Silksong: a missed opportunity?

[Norion]

JimmyFantasy said:

Norion said:

Calling Silksong a game for very, very few people is really silly cause the clear majority of the people who have played it have enjoyed it. Putting that aside my views on Silksong are quite abnormal in that while I do think it has flaws and isn't a masterpiece like HK one of my biggest issues with the game is different than almost anyone else's. The most common complaint is about frustration with the difficulty but if anything I found the game disappointedly easy cause nothing in it currently is as hard as the hardest parts of HK like Path of Pain or Absolute Radiance and the Pantheon of Hallownest.

Only really a couple of the bosses in Silksong came close to kicking my ass as hard as the big three in HK did and none of the platforming challenges were as hard as PoP so my single biggest issue is a lack of super hard optional challenges like HK has. In particular after such a long development I was convinced that a Godhome equivalent would be available from the start which would've been amazing and for sure have given me dozens of hours of extra playtime so the the lack of that is a major disappointment but at least once all the DLC is added this issue should be gone.

I do find complaints about the difficulty to generally be a skill issue since a common one the high halls gauntlet took me like two tries and if someone is having a hard time with it they can just leave and come back later when more prepared. Another is I don't get why a boss like Savage Beastfly has become hated since it was a piece of cake compared to Lace 2 and Karmelita.

Another significant issue I have is that the 100% experience wasn't that fun since while HK is super tight Silksong does have quite a bit of fluff for example some quests that just aren't interesting to do. Other than those two issues I found the game overall great and was having a blast with it for most of act 2 so in a few years after more patches and all the DLC is added I'm confident it'll be a strong 9/10 though I doubt it'll become a full on 10/10 like HK.

I'm glad you enjoyed it and that you spent your time with the game well.

Personally, no matter how hard I tried to get to the end, no matter how much I defeated all the mandatory and optional bosses that came my way, no matter how much I tackled the complex platforming challenges (mountain fay, bilewater, etc.), I couldn't help but note that many of the more extreme difficulties—requiring incessant repetition of the bench-to-boss path, farming shards to regain the ability to use extra weapons against bosses, the poor placement of benches, the poor placement of basic enemies, as well as their excessive aggressiveness—were generally due to gaps in the level design or the equipment system, or in the management of the aforementioned shards, the placement of enemies in the levels, and many other small details.

All things that make the experience grueling, even for a hardcore gamer.

The point is that creating a difficult or near-impossible game is extremely easy, because generally during game development, both programmers and playtesters become accustomed to the challenges. The subtle art of game design lies precisely in making the experience consistently enjoyable and finding the perfect balance between player skill and proposed challenges, adding and tweaking small things here and there. It's a complex art that few manage to successfully develop, and ultimately determines whether a game is well-made or not.

Unfortunately, this isn't done in this title, and this is rewarded precisely by those who should have the minimum amount of expertise to do so.

For me I didn't have those sort of issues for example I never had to farm shards since I was usually gaining them at a faster rate than I was using them which made it that a lot of the time I was actually maxed on them though that did lead to the separate issue of a lot of the enemies were sometimes not dropping anything useful when killed unlike HK where Geo is always good to get till the late game. With the offensive tools I tried to not overly rely on them in that I'd only start using them against a boss if I thought I had a good chance of beating it that attempt with the extra help. Against the hardest bosses I'd not really use them at all till I had learned their attack patterns.

The combat in general is the area where Silksong surpasses the original the most I think with Hornet's better moveset and the bosses and even general enemies being significantly more complex on average than the ones in HK. Though it's not perfect since I'd say the worst designed aspect of the game is actually the crest system cause while it's really cool on paper the memory locket mechanic heavily discourages experimentation since I didn't wanna use a crappy new one with all its tool slots locked when I could just use the one I'm already familiar with that has all its slots opened up making it clearly better. As a result I just stuck to the default one the entire time outside of stuff like platforming challenges where the Wanderer crest works better.