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> Silksong as a game should not exist. It is so brutally difficult that it stretches the very definition of the word "game". Games are supposed to be fun. They

> Silksong as a game should not exist. It is so brutally difficult that it stretches the very definition of the word "game". Games are supposed to be fun. They are meant to delight with their whimsy. Sometimes, yes, they are meant to be challenging. But that challenge is in service of fun. Games, more than any other form of entertainment, offer skill challenges. As they've become more popular they've gotten better about offering spectacle also. Some people play games mostly for skill mastery, others play games mostly for spectacle. This is a more nuanced distinction than "hardcore" vs "casual" - which fails to capture skill mastery extremists who are barely even gamers because they only play one game, or spectacle extremists who could hardly be called casual because they make gaming their entire life. Most people care about both, but may care more about one side or another. Some games cater to one side or the other, and some games, like Hollow Knight and Silksong, achieve excellence at both.

TriangleEdge 1y ago
Spoilers: Silksong has arenas with 3 mobs that throw discs plus you. Idk about you, but I can't track 7 things moving at once. This isn't fun. Nor is it challenging, you just have to get lucky. I like Silksong, but the only way some the bosses were made challenging was because of constant adds. Hollow Knight rarely had this.
- crooked-v 1y ago
  Silksong has the basic issue that it was effectively designed as extended content for people who had already beaten the secret harder stuff in Hollow Knight, rather than as its own game or even as a sequel for people who had "just" beaten the basic game in HK.
  - yladiz 1y ago
    I think that’s a slightly uncharitable take. Yes, it was originally DLC, and yes it is unforgiving, but it’s nowhere near as hard as the White Palace from the first game, and it’s not brutally punishing (you are quite agile and get good upgrades pretty early on).
    - foresterre 1y ago
      I felt that the beginning of the game is pretty punishing, exactly because you don't have these movement abilities yet. After getting Swift Step (dash), the game became quite doable. Luckily you get dash a lot faster than in the original game, although I would say, in Silksong it's more a necessity. I went through Hunter's March without abilities and initially I hated the diagonal pogo jumps. It took a night's sleep to reset my mind, and learn pogo-ing for real. That also was the lesson I needed to go forward: take your time, consciously clear the environment, and learn the movesets. I have a lot of hours in the original game, and was way too used to sprinting through the environment.
      - gyomu 1y ago
        Most of the pogos don't require the full diagonal range, you can just trigger the attack when you're really close to the target, which makes it almost a regular downwards jump.
        boppo1 1y ago
        Yeah, this was the big insight for me.
        sunrunner 1y ago
        And to add, gliding down to allow yourself more time to adjust. It seemed too good to be true first, now I think working exactly as intended.
  - gyomu 1y ago
    Everyone repeats this, but is there any information that confirms it? Yes, it started as a DLC for Hollow Knight - but the devs have known for the past 5 years that it would be a standalone sequel. Is there any evidence that they designed it as "extended content for people who had already beaten the secret harder stuff", rather than approached it as a game on its own right?
    - sunrunner 1y ago
      A lot of people coming to Silksong having played Hollow Knight seems to be saying this, but also seem to have forgotten that pretty much exactly the same things were said about Hollow Knight when it first came out over eight years ago. Almost like the collective memory of Hollow Knight's difficulty has dulled over time as people have, over the eight years, dare I say it, git good... Are there things that are measurably more difficult? Perhaps. Common enemies can now do two masks worth of damage which before was relegated to boss specials, so environments feel more dangerous. This has always been a significant part of the early game, as an extra mask in Hollow Knight was significant enough to keep you safer from regular enemies, but in Silksong once you get hold of an extra mask you go from being able to be killed in three hits to...being able to be killed in three hits. So I think there are things that make it feel tougher. At the same time though, all the same things were said before about the difficulty, about not knowing where to go (Silksong gives even fewer clues I'd say), but people persisted through areas, learnt boss patterns, and eventually just learnt the game up until P5. And in a few years the collective memory of Silksong's early game difficulty will have gone as people adapted to it.
