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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2236 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 5, 2025

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After seven long years, Hollow Knight: Silksong released and people could finally play it crashed Steam for several hours after which people could finally play it.

You'll remember that Dark Souls (2011) started a storm of Dark Souls buts -- Dark Souls but Scifi, Dark Souls but Roguelike, Dark Souls but Cooking Mama, etc. Of these, to my knowledge, the only pure success was Hollow Knight. (But Metroidvania.) It captured Dark Souls 1's best feature, which was a feeling of going on an expedition into the deep unknown, with no idea how to get back home. Likewise in Hollow Knight, very commonly players clear the game's tutorial zone and end up falling into a late game spiders' nest a hundred miles underground. Or swim through a hole in wall, but get lost in a complex sewer system with an abandoned city underneath. Or mess around platforming and find a secret level hidden above the cliffs of the starter village. The story, vibe, and lore were also very Dark Souls, although this is mostly because Hollow Knight just plain ripped it off.

Five hours in, I'm enjoying myself but I'm disappointed. It's ironically the exact same disappointment of Dark Souls 2. Silksong is much more linear and railroaded; the difficulty, even in these early areas, is a step up from the original, and this is mainly accomplished but lower player health, higher enemy health, and the liberal use of gank squads. And I suspect Silksong won't pull off a nifty meta-narrative like DS2 did, or at least not with such gravitas or panache.

We'll see if the game opens up once I reach the citadel, or once I finally get a freaking health or damage upgrade. Anyone else playing this? (Or any other Soulslike or Metroidvania, I guess)

Update on Silksong.

The conversation around this game is getting on my nerves. Camps have divided over whether Silksong is too hard (double damage, runbacks) or just right (get good). Ultimately difficulty is up to preference. No one is going to convince anyone here, although people denying Silksong is harder are pretty annoying. But no one is talking about Silksong being a different genre than Hollow Knight. That seems important. Am I taking crazy pills?

The core conceit of Metroidvanias is exploration yields power. You have a freeform world and can explore many different areas. As you find collectibles and beat bosses, your avatar strength increases. You unlock new areas, which open up new bosses and powerups, which in turn open up new areas, etc. Not so in Silksong.

First off, the area progression is almost entirely linear. You have one or two optional areas like Hunter's March. But really, you're advancing down the critical path like a regular action platformer.

Second, your avatar strength is barely increasing, and not at all due to exploration or boss-beating. If you comb every area for hidden walls, you can maybe find enough masks to increase your health from 5 pips to 6 pips by Act Two. But since most enemies and environmental hazards do two damage, that isn't an upgrade. As for your damage output, you are gifted a small sword upgrade at a set point in the story about 10 hours in. But since all the enemies from that linear point on get twice as tanky, that's not an upgrade. And there's no incentive to backtrack, so...?

All crests or tools you get are sidegrades. They unlock other gameplay styles according to your preference. I've mostly ignored them.

Weirdly you do get a few things that feel like Metroidvania "door-opening" moves (See: the Drifter's Cloak or Silk Spear). But they end up only being used to advance from the area you find them in. Want to backtrack? The door-opening moves don't open anything in old zones. And later levels forget about them. (Why didn't Team Cherry put steam updrafts in later levels at least? That was fun!)

At hour thirteen, I don't feel my hornet is meaningfully stronger or more capable than at hour two. Instead, the last eleven hours have been a sequence of challenge levels.

Conclusion: Silksong is in practice closer in genre to something like Super Meat Boy or I Wanna Be the Guy than Hollow Knight. The trappings of a Metroidvania are here, but the substance isn't. I feel like this change is more important that just 'second game harder', no?

This development does not surprise me in the least, given how the tail end of my playtime in Hollow Knight was mostly just a continuous escalation of challenge for the sake of challenge. I liked the game for what it was up to a point, especially for the exploration, but the exclusive focus on high-end skill checks in the boss rush or extreme platforming sequences at the end had me check out. That Silksong looks more like that and less like the open-world exploration game that the earlier parts of HK were like seems consistent with what the devs of HK already liked to turn their game into.

