accessible for all.
A single player game shouldn’t be accessible to all. It should be accessible to everyone the creator intends it to be accessible to.
Devaluing and demanding an artist or team of artists compromise their vision and intent is flat out a shit take. You have to be a massive self centered asshole to think it’s even remotely acceptable.
Nintendo expects Mario games to be played by everyone, thus it’s reasonable to expect accessibility features and difficulty controls. To allow for the widest range of players.
A Mario game with out either implicit or explicit difficulty controls would be a fair thing to criticize when Nintendo’s clearly stated goal is to reach the boardest audiences and be a game for the whole family.
But a game made by say kojima IS NOT trying to reach the boardest audience. Thus, expecting any amount of control over the experience is just being an asshole on the part of the player. The game is designed for himself first and foremost. He’s making something he wants to make. Tell a story he wants to tell. If the player enjoys it then all the better.
Games are after all first and foremost art. Art can be a product or can be a passion. A product even if art is reasonable to expect it to be made for the consumer first and cater to them But never should any reasonable person. Assume a passion should bend the knee.
The main goal of a game is to be whatever the creators and/or you want it to be. Frustrating difficulty can still be fun, just like feeling scared in a horror game is fun. It simply has to be done right.
Keep in mind it’s already very hard to make a good, balanced game. Adding difficulty sliders increases that exponentially. Even if you add a few presets - that’s still a lot more work, which indie studios may not have resources for.
There doesn’t need to be sliders or options menu settings. Elden Ring handles difficulty settings beautifully: upgrading your flask is optional and increases both the frequency and amount of healing that can be received. Using summons is optional and can make some fights an absolute cakewalk. Same with all the different crafting items. If you want, almost every dungeon in the game can be skipped or revisited if it’s too hard.
All Team Cherry had to do was change the timing or location for access to certain tools in the game.
Many FromSoft games don’t strike that balance right. The ones I’ve tried, even the ones I successfully beat, gave me a groan of “Fucking FINALLY, now what mediocre reward and fresh hell do I get for that!? In fact, why am I playing this…?”
Another example, Stellar Blade. I enjoyed the difficulty, and got pretty good at the parries against bosses; but usually only hit about 60% of them. That wasn’t good enough for the very final boss, which takes off about half your health for each one you miss. Only for that fight, I ended up turning down the difficulty - and it was still tough! And, I still felt rewarded at the end.
One final example, Another Crab’s Treasure. It has some hard fights, and many difficulty options. I’m glad those were there…but I also just never used them. Also, it now has a NG+ that gets even harder.
For myself? Definitely! But someone shouldn’t be prevented from playing a game because of a disability. Just like how Frostbite engine games have great accessibility options for colour blindness.
Disability, accessibility and gameplay accessibility are two different things and should be treated as such. There is also a very hard line between what is possible to help someone with a disability. Enjoy a medium that requires certain minimal physical traits.
The color blindness deafness rebindable controls as many things that can help the disabled and these should be expected whenever possible. Hell a lot of these are built directly into your operating system and don’t require any effort from a game developer. They just need to make sure not to get in the way of already existing tools.
But gameplay accessibility is an entirely different beast and even very minimal. Gameplay accessibility can create an entirely new gameplay experience to the point where it’s not the same game. If the developer wants to add those, it should be up to the developer and what they’re targeting, both as an audience and as an artist.
We should always demand disability accessibility. We should never demand gameplay accessibility.
Colorblind accessibility is easy to implement and pretty much everybody can do it after reading a wikipedia article on colorblindness.
On the other hand, balancing a game for several difficulties is not easy and takes a lot of time. Plus, it doesn’t always make sense. Part of the game is the struggle. If you’re skipping the struggle, then you’re missing a part of the game.
Tbh it’s a reflex and dexterity game, among other things, so it is not for everyone. In the same way a game that requires memorising melodies is not for me, since I suck hard at it.
I suppose there could be a mod that simply doesn’t let you die and you can explore the whole world.
There is no other way to make a platforming section easier, unless you add more anchor points etc., which requires actually changing the world (essentially, you remove the platforming section), so those could still be a problem.
I can see they have lots of options!
However the platforming seems to be slightly different? In case of HK I suppose that invincibility-like mode is what I suggested brought to the extreme (I.e. you can just walk over spikes etc). Maybe the other thing that could work is slowing the game down so that timing is easier to get.
I think it’s an interesting discussion accessibility from this point of view. I think everyone draws the line at some point, between accessibility and simply making a game with some principles that represent the soul of the game.
And the game is fundamentally not the same with some of those accessibility features enabled. Good on the devs for targeting a wider audience but fundamentally they have different game play experiences.
Not every designer wants to have multiple experiences in their game. That should be entirely up to the designer and demanding them add entirely new experiences is unreasonable.