      - slightwinder 1y ago
        It's less that it's harder, but simply very annoying. It has so many broken, twisted concepts even from the beginning. This makes it really not fun to experience, which then makes it's harder to play. It's obvious why Team Cherry didn't allow pre-sale reviews. It will be interesting to see how successful it will stay in a month, and next year.
  - optionalsquid 1y ago
    At one point (2020) they did intend for the difficulty to be similar to Hollow Knight: > So Team Cherry is not out to make a more difficult sequel, then: they're hoping for it to be a "comparable" test of skill to Hollow Knight, Pellen says, while Gibson explains that starting with the clean slate of an entirely new kingdom with its own lore and new characters is another way in which Silksong is designed to be "a perfect jumping-on point for new players. We're trying to be really, really mindful that we want this to be a game that new people can come into, and experience as their first Hollow Knight game — that it sits alongside the original game, and the difficulty also sits alongside the game in that way." https://www.reddit.com/r/metroidvania/comments/oebdg6/the_hollow_knight_silksong_edge_interview/ https://www.reddit.com/r/metroidvania/comments/oebdg6/the_ho...
- SamoyedFurFluff 1y ago
  Mentally what you need to do is prioritize killing adds once you’ve memorized the avoidance of the boss pattern. Additionally, a heavy use of tools is immensely helpful in removing adds before it becomes overwhelming.
- sniffers 1y ago
  It's hard, but I think you are projecting your own experience here a bit. Many players are able to track these things and come up with strategies to minimize the impacts of the adds (changing loads, altering movement, planning encounters, etc.) There's much more elegance to the design than you are giving it credit for, it just is expecting you engage with the entire toolkit.
- enqk 1y ago
  Have you ever seen a bullet hell shooter?
- testdelacc1 1y ago
  Have you tried turning the “Backer Credits” setting on? The game reportedly becomes substantially easier afterwards. Source - https://youtu.be/1rsWTBGY_cY?t=777 https://youtu.be/1rsWTBGY_cY?t=777
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - adamors 1y ago
    Rare to see Dunkey mentioned on HN, lovely.
- marginalia_nu 1y ago
  You can just attack the projectiles though. You don't have to dodge them.
- aiven 1y ago
  skill issue game just trying to tell that brute force solution might not work. use tools, use specific charms, use crests that are better suited for specific arena/boss. some tools (such as spiked traps) can literally one shot most mobs and leave you 1v1 with a boss. dont give up, use your brain, hacker
  - gyomu 1y ago
    so much this Most AAA videogames seem to teach people "mash attack button until enemy goes away, move forward to the next shiny dot on the map, repeat". It's crazy that when a game asks the player to actually take stock of the situation and learn from their mistakes, it gets billed as "brutally difficult". For what it's worth, I find Silksong challenging, but I really don't get the "impossible difficulty" complaints. I think I'm about halfway through the main game and the most I've spent on a single boss is ~30 minutes. And I don't think I'm a crazy pro gamer with insane reflexes - I play only a few videogames a year (I mostly care about the art), every time I've tried a multiplayer FPS I get utterly destroyed by other players.
- taneq 1y ago
  This is making me want to go back and try again to beat Hollow Knight (I got up to the Mantis Lords and that... teleporting warlock guy... looked it up, I'm thinking of Soul Master.) I'm pretty sure I remember things of this sort of difficulty level in it, too. The fights were brutally hard, but still felt fair.
