Sigh this shit again, if it’s the creators decision to have a game with finely tuned hard difficulty, so be it, that’s the creators creative decision and it should be respected
I dont think there is any conversation to be had about an easy mode or boss runbacks. Any time this small dev team spends on an easy mode is time wasted IMO.
If its to hard you can play another game. I see this the same as people demanding a complex movie be changed to be easier to understand. Its just a dumb complaint and im sick of seeing these people flood every comment section of every slightly challenging game.
They’re saying your taste in games isn’t valid and shouldn’t be catered for. Instead, theirs should be in every case.
The difference between “I don’t like this” and “this is bad” is too often overlooked
I’m ok with there being a conversation on this topic, even if the arguments devolve to ‘waaah’ vs. ‘git gud’.
Ultimately though, I agree that a small dev team shouldn’t have to focus on a game-mode outside their vision - and any such demand for an easy-mode or other additions can and should be left up to mod makers.
It’s a single-player game, so in the end how the individual user wants to play is how they should be able to play.
I think it’s a great game for veterans who like challenges like myself.
But I have to call out team Cherry for their interviews: They said they wanted anyone to be able to pick up this as their first Hollow Knight game and just start playing… Sorry, but, bullshit. the difficulty ramp is too quick, double damage comes out to early and the boss fights get more challenging quickly. See the weaver for instance, a fight I’d place around the difficulty of Grimm, but there’s double damage and you probably only have 5 health.
Also they mentioned part of the game’s difficulty was due to Hornet’s competence and utility… Ghost is canonically a better fighter than Hornet, so by that logic they should have made the game easier (yes I’m being silly about this part).
I think its fine for a player new to the series but you’ve got to the type of person that is willing to learn and willing to die over and over. For people who play these kinds of games its not insane to expect them to pick it up.
Didn’t personally watch the interview in question (or forgot by now) so I don’t know what they meant, but it definitely feels like lore wise Silksong can stand as an independent game with what I’ve discovered so far.
Regarding difficulty, Hollow Knight isn’t the only game that could have prepared you for Silksong I think.
I think what it helps a lot with is familiarity and mindset. The overall game loop is very similar.That said, I think it’s wise to give HK a try before buying Silksong. It’s a cheaper game, worth playing through if you’re into these kinds of experiences and if you don’t enjoy it, chances are Silksong will not be much fun for you either.
Every game should have difficulty settings, the more, the better.
That goes for indi darlings too.And all music should be under three minutes long. Every book should have page numbers. Photographers should have familiar subjects. Paintings should have a full explanation by the artist telling you exactly what they meant to communicate. /s
If the game isn’t for you, just move along. There are tons of games out there.
are you aware of the meaning of the word “setting” in this context?
Just in case I can explain:
It means you can switch something from one behaviour or effect to another, basically giving you a choice of how something should work. So, adding a difficulty setting changes nothing about your experience of the game.do you need more words to explain this simple thing?
I can try to use simple language and shorter sentences if you require it?
is nobody going to define what “runbacks” are?
I’m guessing it’s something like when you lose to a boss you have to travel a senselessly difficult and long way back to the boss to try again?
That does sound annoying and I hate when I even have to sit through a cutscene on each retry of a boss…
I’m guessing it’s something like when you lose to a boss you have to travel a senselessly difficult and long way back to the boss to try again?
That’s exactly it. The runbacks aren’t too long in this game despite all the complaints, but some of them are tricky and can get annoying if you keep dying 10 seconds into a fight.
There have been several boss fights so far where I die to the path to the boss more than the boss itself and it takes way longer to get to the boss than actually beating it.
That being said though, I do think there’s some merit to runbacks as an actual consequence for failure. I definitely strategize more cautiously because of it.
I mean, there are some really bad runbacks, but yeah most of them are fine.
How is it compared to HK?
This is the only thing I wanted to know from reviews, for whether or not to bother with Silksong. I love difficult boss fights, but cannot be arsed to spend more than half a minute doing a tedious chore in order to actually redo boss fights.
The worst one I’ve encountered apparently has a secret bench somewhere that makes it much better, and the second worst (the runback that I think everyone is talking about) is about as long as the runback to crystal guardian I think.
It is slightly worse then HK.
Some of these mother fuckers never dealt with nosk and it shows.
So it’s basically the standard platformer formula going back three or more decades?
No, just those with bad level design. Nine Sols has plenty of challenging boss fights, zero run back. Same with Sekiro, and most newer titles.
More like the Dark Souls formula of having to trek through heaps of enemies and traps to get back to the boss. Including the whole “lose all of your money on death” thing.
Modern from games barely have run backs anymore. Atleast in souls game you can bank your currency into stats or buy consumables, you can’t reliably do that in SS.