Color blindness support, rebindable controls, subtitles, on screen audio visual cues. There’s plenty of things that can help the disabled that don’t change fundamental aspects of the game. If a developer adds these but doesn’t want to compromise the intended gameplay as they see it then they shouldn’t have to.
End of the day. It’s art that is being sold to be consumed. If you don’t like the art, then it’s not for you.
As someone who isn’t necessarily big on the notion streamlining is “objectively” good game design… That more or less began to be disposed of the minute we had the technology, minus a few now-niche genres that rely on it. It was gradual, but mass market games as early as Zork in 1981, had save schemes.
I mean personally I don’t have any issues with an easy mode in games, casual play is nice when you come back home from work half dead. Silksong is advertised as a soulslike though. Feels a little counterintuitive to take away the aspects that define a soulslike, even if it makes the game accessible to a wider audience.
I think it’s a great game for veterans who like challenges like myself.
But I have to call out team Cherry for their interviews:
They said they wanted anyone to be able to pick up this as their first Hollow Knight game and just start playing… Sorry, but, bullshit. the difficulty ramp is too quick, double damage comes out to early and the boss fights get more challenging quickly. See the weaver for instance, a fight I’d place around the difficulty of Grimm, but there’s double damage and you probably only have 5 health.
Also they mentioned part of the game’s difficulty was due to Hornet’s competence and utility… Ghost is canonically a better fighter than Hornet, so by that logic they should have made the game easier (yes I’m being silly about this part).
Didn’t personally watch the interview in question (or forgot by now) so I don’t know what they meant, but it definitely feels like lore wise Silksong can stand as an independent game with what I’ve discovered so far.
Regarding difficulty, Hollow Knight isn’t the only game that could have prepared you for Silksong I think.
I think what it helps a lot with is familiarity and mindset. The overall game loop is very similar.
That said, I think it’s wise to give HK a try before buying Silksong. It’s a cheaper game, worth playing through if you’re into these kinds of experiences and if you don’t enjoy it, chances are Silksong will not be much fun for you either.
I think its fine for a player new to the series but you’ve got to the type of person that is willing to learn and willing to die over and over. For people who play these kinds of games its not insane to expect them to pick it up.
In most games, finally beating it would have me saying “thank fuck its over”.
In silksong, I’m saying “fuck yeah that was a good boss”. It’s a very different feeling, and one that I haven’t had the pleasure of enjoying in quite some time.
That said.
I think both hollow knight and silksong should have easy modes. It would be fine. It doesn’t hurt me any that someone else can have an easier time. People need to remember that video games are entertainment, and the sweaty “hardcore gamers” can fuck off with their usual judgemental elitism.
This is exactly it. I think the game is a goddamn masterpiece. The most infuriating fights feel like huge accomplishments, not just relief. Phenomenal game all around, but that difficulty curve isn’t for everyone. I can say the same about any Soulsborne game, love them to death but it’s definitely too much for some folks. Difficulty options are a good thing, if a compromise has to be made just have it disable achievements or w/e.
I’m guessing it’s something like when you lose to a boss you have to travel a senselessly difficult and long way back to the boss to try again?
That’s exactly it. The runbacks aren’t too long in this game despite all the complaints, but some of them are tricky and can get annoying if you keep dying 10 seconds into a fight.
Most runbacks aren’t too bad, but fuck the Bilewater one. That shit was too hard and annoying. I had less trouble with the First Sinner than that boss.
The devs looked at blight town from dark souls 1 and thought ‘we can do worse’. It really is a nightmare but somehow I killed the boss first try in the end
There have been several boss fights so far where I die to the path to the boss more than the boss itself and it takes way longer to get to the boss than actually beating it.
That being said though, I do think there’s some merit to runbacks as an actual consequence for failure. I definitely strategize more cautiously because of it.
This is the only thing I wanted to know from reviews, for whether or not to bother with Silksong. I love difficult boss fights, but cannot be arsed to spend more than half a minute doing a tedious chore in order to actually redo boss fights.
The worst one I’ve encountered apparently has a secret bench somewhere that makes it much better, and the second worst (the runback that I think everyone is talking about) is about as long as the runback to crystal guardian I think.
More like the Dark Souls formula of having to trek through heaps of enemies and traps to get back to the boss. Including the whole “lose all of your money on death” thing.
Modern from games barely have run backs anymore. Atleast in souls game you can bank your currency into stats or buy consumables, you can’t reliably do that in SS.
I’m guessing it’s something like when you lose to a boss you have to travel a senselessly difficult and long way back to the boss to try again?
Exactly. Lots of bosses don’t have convenient save points nearby, so you’re forced to walk back from the save point every time. And many of the treks are either long or just outright annoying (cheesy enemies, obstacle courses, etc). It’s like the 5 Minute Long Unskippable Cutscene’s more annoying older brother, because this unskippable cutscene requires actual gameplay and focus.