  - BobaFloutist 1y ago
    Mantis lords is a fantastic boss fight, because it's really hard, but super fair. There's an attack during which you can consistently heal, so once you recognize that it just becomes about mastering the reactions to each of their attacks faster and faster and faster as the fight goes on. It's sooo satisfying.
- raincole 1y ago
  > This isn't fun. Nor is it challenging, you just have to get lucky I understand most people don't find it fun. Neither do I. But saying it's not challenging is just plain wrong. If it were true then the best player would have the same chance to pass it as I do. And it's not the case.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  The older I get the more I find boss fights off putting. I get literally zero satisfaction out of learning whatever pattern you have to learn to perform whatever correct action, at the correct time, you need to defeat a particular boss. It's just a time consuming chore. Edit: the "boss" escape sequences in the Ori games were also entirely frustrating and and unsatisfying to me.
  - scrollaway 1y ago
    Your post could be reworded to talk about learning just any musical instrument.
    - rkomorn 1y ago
      I think learning to play a musical instrument would actually give me more satisfaction because it would open more doors towards creativity. But it's all personal of course. :) Some people like boss fights (or Souls-like games) and I'm happy for them. I just would be happy with a "bypass this" button.
    - BalinKing 1y ago
      I disagree, because with an instrument you actually get music out at the end, which is enjoyable in its own right on top of the satisfaction of executing the technical challenge of playing it. A more akin analogy, in my opinion, would be “any musical instrument which has been artificially muted”—this could definitely still be fun, and indeed I’ve played my keyboard without sound before, but it really doesn’t compare.
      - simoncion 1y ago
        > I disagree, because with an instrument you actually get music out at the end... You've clearly never heard me playing my horns! I never found the end result of all that practice to be rewarding (as the kids seem to say these days), [0] and -brother- I tried for years and years. So, I switched hobbies to video games and have a leisure-time activity that I like a lot more. [0] Those unfortunate enough to be within earshot were usually fairly unimpressed with the result, so this isn't just me shittalking myself.
- animuchan 1y ago
  Where it says "you just have to get lucky", there's clearly a typo. The correct text reads, "you just have to get good."
- zimpenfish 1y ago
  > you just have to get lucky. You can definitely learn and not have to rely on luck - watch a video of someone good playing a bullet hell shooter[0] and getting a perfect score with no hits. There is not a world that exists in which you could accomplish that with luck. [0] Touhou is probably the definitive example here. Something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY7QEEnSGVU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY7QEEnSGVU
  - whatevaa 1y ago
    I believe that our brains are not the same in such aspects and some people can, and some just can't.
  - ashleyn 1y ago
    I'm sure it isn't luck but at the same time I watch these things and genuinely don't understand how they do it. Particularly the whole thing of seeing and reacting that quick. It reminds me of how bad I am with rhythm games. I can't even get through Easy on DDR because the arrows move too fast. It's like I can't read them and react quick enough. Typically I do much better with games where the point isn't to see, process, and react within milliseconds. I definitely think there is a type of brain that can play games like these and another type that can't, and I'm in the latter.
    - diggan 1y ago
      I think you can train it, at least that's what I did with Stepmania in the early 2000s. I was watching in awe how people could manage to get perfect scores when I could hardly see the steps before they were at the bottom of the screen. Eventually I learned to stop looking at the individual entities, and just "stare in the middle" kind of, and you stop "looking" and start sensing in a way, without looking directly at them. They might just flash by, but it's enough for your brain to be able to at least figure out what right finger to use. Then it's just a bunch of training :) I think it's fairly established that "reaction time" is something you can train, you just need to always be at the limit and slowly make it faster and faster. Same with speed-reading/listening I think.
