Silksong is not for me
Like many other Hollow Knight fans, I awaited the release of Silksong for years. According to my steam stats, I have over 500 hours into the original game and anticipated being taken in by a much larger map and the downright gorgeous art and music of the game.
Once I dove in though, I quickly realized that Silksong was probably not the game for me.
I got about 12 hours in completely spoiler free, exploring the map and doing my best to get comfortable with the gameplay. I beat a few punishing bosses like Moorwing and Fourth Chorus without any hints or spoilers. But as the grind continued, I felt very little sense of accomplishment and very little satisfaction in clearing areas.
After realizing that I was a bit stuck on what to do next, I resorted to watching the streams of Skurry and Fireborn to get a sense of where to explore next and how the map would open up. This gave me enough to go on that I put another 5 hours into the game. With a few pointers about where to go next and what upgrades to look for, I had a bit more motivation to continue. But more importantly, I realized that these players were clearing bosses first or second try that took me 50 attempts. These hours solidified my growing unease that I was simply not up to the task.
Casual gaming
Let me rewind a bit. I strongly identify as a casual gamer. At most, I put 5-10 hours per week into gaming and may go weeks without gaming. I have a career and other hobbies that rank as high or higher than gaming. But having a casual gamer schedule is not entirely equivalent to only liking casual games - I do like difficult challenges and pushing my limits once in a while.
The games I tend to like are the ones that you can pick up for a bit, jump into some fairly self-contained challenge, exploration or building and then put it down. Most critically, I like games where you can pick up where you left off days or weeks after putting it down.
The original Hollow Knight was challenging at this pace, but not impossible. I got completely stuck on the Watcher Knights and Hornet II during my original playthrough, but with some tips and practice I was able to get past them and feel enough mastery that they wouldn’t be as hard on successive playthroughs.
Silksong, from what I’ve seen thus far, requires far more time than I have to give. Like Celeste, which I bounced off for the same reason, Silksong feels way more like cumulative - you must devote substantial hours and have very little downtime to feel ready for the next challenge. After watching some of the later game content, I’m fairly sure that I don’t have the hours left in my life to see a game ending for myself.
Let me be clear - I think I am very atypical in this regard. The pattern I enjoy most in Hollow Knight is the following, which can be contained to 3-5 sessions:
- Early game (up to Crystal Heart)
- Nail upgrades and Nail arts
- Late game (Dreamers and HK)
Hard games
In case you’re getting the impression that I’m completely soft, I have been able to complete some pretty tough achievements with this approach such as Steel Heart (4.2% of players) and Speedrun 2 (4.9% of players). I don’t have anything against difficult games, but I think there are limits where the tradeoffs diminish for someone like me. That limit - for Silksong specifically - was when I started regularly dying ON THE WAY to the boss fight.
Do I want an “easy mode”? Absolutely. 100% yes. I would love to have a casual walk through the world of Pharloom on my own machine without hitting the wall less than 10% into the game. I would love to experience the lore and music and art on my own. I don’t get the sense that this will come from Team Cherry, but I will be keeping my eye out for any mods which add this in the coming months.
Regret
I considered requesting a refund from Steam. My current total is 17 hours and I would guess I am less than 10% into the game, which is not where I expected to be when purchasing the game. But I came to the conclusion that the price was absolutely worth it considering the time I’ve spent in both games. Though I may not experience the later game content myself, there is a wealth of Streamers and YouTubers I can watch to see it and will be waiting for the Mossbag lore video.
Just Buy It
Team Cherry has made the game they wanted to make and I absolutely love that. From everything I’ve heard, they are a shining star in the world of games and tech more broadly. I want to support that and validate their right to do so.
I hope that with coming balance patches and tuning, the game will become more accessible to a wider range of players, but I’m not holding out any hope that it will get to where I need it to be while satisfying the hardcore players. Without a separate game mode or something, it is an irreconcilable gap considering the scale and breadth of the game.
With all these things in mind, I would still recommend the game to anyone that enjoys a challenge. Maybe you’ll only get 15 hours into it and bounce off like I did, but I still consider that a solid win given the work that Team Cherry has put into it and the super low price tag.