Every time I read about players bitching about difficulty, I wonder why they're so persistent. There's plenty of games out there to play instead. I tried dark souls and realized that kinda game isn't for me. Neither is getting over it, or anything like that. I just want to lean back and relax, and I don't want to mess with tight timings and stuff like that. I just play puzzle games because of that, and I thoroughly enjoy it. Why do they feel the need of forcing themselves through an experience they don't enjoy? FOMO? Bragging rights? I really don't get it.

It depends on the context. Let's say their is a hard boss that you need 10 attempts for. It makes a huge difference if there is a checkpoint before it or if you have to do 5 minutes of chores again (I agree that these are extreme examples...)

I'm fine with the difficulty, but I'm sure a lot of players bought silksong without beating hollow Knight first, and I feel that the game is too hard for someone just getting into the genre. it's unnecessary cruel to new players sometimes imo. someone could enjoy most of the game but be turned away by some of the more frustrating parts, which in my opinion is kinda unfortunate. maybe they bought the game on release and now feel like they are stuck with a game that isn't worth it.

If someone can speedrun the first two chapters in 1:08, it can't be that hard, can it?

Difficulty and fun are orthogonal, one doesn't exclude the other. Look at something like Celeste, it gets brutally difficult in farewell but never feels unfair. A difficult game should motivate the player to get better, and that can happen while still remaining a fun experience. Nine Sols has a difficult combat system, but the combat feels fluid and fast-paced. Learning how to parry an enemy's attacks and get in counter hits feels amazing, also you get lots of meaningful upgrades and rewards from everywhere. Meanwhile in silksong you have a character with insane horizontal movement, then you repeatedly get pushed through narrow vertical platforming sections with flying enemies above, spikes on the sides. Killing a bell guy by agonizingly hitting them 1 hit at a time before they dash away out of reach again is not a fun combat paradigm and doesn't create the power fantasy Hollow Knight excelled at. The boss fights and >!Mt.Fay!< are fantastic but exploring the map just feels frustrating, especially when 90% of zones don't drop any rosaries.

Are tedium and difficulty the same thing?

A game developer can have massive blind spots about their game, feedback can elevate the artist's vision if responded to critically.

Yes, but trying to please everyone can also lead to pleasing no one.

Hmm, fair point.

I think it'll only be "too hard" the first play through. I got every achievement in HK, I'll probably do the same with Silksong, which means eventually I'll be able to beat every boss in order without dying in less than 10 hours. It'll get easier to the point where I'm adding challenges to my game just to stay entertained. Most of the complaints are limited to the early game. After act 1, I didn't really struggle to the same level anymore. I had the masks and abilities I needed to navigate hard fights.

Seriously. I love Hollow Knight and what I have played from Silksong thus far, but this elitist "game must be ultra hard and exclude people that can't do it" shit is and always has been a garbage take as far as I am concerned. Having some sort of option to allow people that aren't that good or have accessibility issues enjoy the game seems like a fine thing. Having those be **optional** should in no way prevent people that like the hard default settings from enjoying the game. Maybe have those options disable getting achievements/trophies if it prevents these elitists from enjoying the game knowing that their "lessers" are also able to enjoy the game.

Holy shit did they do that on their first try? Or did they spend basically the entire time since it came out just grinding those exact levels to dial in as close to perfection as they can? Cos like the rest of us got real jobs

I don't know how long this guy took, but he knew his ways in and out, so one can safely assume he already spent a lot of time in the game.

Why drop rosaries when you get killed in 3 hits (for about all of act 1 at the very least) and come across a dozen enemies that bait and dodge every input you make and spike traps within a couple screens every time you die and you get killed a second time on your runback anyway

I hope they don't nerf anything else. I was grinding through Sister Sledge (or whatever the boss is called) and I'd nearly done it. Then patch 1 came out and I did it first time. I feel robbed of the achievement. Tweaking the rosary economy is _ok_ however there is a clear lore reason why it is less generous initially.

20 minutes of challenge becomes 5 minutes of chores becomes 2 minutes to blaze through flawlessly once you get it down And it breaks you out of the headspace. You can't just dive back in, every attempt has weight, even if not much Also most people who complain about this seem to not understand that this is not random, these are well thought out design decisions. If it feels impossibly hard to just get to the boss, there's probably an easier way. There's tons of shortcuts, there's often an easier route to another bench, and when there isn't the boss is probably an easy one when you're not anxious about having to repeat the section Plus, platforming is a huge aspect of the challenge in itself. Sure, it's annoying chores now, but what happens when you need near perfect movement for long stretches with no platforms to rest on?

I avoided all Silksong articles and posts until I finished Act 1 and probably shouldn't have been surprised by the response, but I was. To me, this threads the needle of that difficulty curve I'm looking for. It's hard but none of my deaths have felt cheap - I made a mistake in my read or hit the wrong button or I'm old and my reflexes are slowing down. The high you get when finally learning the boss patterns and beating them is fantastic although... ::: spoiler act 1 spoiler when I landed the final blow on the Last Judge I dropped my controller and threw my hands in the air only for the corpse to explode and drop me down to one mask. It was 🤌 :::

Maybe mods could be a solution to this?

It really wouldn't take much. Just some accessibility options to address some of the most punishing mechanics would do it. Would be great if mods solved this.

Nine Sols did this perfectly. It's another very hard metroidvania, but it has some options you can enable if you want to that adjust the difficulty in a variety of very tangible ways. I wish that was standard.