    - 1y ago
- DanielVZ 1y ago
  You don’t have to keep track of seven things at once. You need to keep track of your own character and react accordingly. I understand that the game is hard but it adds a ton of fun to my taste.
ranguna 1y ago
I believe you have given up and found out that the game is not for you. That's not a bad thing, it's just you finding out things about yourself. Move on to another game and let other players have fun with this one. Regards, Someone who has never player HK and doesn't plan to
- furyofantares 1y ago
  Did you reply to that wrong post?
  - ranguna 1y ago
    Indeed I have, not sure how that happened. Thanks!
lightedman 1y ago
"Silksong as a game should not exist. It is so brutally difficult that it stretches the very definition of the word "game"." Someone get that article writer a copy of Battletoads.
dfxm12 1y ago
After reactions to Elden Ring, I can't blindly trust people saying a game is not enjoyable because it is too "difficult".
- wrinkl3 1y ago
  Whenever a game of this kind has a massive launch, a bunch of criticism will come from people who are either unfamiliar with the genre or just plainly don't enjoy it. That said, there's a very legitimate conversation to be had about difficulty in Elden Ring's DLC - I love FROM games and I genuinely couldn't enjoy the final bosses of SOTE due to the amount of bullshit they throw at you. In general these games have an issue where each new entry (1) gives the player more tools to use, and thus needs to up the difficulty to balance it out, and (2) caters to a fanbase of people who have spent hundreds of hours playing the previous games, and thus expect increased challenge. The end result is that if you go to Dark Souls 3 after completing SOTE you'll be pretty amazed by how easy that game is by comparison.
- Konnstann 1y ago
  Elden Ring is a great example of a game where the difficulty is largely self-imposed, if you play using all the tools the devs give you like summons, magic, certain weapons, etc the game becomes almost trivialized. Not saying that's a bad thing necessarily, in fact the opposite, I think FromSoft's "difficulty slider" replacement is one of the best ways of going about it, however I think the difficulty overall is overstated by the "real souls players" who hamper themselves so as to experience all of the mechanics.
corimaith 1y ago
I think if you place games in the category as tourism in so far as the "safari experience", then it makes decisions clearer that the difficulty is part of the experience as the artist's intention. Silksong is not particularly that hard either with retrospect to the wider genre with staples like Megaman.
- buellerbueller 1y ago
  Is Mega Man a metroidvania? I could kinda see it.
the_af 1y ago
> some games, like Hollow Knight and Silksong, achieve excellence at both. I disagree. I appreciate the skill that went into making Hollow Knight, but to me it felt too much like work, too repetitive, too grindy, too difficult. Not an enjoyable experience for me at all :(
pepoluan 1y ago
It's unfair that you cut off the quote there. Because in the next paragraphs: > And yet. > I have played this game obsessively since it came out. I cannot put it down... This game is incredible, I say to myself as a small grub brutally murders me for the mistake of touching its seemingly soft and cuddly body.
- furyofantares 1y ago
  I am in agreement with the author regarding Silksong. It's the author's understanding about games in general that seems to have a bit of a blind spot (despite being deep in other ways). These games may be masterpieces but they don't come out of nowhere, there are many other games where skill mastery is much or even most of the appeal. I also somewhat wanted to pick on the line that the Mario games are the only other games that put as much care into how you traverse the world.
ranguna 1y ago
I believe you have given up and found out that the game is not for you. That's not a bad thing, it's just you finding out things about yourself. Move on to another game and let other players have fun with this one. Regards, Someone who has never player HK and doesn't plan to