This development does not surprise me in the least, given how the tail end of my playtime in Hollow Knight was mostly just a continuous escalation of challenge for the sake of challenge. I liked the game for what it was up to a point, especially for the exploration, but the exclusive focus on high-end skill checks in the boss rush or extreme platforming sequences at the end had me check out.

I had the same experience of HK. The game was all roses until I maxed out my knight. Then, suddenly, to reach the ending I apparently had play a masocore platformer and a bullet hell game? Why? I checked out and watched the ending cutscene online.

Honestly, I didn't hold this against Hollow Knight. But it seems Team Cherry wanted to make a sequel to the part of their game I actually didn't like. Shame.

I only just stumbled across this post, but I feel like this deserves correction. The Path of Pain and Absolute Radiance are both very optional, intentionally brutal content. The canonical good ending only requires you to defeat normal Radiance (after fighting the Hollow Knight), which is a bit tricky but nothing compared to what you linked. It sounds like you checked some guides, misinterpreted them, then gave up prematurely?

No, I agree with @popocatepetl. AFAIK getting the good ending requires doing a bunch of ‘optional’ bosses to power up the dream nail, then going through super-meat-boy style platforming in the White Palace to get the Void Heart, then fighting two difficult bosses in a row.

I beat the ‘final’ boss, felt kind of good about it, looked the game up online and got told about all the other bullshit I was meant to do and gave up.

I liked HW for the metroidvania exploration, but Team Cherry seems far more invested in super-hard bosses and platforming.

But it seems Team Cherry wanted to make a sequel to the part of their game I actually didn't like. Shame.

Agree completely. I don’t think they realised that this wasn’t what appealed to many players.

From the wiki: "Behind a breakable wall on your left is the entrance to the Path of Pain - an optional and particularly hard area. Note that beating this area isn't required for the true ending."

Yes, you do have to do some platforming in the White Palace. But you do not even have to find, let alone complete, the insane secret section that's showcased in the linked video.

Sorry, I expressed myself poorly. You are factually correct that the Path of Pain and Absolute Radiance are optional.

I agree with the previous poster in the sense that you have to fight some pretty bullet-hellish bosses and do some pretty gnarly platforming to get the chance to fight ordinary Radiance, and that I noped out on hearing this.

Fair enough! It's definitely a hard game.

There are three major endings in the game, ranked from earliest/easiest to hardest. I'll spoil them just in case.

  1. You kill the three dreamers and then the Hollow Knight. Doable with mid-level upgrades, but might feel hard at that point. You probably won't have discovered the entire map.
  2. You awaken the Dream Nail, requiring defeating some combination of easy-ish Warrior Dreams and harder versions of existing bosses, then collect the Void Heart (the only obstacle of note is the aforementioned platforming section), then kill Hollow Knight followed by Radiance. At that point, if you've been exploring you should have enough upgrades that Hollow Knight is barely a challenge, especially since you're fully healed on entering the Radiance fight anyway. This is the "canon" ending that Silksong takes over from.
  3. You find and kill every boss in the game, then complete a boss rush where you fight all of them in a row, with a few opportunities to get a full heal, capstoned by a stronger Radiance. This is pretty much the 100% completionist ending and is not for regular players. Solksong does not have this kind of challenge implemented as of now.

I find it strange to complain about platforming in favor of metroidvania exploration, because as far as I remember there are more than a few exploration rewards in HK that are locked behind platforming.

In my experience Silksong is quite heavy not on hard bosses but hard "gauntlets", i.e. the multiple waves of enemies arenas. But those can be trivialized by tool spam if you haven't been zeroing out your shard stash all the time.

Silksong does not have this kind of challenge implemented as of now.

Yeah, Hollow Knight also didn't have the Pantheons (boss rush) until the DLC came out. And while the first four (much much much easier) Pantheons contribute to the final 112% completion percentage, the fifth one with that ending does not. It really is intended to be optional content. (There IS an achievement for it, though.)

I haven't finished all Silksong's extra content yet, but I found the bosses to be tough but fair - especially if you count this as a soulslike, which IMHO is a genre rife with badly-designed overtuned bosses. I would cite Nine Sols, another recent metroidvania, as an example of how NOT to do it.

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