Hot take here, but I don’t mind them. Exactly because they take focus. They tell me when it’s time for a break. If I’m not up for the runback, then I’m not up for aother attempt at the boss.
I haven’t played silksong, but I’m just going off other games in the past for my experience.
If you make it through the hallway of meaningless denizens that just waste time and get to the boss, then die to the boss… Why waste time going through the meaningless denizens again to challenge the boss?
I can see it on higher difficulties when you need to make sure you get through the meaningless denizens perfectly in order to preserve your health and resources to have a better chance of defeating the boss.
But when you just want to experience the story on lower difficulty why make the denizens less powerful to make the boss easier when you can instead just put the save point in front of the boss in instead of the denizens? You’ve already made it through the denizens, it’s not like you’re skipping content.
What a weird take. It’s about respecting the players’ time. Making it through the denizens to the boss is not challenging whatsoever. Why would you think it is? It’s just tedious, and bad level design.
If anything I find the walkbacks much shorter than in the original. There is always a bench 30s/1m away from each boss or tough platforming section. At least so far…
Yeah I am almost at the end of the act 1 (i think?) and so far the impression is that if something seems to have a long walk or having to repeat a hard parcour section, I didn’t find some hidden bench or shortcut to bypass said parcour section.
In general I can see this game being started as an expansion for HK, the difficulty is quite high and the curve steeper, but I can’t relate with most of the complains so far (the currency maybe a little, but it’s normal IMHO you can’t just shop everything at once from a new vendor you find).
Initially I was put off by the double damage, but the heal being short and x3 I think compensates for it (plus, you can do it mid air etc.).
Yeah the game’s definitely harder than HK was, but by no means impossible. It’s not nearly as difficult as say Elden Ring for a recent-ish example. The true ending final boss didn’t even take me as many tries as Last Judge or that frog fucker lmao
None of the runbacks are egregious either. There’s just about always a bench barely 30-40 seconds away at absolute most.
We should definitely talk about how levying criticism, especially thoughtful criticism, is treated as a personal attack by other people playing the same game. It’s a bizarre form of tribalism.
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In my opinion, the game is not particularly difficult. That is, if you’ve played through the original Hollow Knight. Which most people haven’t. In fact, it looks to me like a lot of people jumping on the hype don’t have too much experience with metroidvanias and soulslikes.
It’s a sequel, so intended to be played after the original. Why do we care what people who haven’t played the first game think?
Sigh this shit again, if it’s the creators decision to have a game with finely tuned hard difficulty, so be it, that’s the creators creative decision and it should be respected
My biggest complaint is the sheer lack of rewards when I finish a fight. Give me any currency.
I have spent so much of this game broke, unable to buy the things I need to advance any side plots.
I’m currently stuck on the fight for the Music in the top left of the citadel. The double boss at the end is brutal. But because no enemy in that fight drops monster parts, I have to quit to grinding it to go grind more materials to build equipment, despite having slain 20+ enemies each run.
I’m about 10 hours into silksong and it’s amazing, don’t get me wrong. But the majority of the boss fights seem… cheap?
Like, their difficulty doesn’t come from their various attacks, or their environment. Instead, it usually comes from the fact that they do double damage, or the fact that they spam the same two attacks over and over way too quickly, or the fact that they can do the same add summon three times in a row and make what was a controllable situation practically impossible
Now, I’ve 112% the OG hollow knight and beaten true radiance, so I’m not against difficult boss fights. In fact I relish the feeling of learning their moves and patterns after every single death
But when the moves are “ram into wall. Then ram into wall again” it becomes incredibly annoying
Some of the boss fights felt amazing once you start learning their attack patterns, but then others were just… lacking. The savage fly one comes to mind. It wasn’t particularly a difficult boss itself. But when it summoned ads, it became a fight around rng. It wasn’t a fun fight at all. Felt like the devs realised it was too easy and chucked in ads then left it there.
Separately, why on earth the boss doesn’t receive damage for slamming down on the spiky enemy when its spikes are deployed… Missed opportunity!
The Beastfly in the Chapel isn’t too bad, since you can leverage its slam to take out any ads, however there is another arena where you fight it again and it spawns flying ads who shoot projectiles which deal double damage AND the boss breaks the platforms you’re standing on.
Feels like bullshit fighting against it.
High difficulty is not good game design. Making a game more approachable through lower difficulty settings with additional checkpoints doesn’t make it worse for people who like a challenge. It just makes it enjoyable to more people.
Claiming it’s down to “artistic vision” just feels dishonest. You could claim Studio Ghibli movies should never be dubbed or subbed. You just have to learn Japanese to enjoy them, just don’t watch them if that’s not for you… but why? How is it a bad thing if more people can enjoy something?
Cup Head is a great example. It’s a fantastic game with an art style that younger kids love. But it’s too difficult for most kids, which doesn’t make the game better, it just locks them out from a game they’d otherwise love.