TriangleEdge 1y ago

Spoilers: Silksong has arenas with 3 mobs that throw discs plus you. Idk about you, but I can't track 7 things moving at once. This isn't fun. Nor is it challenging, you just have to get lucky. I like Silksong, but the only way some the bosses were made challenging was because of constant adds. Hollow Knight rarely had this.

crooked-v 1y ago
Silksong has the basic issue that it was effectively designed as extended content for people who had already beaten the secret harder stuff in Hollow Knight, rather than as its own game or even as a sequel for people who had "just" beaten the basic game in HK.
- yladiz 1y ago
  I think that’s a slightly uncharitable take. Yes, it was originally DLC, and yes it is unforgiving, but it’s nowhere near as hard as the White Palace from the first game, and it’s not brutally punishing (you are quite agile and get good upgrades pretty early on).
  - foresterre 1y ago
    I felt that the beginning of the game is pretty punishing, exactly because you don't have these movement abilities yet. After getting Swift Step (dash), the game became quite doable. Luckily you get dash a lot faster than in the original game, although I would say, in Silksong it's more a necessity. I went through Hunter's March without abilities and initially I hated the diagonal pogo jumps. It took a night's sleep to reset my mind, and learn pogo-ing for real. That also was the lesson I needed to go forward: take your time, consciously clear the environment, and learn the movesets. I have a lot of hours in the original game, and was way too used to sprinting through the environment.
    - gyomu 1y ago
      Most of the pogos don't require the full diagonal range, you can just trigger the attack when you're really close to the target, which makes it almost a regular downwards jump.
      - boppo1 1y ago
        Yeah, this was the big insight for me.
        sunrunner 1y ago
        And to add, gliding down to allow yourself more time to adjust. It seemed too good to be true first, now I think working exactly as intended.
- gyomu 1y ago
  Everyone repeats this, but is there any information that confirms it? Yes, it started as a DLC for Hollow Knight - but the devs have known for the past 5 years that it would be a standalone sequel. Is there any evidence that they designed it as "extended content for people who had already beaten the secret harder stuff", rather than approached it as a game on its own right?
  - sunrunner 1y ago
    A lot of people coming to Silksong having played Hollow Knight seems to be saying this, but also seem to have forgotten that pretty much exactly the same things were said about Hollow Knight when it first came out over eight years ago. Almost like the collective memory of Hollow Knight's difficulty has dulled over time as people have, over the eight years, dare I say it, git good... Are there things that are measurably more difficult? Perhaps. Common enemies can now do two masks worth of damage which before was relegated to boss specials, so environments feel more dangerous. This has always been a significant part of the early game, as an extra mask in Hollow Knight was significant enough to keep you safer from regular enemies, but in Silksong once you get hold of an extra mask you go from being able to be killed in three hits to...being able to be killed in three hits. So I think there are things that make it feel tougher. At the same time though, all the same things were said before about the difficulty, about not knowing where to go (Silksong gives even fewer clues I'd say), but people persisted through areas, learnt boss patterns, and eventually just learnt the game up until P5. And in a few years the collective memory of Silksong's early game difficulty will have gone as people adapted to it.
    - slightwinder 1y ago
      It's less that it's harder, but simply very annoying. It has so many broken, twisted concepts even from the beginning. This makes it really not fun to experience, which then makes it's harder to play. It's obvious why Team Cherry didn't allow pre-sale reviews. It will be interesting to see how successful it will stay in a month, and next year.
- optionalsquid 1y ago
  At one point (2020) they did intend for the difficulty to be similar to Hollow Knight: > So Team Cherry is not out to make a more difficult sequel, then: they're hoping for it to be a "comparable" test of skill to Hollow Knight, Pellen says, while Gibson explains that starting with the clean slate of an entirely new kingdom with its own lore and new characters is another way in which Silksong is designed to be "a perfect jumping-on point for new players. We're trying to be really, really mindful that we want this to be a game that new people can come into, and experience as their first Hollow Knight game — that it sits alongside the original game, and the difficulty also sits alongside the game in that way." https://www.reddit.com/r/metroidvania/comments/oebdg6/the_hollow_knight_silksong_edge_interview/ https://www.reddit.com/r/metroidvania/comments/oebdg6/the_ho...
SamoyedFurFluff 1y ago
Mentally what you need to do is prioritize killing adds once you’ve memorized the avoidance of the boss pattern. Additionally, a heavy use of tools is immensely helpful in removing adds before it becomes overwhelming.
sniffers 1y ago
It's hard, but I think you are projecting your own experience here a bit. Many players are able to track these things and come up with strategies to minimize the impacts of the adds (changing loads, altering movement, planning encounters, etc.) There's much more elegance to the design than you are giving it credit for, it just is expecting you engage with the entire toolkit.
enqk 1y ago
Have you ever seen a bullet hell shooter?
testdelacc1 1y ago
Have you tried turning the “Backer Credits” setting on? The game reportedly becomes substantially easier afterwards. Source - https://youtu.be/1rsWTBGY_cY?t=777 https://youtu.be/1rsWTBGY_cY?t=777
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- adamors 1y ago
  Rare to see Dunkey mentioned on HN, lovely.
marginalia_nu 1y ago
You can just attack the projectiles though. You don't have to dodge them.
aiven 1y ago
