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."
I am returning to Hollow Knight thanks to the Silksong hype. I had dropped it before because I was unsure where I needed to go to progress and was getting sick of running around the map trying to figure out which paths were actually available to me and which needed some equipment I didn’t have. Well, I did figure it out and basically have everything important unlocked so now I am enjoying it again.
If you do pick it up again, I have some advice. First, there’s a relic in an area called the Hive that will give you passive health regen if there’s a long enough gap between instances of damage. This means you can keep messing up a platforming section and as long as you don’t rush it you can heal back after messing up without needing new sources of soul. Second, there are some sections that are traversable with minimal equipment but become trivial with more. Deepnest was really annoying to me when I went through it and I frankly would have probably enjoyed it if I had one really helpful item unlocked (or even just a bit more health). Third, don’t worry too much about money. Normal enemies don’t give you much from farming and I think I’ve run out of stuff to spend it on mostly from other sources. So don’t be afraid to let it go. If you’ve unlocked the fast travel thing, just head back to vendors when you’ve noticed you accumulated a decent amount.
Like I said, I’m enjoying the game again after years away, but I really wish they had a better way of letting you know where you should go next and what isn’t available to you. Needing to go through zones again to check if something is now unlocked or not is tiresome. The pins help but they are not enough, and I didn’t think to reserve certain colors for certain types of obstacles the first time.
There are mechanisms in both games that allow you to remotely retrieve your body if you are desperate not to lose it. Hollow Knight is definitely less forgiving than Silksong in this respect though.
Exploration is a task that has inherent difficulty in the genre, it’s uncommon to have actual points of no return as you describe, but if you can’t see through a particular segment to the next checkpoint, yeah sometimes giving up will cost you. An actual point of no return probably means you’re on the cusp of a sweet new ability though.
I do not like the idea of a mechanic that punishes me if I do choose to explore somewhere else in a genre that is supposed to be about exploration.
I am returning to Hollow Knight thanks to the Silksong hype. I had dropped it before because I was unsure where I needed to go to progress and was getting sick of running around the map trying to figure out which paths were actually available to me and which needed some equipment I didn’t have. Well, I did figure it out and basically have everything important unlocked so now I am enjoying it again.
If you do pick it up again, I have some advice. First, there’s a relic in an area called the Hive that will give you passive health regen if there’s a long enough gap between instances of damage. This means you can keep messing up a platforming section and as long as you don’t rush it you can heal back after messing up without needing new sources of soul. Second, there are some sections that are traversable with minimal equipment but become trivial with more. Deepnest was really annoying to me when I went through it and I frankly would have probably enjoyed it if I had one really helpful item unlocked (or even just a bit more health). Third, don’t worry too much about money. Normal enemies don’t give you much from farming and I think I’ve run out of stuff to spend it on mostly from other sources. So don’t be afraid to let it go. If you’ve unlocked the fast travel thing, just head back to vendors when you’ve noticed you accumulated a decent amount.
Like I said, I’m enjoying the game again after years away, but I really wish they had a better way of letting you know where you should go next and what isn’t available to you. Needing to go through zones again to check if something is now unlocked or not is tiresome. The pins help but they are not enough, and I didn’t think to reserve certain colors for certain types of obstacles the first time.
I did finish the original. But I remained annoyed with this mechanic the whole time.
There are mechanisms in both games that allow you to remotely retrieve your body if you are desperate not to lose it. Hollow Knight is definitely less forgiving than Silksong in this respect though.
Not having the mechanic to begin with would be better than a thing that merely makes it less bad, because even then there’s still an opportunity cost.
Exploration is a task that has inherent difficulty in the genre, it’s uncommon to have actual points of no return as you describe, but if you can’t see through a particular segment to the next checkpoint, yeah sometimes giving up will cost you. An actual point of no return probably means you’re on the cusp of a sweet new ability though.