Why everything should be for everybody? And why artists should care about your opikion when they are creating what they want to create.
Cup head is great example. Everything in the game is meticiusly hand crafted. The big part why its so popular is the difficulty that forces you to focus on the aninations and sprites. The difficulty also is economical in game as labor intensive as cup head. Because every sprite was hand drawn devs could not just churn unlimited levels and the games lenght came from the difficulty. Making the game easy would ruin the pacing of the game.
Games are art form like any other. There are mainstream movies, plays, songs, paintings and games etc etc etc. that try to reach as large audience as they can. But there is also obscure art pieces that only small group of people can enjoy. And both ways are fine
I find it obnoxious when people bitch about desing choices that devs have consciously made. Its not like they have any obligations to make a game in one way or another.
I feel this is a false equivalence.
If you wanted to make a movie analogy, I’d say it’s more like a movie having subtle subtext or context which would make it’s message or intent more difficult to comprehend.
Imagine if someone watched The Cabin in the Woods (satire movie about horror movies) and said it was a bad movie because it wasn’t scary.
I think its fair to say that person would have low film literacy at least.
How do we compensate for that? Should movies start offering accessibility features so every viewer can have the ability to know foreshadowing, film cliches, or meta-narrative devices?
I feel like giving viewers an option before a movie to say “i have low media literacy”, which would result in popups during the movie to say “hey, this is a callback to the Hellraiser franchise” would be insulting to the creators.
The film wasn’t made for casual movie viewers, it was made for a specific audience. The creators aren’t obliged to make it more easily digestible.
Edit:
Satire falls apart when it’s spoon fed.
If difficulty is part of the games design, then reducing it is functionally similar to explicitly stating irony to a viewer.
But The Cabin In The Woods is exactly what I’m talking about. A product with mass appeal that still caters to a small group of people. Much like Paul Verhovens old movies. You can watch them as dumb action or social criticism.
And movies have several accessibility features. Things like subtitles, which often translate cultural references or jokes that don’t directly translate to viewers from foreign countries. Descriptive audio tracks for visually impaired, directors commentary to learn things behind the scenes. Many services and devices also allow you to even out dynamics and enhance speech.
The problem with games that have a too high difficulty threshold isn’t that you’re missing out on some hidden subtext. It’s that you will never get to see 70% of the game, for absolutely no good reason.
Cuphead is such a good example of this, according to xbox achievement stats 31% never made it past the first part of the game, 72% never got to the end of the game.
Accessibility in film delivers the same work to more people. Accessibility in games can cross the line into creating a different work entirely, because the interaction itself is the art, not just the visuals or sound.
Saying “most players never saw the end of Cuphead” isn’t proof of failure; it’s proof of selectivity. Just like not everyone finishes Infinite Jest, but it doesn’t mean Wallace failed as a writer.
Cuphead was made to invoke arcade game feelings. The gameplay is brutal by design. That’s the point.
It’s like watching Terrifier and throwing up half way through, storming out of the cinema and saying “the acting was good but it was too violent, I wish I could watch a version of the movie without the gore”
But it doesn’t, accessibility in film does not deliver the same work to more people. Films are translated, dubbed and subbed to be approachable. Adding voice acting from talent that were never involved in the original film. It’s all about adapting the film to fit a wider audience.
The fact that gamers think games are somehow different and the “git gud” approach is just pointless elitism. How would Cuphead, Super Meatboy or Silk Song be a worse game if they had an easy game mode where you had more life and/or checkpoints? How does that setting change the experience of someone playing in normal, veteran or hardcore mode?
“How would the game be worse if it had an easy mode?”
Adding an easy mode changes the experience even for hardcore players because:
Design intent shifts. Once multiple difficulties exist, developers design around them. Balancing, encounter pacing, even story beats get shaped by the lowest common denominator.
Cultural meaning shifts. If a work is known as “brutal but fair,” its identity collapses when an easy bypass exists. (Dark Souls without consequence isn’t Dark Souls; Cuphead without punishment isn’t Cuphead.)
Easy mode doesn’t just let more people in; it makes it a different game. Saying “just don’t play easy” is like saying “why not release a PG-rated Terrifier with no gore? Horror fans can still watch the R version, so what’s the harm?”
The harm is you no longer made Terrifier.
Terrifier is available in several cut versions for specific regions / services. Which is incredibly common for movies in general and have been since the 70s. Which you do to reach a wider audience.
Both Silk Song and Cuphead already have additional difficulties. They’re already balancing difficulties, they’ve just decided to gate keep gamers who are not able to play difficult games.
If Gears Of War and Call Of Duty had hardcore and veteran as the only difficulty setting, it wouldn’t make them more interesting games or make a statement about the horrors of war and the fragility of man. It would just make less people enjoy them, for no good reason.
