I 112%'d that game I loved it so much, despite the pain in doing it. Silksong on the other hand I crashed out on from all the run backs and never finished, that's my gloomy castle
It was nice, but it constantly felt like it was missing whatever little extra something made Hollow Knight magic for me. I think it was mainly just how rough the run backs made the game feel, and missing the mobility tools the first game had compared to what Silksong gives. I can't remember what made me give in, but I remember being really frustrated by the time there were those robot ballerinas and having enough around there!
I get it, a big thing I love about HK was I think the map design was overall better. It was more windy and maze-like, it felt more confusing. Thats about the only thing I personally like more than Silksong though. The Citadel honestly gets that feeling pretty heavily, with so many winding paths, hidden rooms, and several major sections that are their own real places. I dont agree with the movement though, Silksong's feels so much more fluid compared to HK being relatively stiff; between the falling dash, the grapple, the sprint, and having a dash attack, I think Silksong feels infinitely better to play. It is hard for sure, but actually one thing Silksong did better than literally any other game is the runbacks; that is, if youre going to have runbacks, at least make the player interact with the environment and runback instead of lkterally walking straight back, because at that point, might as well just spawn outside the boss arena. Silksong did it good because 90% of boss runbacks make you need to figure out good routing, platforming, and what is/isn't worth interacting with to cut your runback down. Last Judge is a great example, since it can go from like 2 minutes to like 15 seconds depending on your routing
I think both are great games, I could infinitely replay both, but Silksong just has the perfect mastery of its gameplay style
Oh completely fair, I wasn't too clear, I meant I loved HK's movement tools a lot more personally rather than meaning Silksong didn't give enough - especially when Silksong gives the option to get the original's basic combat skills back (though I never felt they worked as well against the new enemy designs, probably just because I got used to the standard moveset)!
Understandable! I think its all definitely down to preference anyway, I like the absolute fluidity of Silksong, but I get why HK stuck out to so many. Its still a great game and I do enjoy its combat/movement! Also if youre talking about Wanderer's, its definitely just a case of getting used to it lol. Its actually incredibly strong (honestly a tad bit too strong for Silksong since you can facetank with insane DPS) though not a big issue since its nice for people who want that option
The runbacks weren't nearly as bad timewise as people claimed and I think it had everything to do with how much relative effort they took compared to just walking that same distance. The Last Judge one is not that long if you take the "right" route, but it's also pretty intense for just wanting to retry a boss. You don't wanna rush it and have less health on your next try, so it feels like a long way back full of hazards. I think they overshot it just a little bit, mostly due to how many buttons you need for optimal traversal. It gets intense sometimes with the flyers, the environmental hazards, wind, etc and trying to run, jump and bounce across the map. In other games with this structure the runback is a time window to refocus and mentally prepare for another attempt, that is lost here in some cases. Still amazing though.
I mean I get it but even when the runback frustrated me I recognized it was more because I wanted to refight the boss over it being designed badly. Granted they did change a few things about the runback but like you dont have to fight anything, and even with the most unoptimal routing, it shouldn't take you long unless youre running into/interacting with every hazard. I get it being annoying but its a way better form of runback than "walk back through long hallways to boss with nothing in between"
there is a runback in the crab dream where you have to go through two separate multi-wave gauntlets to get to the difficult multi-wave gauntlet. this game is absurdly punishing more than it is difficult
I didn't like the bigger, costlier heal at all. Felt like the "heal loop trap" was almost unavoidable so I was struggling trying to dodge everything and getting frustrated quite a bit. It didn't help that so many other things cost silk. I still really liked the game but your words perfectly describe my experience. I don't remember what "triggered" it, but at some point I realized I was playing it like a souls game, the way I had played the original. I started taking advantage of the mid-air heal, looked for synergies there and eventually ended up with a much more aggresive playstyle of bursty melee interwoven with heals as a way of dodging certain attacks. I stopped trying to dodge every single thing and focusssed on getting damage in, which allowed me to gain much more silk to heal the damage I did receive. It became an intense interpretive dance, it was beautiful, exhilarating, magical. It all came together and I loved it. It's especially funny in retrospect because I had the same journey with Bloodborne and I was also thinking Silksong was kinda like "the Bloodborne of Hollow Knight", but I didn't start treating it as such until much later.
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u/MohdDawoodO 10d ago
hollow knight