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."
This is to be expected. Silksong gained so much hype that now you have a bunch of people trying it who are finding out it’s not their thing.
I know people these days are used to early access garbage being shoved out the door as a full release, and are ready to rush to the comments to explain why the game is wrong, but I promise you this is not one of those cases.
So far, every run back I’ve experienced in silksong has a purpose. If it’s not something you enjoy, I recommend not playing the game. But don’t be in that overlap of the Venn Diagram between people who are enjoying the game and people who are complaining they aren’t enjoying the game. Either stop playing, or finish it and then we can talk about its design.
Name one with purpose, then.
There is the big cave with the boss. It is separated in two halves by a long ass platform. There are no enemies, exploration, rewards or challenges on the platform. The sole purpose of it is to make you run right and then left, instead of just facing the boss right away.
If it’s the one I’m thinking of, I barely consider that one a run back. It’s like 40s to get to the boss from the bench. And at that point I the game, I noticed myself start hitting the bounce plants much more consistently after having to do this run many times. Up until then I hadn’t been forced to repeat the same small section yet.
And (staying vague to avoid spoilers), the bench itself was particularly “surprising” specifically because of the long gap without any benches leading up to it, forcing you to repeat the same long platforming/combat sections over and over. Players would not have been “surprised” by it if they weren’t so desperate for a bench.
This is to be expected. Silksong gained so much hype that now you have a bunch of people trying it who are finding out it’s not their thing.
I know people these days are used to early access garbage being shoved out the door as a full release, and are ready to rush to the comments to explain why the game is wrong, but I promise you this is not one of those cases.
So far, every run back I’ve experienced in silksong has a purpose. If it’s not something you enjoy, I recommend not playing the game. But don’t be in that overlap of the Venn Diagram between people who are enjoying the game and people who are complaining they aren’t enjoying the game. Either stop playing, or finish it and then we can talk about its design.
Name one with purpose, then. There is the big cave with the boss. It is separated in two halves by a long ass platform. There are no enemies, exploration, rewards or challenges on the platform. The sole purpose of it is to make you run right and then left, instead of just facing the boss right away.
If it’s the one I’m thinking of, I barely consider that one a run back. It’s like 40s to get to the boss from the bench. And at that point I the game, I noticed myself start hitting the bounce plants much more consistently after having to do this run many times. Up until then I hadn’t been forced to repeat the same small section yet.
And (staying vague to avoid spoilers), the bench itself was particularly “surprising” specifically because of the long gap without any benches leading up to it, forcing you to repeat the same long platforming/combat sections over and over. Players would not have been “surprised” by it if they weren’t so desperate for a bench.