A high difficulty threshold is bad game design. And it’s exclusive to people who have physical disabilities or limitations, or other reasons to why they can’t play overly difficult games.
And I say that as someone who loves to beat games in the higher difficulty tiers. But as someone who also wants more people to be able to enjoy the games I enjoy and who’s happy game design has improved since the 80s.
“But as someone who also wants more people to be able to enjoy the games I enjoy”
Its really not about you is it? I get where you are coming from but in the end its people who make the games who decite what kind of experience they want to make. Sometimes their visio does not click with everyone and that is allright.
(Ill reply to both parts in separate replies)
Subtitles/dubs are translations. They adapt language, not pacing, cinematography, editing, or structure. That’s fundamentally different from altering a game’s difficulty, which changes the mechanics, the thing the art is built from and differentiates it from other mediums.
A better analogy:
Subtitles are like adding glasses so more people can see the same painting.
Easy mode is like repainting sections of the canvas so it’s “clearer.” You can call both “accessibility,” but one preserves the work, the other mutates it.
Furthermore, language isn’t a good metric by which to compare analogies because games are also translated.
Cabin in the woods was a satire movie??? I like the movie…
I can’t tell if you’re being ironic or not lol.
I’ll write my response as if you’re being sincere;
Cabin in the Woods is one of my all time favourite movies, but the entire premise is built around horror movie tropes.
The “gods” mentioned at the end of the movie are the movie viewers themselves. They “demand blood” (watching a splatter movie for the sake of watching people get killed).
It’s a requirement that “the virgin” be the last one killed, but the death is optional (this is a staple of horror movies; the ‘Final Girl’)
One of the literary devices the movie toys with is the idea that ALL the horror movies we’ve seen are part of the same universe, and the guys in the offices are the ones pulling the strings to entertain us.
The entire movie is one giant nudge-nudge, wink-wink for people who love to get meta with horror movies.
If you enjoyed it regardless, that’s fine, but my point was that it would be a bad product if it tried to accommodate for viewers such as yourself.
No I really did like the movie and yes it was full of stereo types like the chad, the stoner, the girl etc but I never came to think of it as satire or that we are the gods demanding the blood. But it was a good movie, I liked it.
Glad you liked it anyway lol.
Small aside: the characters aren’t stereotypes, they’re archetypes. This is another example of the satire, as well as the gas station attendant from the start (I think he was called the Harbinger?)
Oh yeah arch types it is. Did you know you can buy the cup-bong on the internet lol
Runbacks are a lame attempt at artificially increasing difficulty. I’ll happily die on that hill. I love difficult games, but there is a fine line between frustration and difficult.
Elden Ring (at least all the bits I played through) and Sekiro absolutely nailed it. None of the run backs were particularly egregious, and it let me really focus on experimenting and learning to feel out the difficult fights. Celeste is another good example. I have dropped hours on some of the later levels trying to master them, but never once got frustrated.
Hollow Knight I never finished because I got stuck on a boss and the runback was just way too long and annoying. I loved everything else about the game and want to finish it eventually.
Edit: I think they have their place as “mods” that you could enable to increase difficulty, and i’d actually probably enjoy it that way. Just designing the game around them is where i draw the line.
Unpopular opinion but I like boss runbacks.
To me it feels like “if you don’t survive the journey, you’re too weak for the boss itself” it brings me down and makes me calmer until I reach the boss.
I like them because it forces you to try to salvage a fight instead of just conceding after a bad start. The time spent getting to the boss is investment you don’t want to waste.
I think this is really just an issue of the tools and abilities not being inherently linked to the related bosses.
FYI quickhop attacking is faster than ground combos and you can weave in the trio dagger throws when you are dodging away from close attacks. Also your attack will negate enemy attacks weapon hitbox(but you still have to dodge bodily contact). The poison tool upgrade is overbalanced and makes a lot of fights a joke.
To be fair, From has like many games to learn from that while Cherry only has HK. I’ll never forget the sheer pain of the Frigid Outskirts from Dark Souls 2.
At least that’s an optional area. Now, the run back from pre-SotFS No Man’s Wharf? That was a pain.
The run to Blue Smelter nearly gave me a coronary.
I think this discussion has more merit when framing this from an ableism viewpoint. Games having accessibility sliders to either slow down puzzles or enemies helps players who have a disability.
A game that comes to mind is Crosscode! You had options that could change the speed and damage for various things in the game. Was nice because sometimes I’d change the settings when I had been stuck and frustrated on a puzzle which made the game far more enjoyable.
skill issue
The main goal of a game is to be fun, not to be a bragging right; even more in a single player game.
If someone, for any reason, prefers a more casual experience, let them have it. On the other hand, if you prefer to brag, go for it and cramp up the difficulty.
There us no point of gating a single player game. Single player games should be accessible for all.
