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Hollow Knight: Silksong devs address difficulty concerns: “You have choices”
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Silksong makes me want to cry sad tears of defeat. It's so melancholy and difficult sometimes. Yeah, there's the whole 'get good' argument, but there's a lot of arguably unnecessary tedium involved that starts to feel like difficulty just for the sake of being difficult and nothing else. That's definitely been a bit of a detractor for me, as well as a lot of others it seems.The clip I watched the character was going through some Lion King game esque jumping sequence and I immediately knew the game wasn't for me.
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Your basically not even out of the tutorial yet in the grand scheme of things. Shards didn't become a problem for me for example till well past the half way point.I personally have 100% completion and only fell below half my available shards a couple of times. I probably still have most of my shard consumables to restore them when you get low if I had to guess. I used the fire tool a fair bit late game, and the boomerang early game for a couple of fights, but presumably since I was using a crest with only one tool slot I consumed shards slower than the average joe.
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I think twitch drives this a lot. Streamers getting annoyed with the game they’re playing tend to do better on their vods and bring in more people. As a result, people become more and more tolerant to games that are just annoying. Like I understand that some people enjoy the gameplay of soulslikes, but who enjoys run backs?... I do? They're like the most basic manifestation of mastery over a particular section meaningfully impacting my experience. Not only does getting good at a run back let me focus on learning the boss more, but it also increases my general mobility throughout the map as a whole and drastically improves how cool it feels to replay the game and just blow through previously challenging sections.
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Some things in the game definitely piss me off. But I avoid ranting about it because then the game would only be about the bad parts. It can still be a lot of fun if you take it slowly. Big tip for boss fights: turn off the music and it becomes 10x easier. For me the music is way too overdramatic and distracting during a boss fight.
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Too much of Silksong's difficulty is just numbers. Shitty peon enemies hit for two health because fuck you. Touching a boss *while it's stunned* hits for two health because fuck you. And then there's the whole shard system, which straight-up doesn't need to exist since it just makes you never engage with tools. Until you use them to nuke a boss in its final phase, of course, because the alternative is playing RNG roulette against the boss's 3 adds (that each hit for two damage, naturally). It's a great game, but it definitely isn't a perfect game. They need to remove shards, tweak (lower) the power of tools, and adjust outgoing damage (ideally through armor-like upgrades you earn). Oh, and crests were not the right call. We all just use the Reaper (unless we're further exploiting tools with that other crest).Shards are my biggest problem with the game atm. They upped the difficulty significantly, and added this system of tools to compensate, and then punish you for engaging with said tools. Boy I tell you there's nothing I love more than grinding up to the maximum Shard capacity, getting my ass fucked by a boss times in a row, and then having to grind for another half an hour to build up my shards again
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Sucks to be anyone who didn't realize how prohibitively difficult it would be until after the refund period
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I'll repeat a comment I posted on another article. It has been 14 years since Dark Souls and yet, the holy words still stand. Git gud.It's been 14 years since Dark Souls and yet the holy rebuke still stands: I have a fucking job
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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 🤌 :::The bosses are fun The fucking mob wave rooms is way harder than any boss and can suck it.
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>there are instances that are impossible to escape like entirely impossible I expect to see the 100% no hit speedrun hit the internet by the end of the month
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And the idea that every game should be for everyone is the reason why Elden Ring is... kind of a bad game. Great open world, beautiful scenery... bad boss design, which yes — that is the game. Like, think about this in the real world setting. Think about how this hyopthetical would play out, person becomes disabled and has to sit in a wheelchair. Everyone agrees 'it's not fair that they can't walk, no one should walk because this person can't'. Does that make sense to you? Because it doesn't to me, I'm sorry if there are people who can't beat these games — but damn, at some point you have to recognize life isn't fair and just enjoy the shit you do enjoy. If being good at a video game isn't important to you, *ok* that's your prerogative. Do not play the hard video game. But this constant whining about difficulty settings and nerfs is just obnoxious.
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A game developer can have massive blind spots about their game, feedback can elevate the artist's vision if responded to critically.“So, gamer, what did you think about the campfire scene?” “I didn’t get it at all. When they said Earl and his kid were dead and everyone started crying I had no idea who they were.” “Huh? You don’t remember him? He was in the scene where you visit the city gate.” “I haven’t been to the city gate yet.” “…Really? I…oh shit.” With all the interactivity games have, it’s very possible for someone’s session to just not hit the same emotional beats the devs planned out. True for an improperly gated story, as well as for a difficulty curve. Shout out to all the homies that missed the Estus Flask in Dark Souls 2, and who learned nothing revelatory about exploration when they finally came back to it.
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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.Several Soulslikes I’ve played have hidden in accessibility options things like not hitting you for falling into a pit, or not taking resources when you die. I had a fantastic moment with this in Another Crab’s Treasure; I was doing some platforming when Krill glitched off the geometry and fell, killing me in the process. When I respawned, I knew I had tons of microplastics (souls) out there I wanted to save, but also felt frustrated because it wasn’t my fault I died - just bad game coding, as many games have. Plus, the odd positioning meant I might not be able to reach the death spot. Instead, I just went to Accessibility and recovered them that one time; the game was nice enough not to even invalidate any achievements from the brief use.
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That's me with Hollow Knight. I want to finish, but it's frustrating to the point that I give up after 30 minutes with no progress.
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Sucks to be anyone who didn't realize how prohibitively difficult it would be until after the refund periodThis is true. There are lots of reviews out there to read though before making a purchasing decision.
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The way we actually react to that situation is having wheelchair ramps and elevators. (i.e. difficulty settings in games) We don't say "Fuck handicapped people, life isn't fair, it SHOULD suck to be them."You're right, difference being that what you're saying is more akin (following the analogy) to putting wheelchair ramps on a mountain. Silksong is the mountain, git gud and climb it or shut the fuck up.
