Yet another video talking about silksong's difficulty, but this one is from someone who knows what theyre talking about
I agree with a lot in this video, but disagree on one key point. You can go explore somewhere else and get upgrades and stuff.
I really liked this aspect in Elden Ring, where the bosses could get pretty hard, but you could always just go explore. Explore the lands, level up, find cool weapons and upgrades to get really OP. Then return to the boss and kick their ass. Once you’ve put 500 hours into it, you do challenge runs like SL1. But if you only want to put in 100 hours, you can easily beat it, no matter your skill level. The exploration feels great, the world is interesting and there is a lot to find. As compared to the previous Souls games where the game would just put a big roadblock boss in your path and good luck getting past it. Or a game like Nioh that gives you a tutorial boss, with which one struggles a bit but then beats pretty fast, only to almost right away throw in the next boss which is so hard about 70% of people quit on him (according to stats I’ve seen).
However, I feel like this doesn’t apply to Silksong at all. You can go explore and get a whole lot of stuff, but a lot of it seems totally useless? You can get one damage upgrade, which does fuck all (haven’t looked it up, but feels like 15% maybe?). The different crests are really cool, but won’t help you beat bosses. There is maybe 1 full mask or 2? But as everything does 2 damage, that’s only 1 extra hit. The secondary weapons are mostly useless and as the video said, you need to farm resources to be able to use them.
I consider myself pretty good at these kinds of games. Not great, but pretty good. I’ve played the fuck out of DS1, DS3 and Elden Ring. I’ve beaten Nioh 1. I’ve done SL1 runs and all sorts of challenges in DS1, DS3 and Elden Ring, I’ve done randomisers etc. I’ve beaten Hollow Knight 3 times, the third time I did 112%.
For Silk Song I’m about 20 hours in, I’ve beaten Act 1 and did pretty much everything I could find (not spoiling myself on anything). I’m part of the way into Act 2 and I don’t know if I want to play anymore. Every enemy is a bullet sponge, requiring a lot of hits to get out of the way. Everything does so much damage. Simply exploring and finding shit feels like a slog. I’ve had many completely unfair deaths where I got booped by an enemy only to fall into a pit of spikes and die. You go from full health to death very fast. And the bosses just keep on getting more difficult. It feels like a grind instead of fun.
On the other hand, I love the way the game looks, I love the boss music (not as much a fan of the level music, too much atmospheric, too little actual music), I love how smooth it feels to play. And I love the world and want to explore it all. That’s where I disagree with the video, I’m not in the rage quit phase, I’m in the this isn’t fun to play phase.
Maybe I’ll continue, I know I have the skills to beat the game. But if I’m not having fun, what’s even the point of playing anymore?
MimicJar@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It took Silksong coming out for me to identify why I wasn’t a fan of Hollow Knight, and it’s touched on in this video.
It’s the runback.
The Dark Souls series of games have the same “problem”, and it’s why I don’t enjoy them either.
I’m a huge fan of Celeste, Super Meat Boy, the Ori series. When I fail at these games, I’m right back in the action.
I’m not against having to learn boss patterns, I really enjoyed Cuphead because after I’ve failed I’m right back in the action.
And while it’s an easier game by comparison, Shovel Knight was a fun game. The checkpoints were plentifully and I could increase the difficulty by destroying them.
But when I played Hollow Knight I reached a point where I was just running to the boss and dying. Then again. And again. And again. I wasn’t getting better. And the time it took to get back just took too long and wasn’t fun. It wasn’t a rage quit. I was having fun at one point… But then the game wore me down and eventually it wasn’t.
I don’t think the game needs to change. Although I think adding difficultly modifiers would be a good idea. I played through Metroid Dread on normal difficulty and after beating it was having so much fun I immediately played it again on Hard difficulty. If there were a mode with more checkpoints in Hollow Knight and Silksong I might give them a shot.
Maestro@fedia.io 12 hours ago
For me it wasn't so much te runback, as it was fighting your spirit every time. I hated that. Especially if you died in a difficult platforming section. It only made it more difficult
Auth@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
I think the runback is important. When you instantly spawn back in the fight you’re basically banging your head on the boss with zero pressure until you beat it. But with the runback in darksouls you’re forced to reset after each failed attempt and fight your way back. It makes boss fights feel more like boss fights in my opinion because there is that pressure of being sent back to the bonfire if you make a mistake against this powerful enemy.
MimicJar@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
I think the run back is fun for some people and I think the game should deliver the best version they can for those people. For me, it’s just not fun. The reward is smaller than the frustration it causes.
Wawe@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Same, this is why I like Hyper Light Drifter. Boss fights are hard, but when die you are instantly back at the fight.
I tried playing the Titan Souls but it was really annoying game. It is a boss rush game where both you are boss die in one hit. So some times you can die instantly when boss fight starts. Issue is that there is really long load times and you have to walk back to boss (and there isn’t even combat). Some times walking back to the boss takes longer than the time you fought the boss.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
I think the runback is important to give you time to think. You can repeatedly attempt a difficult section of a game with a ton of checkpoints and get through it without actually learning it properly. You essentially get lucky that your hands do the right thing just enough to get by.
Imagine going to a piano recital where the person keeps messing up and repeating a difficult passage of the music, never actually being able to play the entire thing without making a mistake! That’s just not very impressive!
The goal of playing a difficult game should be to improve your skills and get better, figure out new strategies and use them in battle, not merely reach the end.
itsprobablyfine@sh.itjust.works 25 minutes ago
I mean if I’m going to spend time practicing something it’s certainly going to be an instrument and not a video game.
Patches@ttrpg.network 22 hours ago
And here I thought the goal of playing a game was to enjoy my limited free time.
BunScientist@lemmy.zip 19 hours ago
most runbacks are nothing but time wasters, some are platforming challenges and others are avoid the enemies in the way which you’ve avoided plenty of times before if you are having actual problems with the boss.
bluelander@lemmy.ml 22 hours ago
Very well stated, and echoes my sentiment exactly.
My game time is precious to me and sitting with that feeling of failure while I waste time just getting back to zero feels bad to me. I’d rather be, you know, making some sort of progress.
It’s a gorgeous game, very lovingly crafted. But I would cheer for some built in accessibility options akin to the most recent Ninja Gaiden that let me dial in the experience I want.
BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Exactly, as an adult with a job I have very little time to game as is, the last thing I need is losing progress and then having to grind through a part of the game I’ve been through already many times till I reach a difficult boss battle, just auto save the game at critical check points so people can continue from where they last failed quickly