A single player game shouldn’t be accessible to all. It should be accessible to everyone the creator intends it to be accessible to.
Devaluing and demanding an artist or team of artists compromise their vision and intent is flat out a shit take. You have to be a massive self centered asshole to think it’s even remotely acceptable.
Nintendo expects Mario games to be played by everyone, thus it’s reasonable to expect accessibility features and difficulty controls. To allow for the widest range of players.
A Mario game with out either implicit or explicit difficulty controls would be a fair thing to criticize when Nintendo’s clearly stated goal is to reach the boardest audiences and be a game for the whole family.
But a game made by say kojima IS NOT trying to reach the boardest audience. Thus, expecting any amount of control over the experience is just being an asshole on the part of the player. The game is designed for himself first and foremost. He’s making something he wants to make. Tell a story he wants to tell. If the player enjoys it then all the better.
Games are after all first and foremost art. Art can be a product or can be a passion. A product even if art is reasonable to expect it to be made for the consumer first and cater to them But never should any reasonable person. Assume a passion should bend the knee.
The main goal of a game is to be whatever the creators and/or you want it to be. Frustrating difficulty can still be fun, just like feeling scared in a horror game is fun. It simply has to be done right.
Keep in mind it’s already very hard to make a good, balanced game. Adding difficulty sliders increases that exponentially. Even if you add a few presets - that’s still a lot more work, which indie studios may not have resources for.
There doesn’t need to be sliders or options menu settings. Elden Ring handles difficulty settings beautifully: upgrading your flask is optional and increases both the frequency and amount of healing that can be received. Using summons is optional and can make some fights an absolute cakewalk. Same with all the different crafting items. If you want, almost every dungeon in the game can be skipped or revisited if it’s too hard.
All Team Cherry had to do was change the timing or location for access to certain tools in the game.
Many FromSoft games don’t strike that balance right. The ones I’ve tried, even the ones I successfully beat, gave me a groan of “Fucking FINALLY, now what mediocre reward and fresh hell do I get for that!? In fact, why am I playing this…?”
Another example, Stellar Blade. I enjoyed the difficulty, and got pretty good at the parries against bosses; but usually only hit about 60% of them. That wasn’t good enough for the very final boss, which takes off about half your health for each one you miss. Only for that fight, I ended up turning down the difficulty - and it was still tough! And, I still felt rewarded at the end.
One final example, Another Crab’s Treasure. It has some hard fights, and many difficulty options. I’m glad those were there…but I also just never used them. Also, it now has a NG+ that gets even harder.
For myself? Definitely! But someone shouldn’t be prevented from playing a game because of a disability. Just like how Frostbite engine games have great accessibility options for colour blindness.
Disability, accessibility and gameplay accessibility are two different things and should be treated as such. There is also a very hard line between what is possible to help someone with a disability. Enjoy a medium that requires certain minimal physical traits.
The color blindness deafness rebindable controls as many things that can help the disabled and these should be expected whenever possible. Hell a lot of these are built directly into your operating system and don’t require any effort from a game developer. They just need to make sure not to get in the way of already existing tools.
But gameplay accessibility is an entirely different beast and even very minimal. Gameplay accessibility can create an entirely new gameplay experience to the point where it’s not the same game. If the developer wants to add those, it should be up to the developer and what they’re targeting, both as an audience and as an artist.
We should always demand disability accessibility. We should never demand gameplay accessibility.
Colorblind accessibility is easy to implement and pretty much everybody can do it after reading a wikipedia article on colorblindness.
On the other hand, balancing a game for several difficulties is not easy and takes a lot of time. Plus, it doesn’t always make sense. Part of the game is the struggle. If you’re skipping the struggle, then you’re missing a part of the game.
Tbh it’s a reflex and dexterity game, among other things, so it is not for everyone. In the same way a game that requires memorising melodies is not for me, since I suck hard at it.
I suppose there could be a mod that simply doesn’t let you die and you can explore the whole world. There is no other way to make a platforming section easier, unless you add more anchor points etc., which requires actually changing the world (essentially, you remove the platforming section), so those could still be a problem.
Celeste is a game about reflexes and dexterity. They implemented tons of accessibility features, including ways to make platforming easier.
I have never heard of the game, i guess you are referring to https://celeste.ink/wiki/Assist_Mode?
I can see they have lots of options! However the platforming seems to be slightly different? In case of HK I suppose that invincibility-like mode is what I suggested brought to the extreme (I.e. you can just walk over spikes etc). Maybe the other thing that could work is slowing the game down so that timing is easier to get.
I think it’s an interesting discussion accessibility from this point of view. I think everyone draws the line at some point, between accessibility and simply making a game with some principles that represent the soul of the game.
And the game is fundamentally not the same with some of those accessibility features enabled. Good on the devs for targeting a wider audience but fundamentally they have different game play experiences.
