i have been playing a bit of silksong and i think this one works a lot better for me than the first one (not a fan). hornet’s movement is vastly more interesting.
i may peace out if/when the game gets tedious with runbacks later. i remain a bit skeptical about how rewarding this endeavor (trying to finish this game) may prove
my experience is interestingly bifurcated
it’s an exquisitely polished game thus far. there’s some real love and care put into it. the core game elements are all very well-done. bosses have some satisfying mega man energy. i like the music a fair bit more (often a bit on the nose with “indie dark souls” musical aspirations, but when it hits, it hits)
and then the economy and trinkets and map system are kiiinda bullshit design. the rest of the game is such a glow-up from hollow knight, but they’ve imported a few of the poor design choices from that game here again and it gives me some pause re: how well they understood the successes and failures of the first game
all that said, i’m really quite enjoying it. the former elements are taking center stage and the latter quibbles are faded to the background
later edit: i started playing the first game again after positive impressions of the second game (and after reaching a point where it started to get a bit more frustrating doing runbacks). i like it more this time around but it’s immediately less mechanically interesting and even more economically miserly. still, it’s charming again and my opinion of it is rapidly improving at the moment
Finished up act 1 and had the most enjoyable boss battle to finish it off, not because of the boss design (which was fine) but because opening up the fast travel and bench in this area put my rosary count at exactly zero as I spent 100 of them to string the remaining 600 or so of them up. Turns out not having to concern oneself with all that lets someone just enjoy the battle as its own thing, if it was a nightmarish challenge I could simply walk away and not be forced to play it forever to avoid leaving everything behind in there, turns out the homeward bones in the various Souls games existed for a reason.
is there a confessor in this one who will bring your cocoon back?
there’s always the quit to menu exploit
still enjoying the second game a fair bit. i’ve gotten into switching between HK and Silksong whenever one gets too irritating and it is doing wonders for avoiding frustration
also playing them together really solidifies for me how much i prefer the second one.
This comment was specifically about the High Halls gauntlet, wasn’t it. I’m now 24 hours in and I just reached that mess
Nah I think this was about Bilewater!
For the High hall gauntlet I had unlocked a friend for that fight by thoroughly exploring the world map.
Now I’m right there at the very end of the game, spent two hours on a boss called Karmelita, maybe the best boss in a game full of great ones
I feel like I turned a bit of a corner with the game. It’s good, it’s always been good but thanks to several pick-ups and a new “tool” I actually have a solid amount of silk now, rather than taking an entire meter to heal it takes… idk, about 60ish percent of it, which means I can actually put magic use into my regular routine and combat is magically much improved. It’s a shame it took 20ish hours to get to that point but at least it all feels much better balanced now.
It makes up for finally losing some rosaries on the map, although given how much more enemies are dropping in my current local (I think those big guys are dropping 25-30ish) it really is a negligible amount big picture-wise.
I also had the game hard crash going through a door just short of the bench I had spent some time trekking my way back towards, that was less good >_>
I’m currently just starting act 2, I’m almost 30 hours into the game, I’m not sure how far I am, and I’ve spent a loooooong time clearing shit out and finding secrets.
The narrative stuff keeps on impressing me.
Act 2 spoiler
Dropping into act two, initially feeling relief that the save benches were only 15 rosaries to unlock, and the pain of finding out that they reset after you got up and needed another 15 to use again was incredible. As was finding the automated confessional booth that, as far as I can tell, does nothing but eat your money and say fuck you. It’s extra miserable because all the bugs down in the nightmare machine hole that you find yourself in, cleaning everything, will attack on sight and drop virtually no rosaries compared to…well…any enemy you’ve fought up until this point.
These guys are pilgrims who somehow got to the citadel, who spent all their rosaries to get here, and now how to pay for even meager breaks. There’s no audio log that explains this more than “God I hate it here”, it’s all just context inferred from the game itself.