skill issue game just trying to tell that brute force solution might not work. use tools, use specific charms, use crests that are better suited for specific arena/boss. some tools (such as spiked traps) can literally one shot most mobs and leave you 1v1 with a boss. dont give up, use your brain, hacker
- gyomu 1y ago
  so much this Most AAA videogames seem to teach people "mash attack button until enemy goes away, move forward to the next shiny dot on the map, repeat". It's crazy that when a game asks the player to actually take stock of the situation and learn from their mistakes, it gets billed as "brutally difficult". For what it's worth, I find Silksong challenging, but I really don't get the "impossible difficulty" complaints. I think I'm about halfway through the main game and the most I've spent on a single boss is ~30 minutes. And I don't think I'm a crazy pro gamer with insane reflexes - I play only a few videogames a year (I mostly care about the art), every time I've tried a multiplayer FPS I get utterly destroyed by other players.
taneq 1y ago
This is making me want to go back and try again to beat Hollow Knight (I got up to the Mantis Lords and that... teleporting warlock guy... looked it up, I'm thinking of Soul Master.) I'm pretty sure I remember things of this sort of difficulty level in it, too. The fights were brutally hard, but still felt fair.
- BobaFloutist 1y ago
  Mantis lords is a fantastic boss fight, because it's really hard, but super fair. There's an attack during which you can consistently heal, so once you recognize that it just becomes about mastering the reactions to each of their attacks faster and faster and faster as the fight goes on. It's sooo satisfying.
raincole 1y ago
> This isn't fun. Nor is it challenging, you just have to get lucky I understand most people don't find it fun. Neither do I. But saying it's not challenging is just plain wrong. If it were true then the best player would have the same chance to pass it as I do. And it's not the case.
rkomorn 1y ago
The older I get the more I find boss fights off putting. I get literally zero satisfaction out of learning whatever pattern you have to learn to perform whatever correct action, at the correct time, you need to defeat a particular boss. It's just a time consuming chore. Edit: the "boss" escape sequences in the Ori games were also entirely frustrating and and unsatisfying to me.
- scrollaway 1y ago
  Your post could be reworded to talk about learning just any musical instrument.
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    I think learning to play a musical instrument would actually give me more satisfaction because it would open more doors towards creativity. But it's all personal of course. :) Some people like boss fights (or Souls-like games) and I'm happy for them. I just would be happy with a "bypass this" button.
  - BalinKing 1y ago
    I disagree, because with an instrument you actually get music out at the end, which is enjoyable in its own right on top of the satisfaction of executing the technical challenge of playing it. A more akin analogy, in my opinion, would be “any musical instrument which has been artificially muted”—this could definitely still be fun, and indeed I’ve played my keyboard without sound before, but it really doesn’t compare.
    - simoncion 1y ago
      > I disagree, because with an instrument you actually get music out at the end... You've clearly never heard me playing my horns! I never found the end result of all that practice to be rewarding (as the kids seem to say these days), [0] and -brother- I tried for years and years. So, I switched hobbies to video games and have a leisure-time activity that I like a lot more. [0] Those unfortunate enough to be within earshot were usually fairly unimpressed with the result, so this isn't just me shittalking myself.
animuchan 1y ago
Where it says "you just have to get lucky", there's clearly a typo. The correct text reads, "you just have to get good."
zimpenfish 1y ago
> you just have to get lucky. You can definitely learn and not have to rely on luck - watch a video of someone good playing a bullet hell shooter[0] and getting a perfect score with no hits. There is not a world that exists in which you could accomplish that with luck. [0] Touhou is probably the definitive example here. Something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY7QEEnSGVU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY7QEEnSGVU
- whatevaa 1y ago
  I believe that our brains are not the same in such aspects and some people can, and some just can't.
- ashleyn 1y ago
  I'm sure it isn't luck but at the same time I watch these things and genuinely don't understand how they do it. Particularly the whole thing of seeing and reacting that quick. It reminds me of how bad I am with rhythm games. I can't even get through Easy on DDR because the arrows move too fast. It's like I can't read them and react quick enough. Typically I do much better with games where the point isn't to see, process, and react within milliseconds. I definitely think there is a type of brain that can play games like these and another type that can't, and I'm in the latter.
  - diggan 1y ago
    I think you can train it, at least that's what I did with Stepmania in the early 2000s. I was watching in awe how people could manage to get perfect scores when I could hardly see the steps before they were at the bottom of the screen. Eventually I learned to stop looking at the individual entities, and just "stare in the middle" kind of, and you stop "looking" and start sensing in a way, without looking directly at them. They might just flash by, but it's enough for your brain to be able to at least figure out what right finger to use. Then it's just a bunch of training :) I think it's fairly established that "reaction time" is something you can train, you just need to always be at the limit and slowly make it faster and faster. Same with speed-reading/listening I think.
  - 1y ago
DanielVZ 1y ago
You don’t have to keep track of seven things at once. You need to keep track of your own character and react accordingly. I understand that the game is hard but it adds a ton of fun to my taste.