Not every designer wants to have multiple experiences in their game. That should be entirely up to the designer and demanding them add entirely new experiences is unreasonable.
Color blindness support, rebindable controls, subtitles, on screen audio visual cues. There’s plenty of things that can help the disabled that don’t change fundamental aspects of the game. If a developer adds these but doesn’t want to compromise the intended gameplay as they see it then they shouldn’t have to.
End of the day. It’s art that is being sold to be consumed. If you don’t like the art, then it’s not for you.
People forgetting that when you ran out of lives you used to have to go back to the start of the whole game.
As someone who isn’t necessarily big on the notion streamlining is “objectively” good game design… That more or less began to be disposed of the minute we had the technology, minus a few now-niche genres that rely on it. It was gradual, but mass market games as early as Zork in 1981, had save schemes.
yes, i HATED that, and don’t think I ever finished any of those games.
that was not a good thing.
And you’re forgetting that was a holdover from arcades designed solely to part people from their money.
Zelda: Pwr off Rst. Must ensure progress is saved. Far end of the spectrum: Sewer Shark. Fuck that game, I didn’t want that beach life anyhow.
I mean personally I don’t have any issues with an easy mode in games, casual play is nice when you come back home from work half dead. Silksong is advertised as a soulslike though. Feels a little counterintuitive to take away the aspects that define a soulslike, even if it makes the game accessible to a wider audience.
For me though, a lot of Souls games are about opening shortcuts and then running past anything left to get another go at the bosses.
You can’t reliably do that in 2 though with the sheer amount of ganking enemies.
Yeah, I wasn’t fond of 2. Although you could just kill them 12 times and never have them respawn. Quite tedious, especially in the DLC.
I think it’s a great game for veterans who like challenges like myself.
But I have to call out team Cherry for their interviews: They said they wanted anyone to be able to pick up this as their first Hollow Knight game and just start playing… Sorry, but, bullshit. the difficulty ramp is too quick, double damage comes out to early and the boss fights get more challenging quickly. See the weaver for instance, a fight I’d place around the difficulty of Grimm, but there’s double damage and you probably only have 5 health.
Also they mentioned part of the game’s difficulty was due to Hornet’s competence and utility… Ghost is canonically a better fighter than Hornet, so by that logic they should have made the game easier (yes I’m being silly about this part).
Didn’t personally watch the interview in question (or forgot by now) so I don’t know what they meant, but it definitely feels like lore wise Silksong can stand as an independent game with what I’ve discovered so far.
Regarding difficulty, Hollow Knight isn’t the only game that could have prepared you for Silksong I think.
I think what it helps a lot with is familiarity and mindset. The overall game loop is very similar.
That said, I think it’s wise to give HK a try before buying Silksong. It’s a cheaper game, worth playing through if you’re into these kinds of experiences and if you don’t enjoy it, chances are Silksong will not be much fun for you either.
I think its fine for a player new to the series but you’ve got to the type of person that is willing to learn and willing to die over and over. For people who play these kinds of games its not insane to expect them to pick it up.
I spent 3 hours stuck on one boss fight.
In most games, finally beating it would have me saying “thank fuck its over”.
In silksong, I’m saying “fuck yeah that was a good boss”. It’s a very different feeling, and one that I haven’t had the pleasure of enjoying in quite some time.
That said.
I think both hollow knight and silksong should have easy modes. It would be fine. It doesn’t hurt me any that someone else can have an easier time. People need to remember that video games are entertainment, and the sweaty “hardcore gamers” can fuck off with their usual judgemental elitism.
This is exactly it. I think the game is a goddamn masterpiece. The most infuriating fights feel like huge accomplishments, not just relief. Phenomenal game all around, but that difficulty curve isn’t for everyone. I can say the same about any Soulsborne game, love them to death but it’s definitely too much for some folks. Difficulty options are a good thing, if a compromise has to be made just have it disable achievements or w/e.
is nobody going to define what “runbacks” are?
I’m guessing it’s something like when you lose to a boss you have to travel a senselessly difficult and long way back to the boss to try again?
That does sound annoying and I hate when I even have to sit through a cutscene on each retry of a boss…
Unskippable cut scenes should be dragged into the street and shot.
That’s exactly it. The runbacks aren’t too long in this game despite all the complaints, but some of them are tricky and can get annoying if you keep dying 10 seconds into a fight.
Most runbacks aren’t too bad, but fuck the Bilewater one. That shit was too hard and annoying. I had less trouble with the First Sinner than that boss.
All the homies hate bilewater, actual dogshit even with the shortcut
The devs looked at blight town from dark souls 1 and thought ‘we can do worse’. It really is a nightmare but somehow I killed the boss first try in the end
Lucky! I had to try more than ten times due to unlucky behavior in the waves before the boss, and finally managed to win only by using tools.
There have been several boss fights so far where I die to the path to the boss more than the boss itself and it takes way longer to get to the boss than actually beating it.