It’s going so much harder than most ‘evil video game religions’ because it really, really, goes hard in exactly how fucking bad these guys are in material ways. It’s definitely cartoony, but it’s so cool to see how all of the fucked up Rosary economy trickles down and into everything. And how you have to engage with it in order to get anywhere, and it increasingly becomes clear that while sure, a lot of bugs are going crazy for Magic Reasons, there’s a lot who’d be killing each other over all these necessary rosaries regardless.
It’s SO COOL
the parry master thinks so
there are ways in which it feels like a return to the original metroid wilderness, for sure, especially if you compare it to super metroid or zero mission’s endless just-so conveniences that return you to exactly where you need to be.
you’re left on your own to plot your way out of some pretty deep dead ends, and there can be a slight sense of mismatch between your abilities and the environment: ledges are just too high, and you have to scrabble about with the climb and double jump to get up.
it feels like they had a strong outline of the massive world they wanted to make, and that aspect of the vision remained brittle and uncompromising, the immediate play experience stretching to support it.
I’m not getting the parry mechanic down very well. Way too often I’m rushing in to attack at something that’s rushing at me and it attacks and I keep mashing that parry, and all of the slashes get parried but the rushdown keeps on happening and I take contact damage from the bug’s body. Is this happening with anyone else? Especiallyy midair.
i am still playing through this very slowly and having a good time. act ii is cool.
Silksong added Parry as an option like every indie game added a dog you can pet 10 years ago. It is bad taste to me. But I’m glad for the freaks with minimum 20+ Sekiro no hit boss videos on their youtube channels who get to enjoy it
i would argue the implementation here is kind of different as you parry just by attacking an attack, so it’s happened to me by accident many times without explicitly trying to do it. it’s sort of like two moves clashing in smash bros. it also existed in the original Hollow Knight! unless there’s some other parry mechanic in Silksong that i’m not yet privy to.
There’s another more classical parry later on. It consumes silk! I’ve never used it. It’s what allows people to beat Silksong bosses without jumping
silksong is very good. as i’ve been switching between the first and second games, it has really struck me how irritating and tedious the first one can be.
your moveset is far too flat for far too long. the knockback on your strikes and the arc of your pogo and the flat, static dash are just slightly off, not-quite-right pieces of kit - i simply do not care to optimize what this game wants me to optimize. it’s too ticky-tack and reflexive
meanwhile the silksong hornet kit (at least post-dash acquisition) is expressive, fluid, nuanced, joyous, beautifully-animated.
i thought maybe i was just being too hard on the first game but it’s enraging me just like the first time, except now i have something better to compare it to… every time i die in silksong i’m like, alright. motherfucker. when i die in hollow knight i feel a massive, inescapable wince. “bullshit”, “come ON man” “fuck, i don’t wanna do that again”.
i gotta keep playing it tho because a) i need a respite from silksong when i fuck up too bad b) hypothetically the HK moveset might get better later (does it?)
you get a horizontal shinespark* (not invincible though), a double jump (with a weird slight delay that doesn’t feel good) and eventually iframes on the dash (very late, and annoying that new bosses force you to use it when you’ve already learnt combat without it)
* you can end it at will; it doesn’t just keep going till you hit a wall
the way the iframes like, take a few seconds to recharge when you use them feels pretty bad too tbh
Yeah at miffy’s urging I went back and gave the first one a shot and while I wouldn’t say it’s bad it’s also kinda bad cuz it is such a fucking slog before you unlock more skills/higher damage and after that the game is just way easier but not really thrilling. Like I keep playing it but I can’t say I’m getting all that much out of it, there’s no real satisfaction at overcoming any of its challenges and its look does nothing for me even though it’s well executed. Some of these bugs are kinda charming but beyond that I ain’t feeling the atmosphere at all. It’s just a playable yet way overlong search action.
Pretty sure losing 3k golds cuz I died to yet another obscured enemy during yet another tedious hike to a boss battle was the first time I’ve alt + f4’s a game in rage in years. So much of the shit they yoinked from Dark Souls super sucks here and feels so bad cuz there’s just no comedy in this and the moment to moment action isn’t nearly as satisfying as From game for me.
But I did keep playing it and started enjoying it enough that I am starting to suspect I might like Silksong.