ranguna 1y ago

I believe you have given up and found out that the game is not for you. That's not a bad thing, it's just you finding out things about yourself. Move on to another game and let other players have fun with this one. Regards, Someone who has never player HK and doesn't plan to

furyofantares 1y ago
Did you reply to that wrong post?
- ranguna 1y ago
  Indeed I have, not sure how that happened. Thanks!

lightedman 1y ago

"Silksong as a game should not exist. It is so brutally difficult that it stretches the very definition of the word "game"." Someone get that article writer a copy of Battletoads.

dfxm12 1y ago

After reactions to Elden Ring, I can't blindly trust people saying a game is not enjoyable because it is too "difficult".

wrinkl3 1y ago
Whenever a game of this kind has a massive launch, a bunch of criticism will come from people who are either unfamiliar with the genre or just plainly don't enjoy it. That said, there's a very legitimate conversation to be had about difficulty in Elden Ring's DLC - I love FROM games and I genuinely couldn't enjoy the final bosses of SOTE due to the amount of bullshit they throw at you. In general these games have an issue where each new entry (1) gives the player more tools to use, and thus needs to up the difficulty to balance it out, and (2) caters to a fanbase of people who have spent hundreds of hours playing the previous games, and thus expect increased challenge. The end result is that if you go to Dark Souls 3 after completing SOTE you'll be pretty amazed by how easy that game is by comparison.
Konnstann 1y ago
Elden Ring is a great example of a game where the difficulty is largely self-imposed, if you play using all the tools the devs give you like summons, magic, certain weapons, etc the game becomes almost trivialized. Not saying that's a bad thing necessarily, in fact the opposite, I think FromSoft's "difficulty slider" replacement is one of the best ways of going about it, however I think the difficulty overall is overstated by the "real souls players" who hamper themselves so as to experience all of the mechanics.

corimaith 1y ago

I think if you place games in the category as tourism in so far as the "safari experience", then it makes decisions clearer that the difficulty is part of the experience as the artist's intention. Silksong is not particularly that hard either with retrospect to the wider genre with staples like Megaman.

buellerbueller 1y ago
Is Mega Man a metroidvania? I could kinda see it.

the_af 1y ago

> some games, like Hollow Knight and Silksong, achieve excellence at both. I disagree. I appreciate the skill that went into making Hollow Knight, but to me it felt too much like work, too repetitive, too grindy, too difficult. Not an enjoyable experience for me at all :(

pepoluan 1y ago

It's unfair that you cut off the quote there. Because in the next paragraphs: > And yet. > I have played this game obsessively since it came out. I cannot put it down... This game is incredible, I say to myself as a small grub brutally murders me for the mistake of touching its seemingly soft and cuddly body.

furyofantares 1y ago
I am in agreement with the author regarding Silksong. It's the author's understanding about games in general that seems to have a bit of a blind spot (despite being deep in other ways). These games may be masterpieces but they don't come out of nowhere, there are many other games where skill mastery is much or even most of the appeal. I also somewhat wanted to pick on the line that the Mario games are the only other games that put as much care into how you traverse the world.

ranguna 1y ago