That being said though, I do think there’s some merit to runbacks as an actual consequence for failure. I definitely strategize more cautiously because of it.
I mean, there are some really bad runbacks, but yeah most of them are fine.
How is it compared to HK?
This is the only thing I wanted to know from reviews, for whether or not to bother with Silksong. I love difficult boss fights, but cannot be arsed to spend more than half a minute doing a tedious chore in order to actually redo boss fights.
The worst one I’ve encountered apparently has a secret bench somewhere that makes it much better, and the second worst (the runback that I think everyone is talking about) is about as long as the runback to crystal guardian I think.
So it’s basically the standard platformer formula going back three or more decades?
No, just those with bad level design. Nine Sols has plenty of challenging boss fights, zero run back. Same with Sekiro, and most newer titles.
More like the Dark Souls formula of having to trek through heaps of enemies and traps to get back to the boss. Including the whole “lose all of your money on death” thing.
Modern from games barely have run backs anymore. Atleast in souls game you can bank your currency into stats or buy consumables, you can’t reliably do that in SS.
Yes you can! There’s plenty of places where you can turn prayer beads into consumable chains.
Some of these mother fuckers never dealt with nosk and it shows.
Exactly. Lots of bosses don’t have convenient save points nearby, so you’re forced to walk back from the save point every time. And many of the treks are either long or just outright annoying (cheesy enemies, obstacle courses, etc). It’s like the 5 Minute Long Unskippable Cutscene’s more annoying older brother, because this unskippable cutscene requires actual gameplay and focus.
Hot take here, but I don’t mind them. Exactly because they take focus. They tell me when it’s time for a break. If I’m not up for the runback, then I’m not up for aother attempt at the boss.
Eh, make it optional. On hard difficulty make it a thing, medium difficulty allow it to be skipped.
Why? If you can’t get through that, you aren’t going to beat the boss.
I haven’t played silksong, but I’m just going off other games in the past for my experience.
If you make it through the hallway of meaningless denizens that just waste time and get to the boss, then die to the boss… Why waste time going through the meaningless denizens again to challenge the boss?
I can see it on higher difficulties when you need to make sure you get through the meaningless denizens perfectly in order to preserve your health and resources to have a better chance of defeating the boss.
But when you just want to experience the story on lower difficulty why make the denizens less powerful to make the boss easier when you can instead just put the save point in front of the boss in instead of the denizens? You’ve already made it through the denizens, it’s not like you’re skipping content.
Because if you can’t make it through the denizens, you can’t make it through the boss. It’s a filter.
It’s not that you can’t make it through the denizens, making it through the denizens is usually easy. It’s just a waste of time for the most part.
What a weird take. It’s about respecting the players’ time. Making it through the denizens to the boss is not challenging whatsoever. Why would you think it is? It’s just tedious, and bad level design.
I’m loving it, and the runbacks and difficulty just feel like standard metroidvania to me. Yeah, it takes time and caution, but that’s just the genre.
Since when do metroidvanias not have save points right outside boss rooms? That’s been the standard since symphony of the night at least…
They haven’t really been a thing in either Metroid or Castlevania for a long time, interestingly.
Doesn’t metroid only have save rooms?
Yes? http://metroid.retropixel.net/games/metroid3/metroid3_map.gif
Notice how there is always one close to each boss.
If anything I find the walkbacks much shorter than in the original. There is always a bench 30s/1m away from each boss or tough platforming section. At least so far…
the vastly increased traversal speed also helps mitigate the walkback tedium
It’s definitely fair most of the time. There are one or two places I’ve seen so far where it’s deliberately ramped up (or appears that way at first.)
Yeah I am almost at the end of the act 1 (i think?) and so far the impression is that if something seems to have a long walk or having to repeat a hard parcour section, I didn’t find some hidden bench or shortcut to bypass said parcour section.
In general I can see this game being started as an expansion for HK, the difficulty is quite high and the curve steeper, but I can’t relate with most of the complains so far (the currency maybe a little, but it’s normal IMHO you can’t just shop everything at once from a new vendor you find).
Initially I was put off by the double damage, but the heal being short and x3 I think compensates for it (plus, you can do it mid air etc.).
Yeah the game’s definitely harder than HK was, but by no means impossible. It’s not nearly as difficult as say Elden Ring for a recent-ish example. The true ending final boss didn’t even take me as many tries as Last Judge or that frog fucker lmao
None of the runbacks are egregious either. There’s just about always a bench barely 30-40 seconds away at absolute most.
Groal’s runback is egregious. Even if you find the closest bench.
We should definitely talk about how levying criticism, especially thoughtful criticism, is treated as a personal attack by other people playing the same game. It’s a bizarre form of tribalism.
Steve Bannon recognized exactly this (with gamergate) and harnessed it for his fascist ends.