Yes you can! There’s plenty of places where you can turn prayer beads into consumable chains.
Most runbacks aren’t too bad, but fuck the Bilewater one. That shit was too hard and annoying. I had less trouble with the First Sinner than that boss.
The devs looked at blight town from dark souls 1 and thought ‘we can do worse’. It really is a nightmare but somehow I killed the boss first try in the end
Lucky! I had to try more than ten times due to unlucky behavior in the waves before the boss, and finally managed to win only by using tools.
All the homies hate bilewater, actual dogshit even with the shortcut
I’m guessing it’s something like when you lose to a boss you have to travel a senselessly difficult and long way back to the boss to try again?
Exactly. Lots of bosses don’t have convenient save points nearby, so you’re forced to walk back from the save point every time. And many of the treks are either long or just outright annoying (cheesy enemies, obstacle courses, etc). It’s like the 5 Minute Long Unskippable Cutscene’s more annoying older brother, because this unskippable cutscene requires actual gameplay and focus.
Hot take here, but I don’t mind them. Exactly because they take focus. They tell me when it’s time for a break. If I’m not up for the runback, then I’m not up for aother attempt at the boss.
Eh, make it optional. On hard difficulty make it a thing, medium difficulty allow it to be skipped.
Why? If you can’t get through that, you aren’t going to beat the boss.
I haven’t played silksong, but I’m just going off other games in the past for my experience.
If you make it through the hallway of meaningless denizens that just waste time and get to the boss, then die to the boss… Why waste time going through the meaningless denizens again to challenge the boss?
I can see it on higher difficulties when you need to make sure you get through the meaningless denizens perfectly in order to preserve your health and resources to have a better chance of defeating the boss.
But when you just want to experience the story on lower difficulty why make the denizens less powerful to make the boss easier when you can instead just put the save point in front of the boss in instead of the denizens? You’ve already made it through the denizens, it’s not like you’re skipping content.
Because if you can’t make it through the denizens, you can’t make it through the boss. It’s a filter.
It’s not that you can’t make it through the denizens, making it through the denizens is usually easy. It’s just a waste of time for the most part.
What a weird take. It’s about respecting the players’ time. Making it through the denizens to the boss is not challenging whatsoever. Why would you think it is? It’s just tedious, and bad level design.
Unskippable cut scenes should be dragged into the street and shot.
Along with unpausable cutscenes. My kid will cry exactly during your 10 minute cutscene, and I want to know the story.
I think this discussion has more merit when framing this from an ableism viewpoint. Games having accessibility sliders to either slow down puzzles or enemies helps players who have a disability.
A game that comes to mind is Crosscode! You had options that could change the speed and damage for various things in the game. Was nice because sometimes I’d change the settings when I had been stuck and frustrated on a puzzle which made the game far more enjoyable.
skill issue
For myself? Definitely! But someone shouldn’t be prevented from playing a game because of a disability. Just like how Frostbite engine games have great accessibility options for colour blindness.
Tbh it’s a reflex and dexterity game, among other things, so it is not for everyone. In the same way a game that requires memorising melodies is not for me, since I suck hard at it.
I suppose there could be a mod that simply doesn’t let you die and you can explore the whole world. There is no other way to make a platforming section easier, unless you add more anchor points etc., which requires actually changing the world (essentially, you remove the platforming section), so those could still be a problem.
Celeste is a game about reflexes and dexterity. They implemented tons of accessibility features, including ways to make platforming easier.
And the game is fundamentally not the same with some of those accessibility features enabled. Good on the devs for targeting a wider audience but fundamentally they have different game play experiences.
Not every designer wants to have multiple experiences in their game. That should be entirely up to the designer and demanding them add entirely new experiences is unreasonable.
Color blindness support, rebindable controls, subtitles, on screen audio visual cues. There’s plenty of things that can help the disabled that don’t change fundamental aspects of the game. If a developer adds these but doesn’t want to compromise the intended gameplay as they see it then they shouldn’t have to.
End of the day. It’s art that is being sold to be consumed. If you don’t like the art, then it’s not for you.
I have never heard of the game, i guess you are referring to https://celeste.ink/wiki/Assist_Mode?
I can see they have lots of options! However the platforming seems to be slightly different? In case of HK I suppose that invincibility-like mode is what I suggested brought to the extreme (I.e. you can just walk over spikes etc). Maybe the other thing that could work is slowing the game down so that timing is easier to get.
I think it’s an interesting discussion accessibility from this point of view. I think everyone draws the line at some point, between accessibility and simply making a game with some principles that represent the soul of the game.
Disability, accessibility and gameplay accessibility are two different things and should be treated as such. There is also a very hard line between what is possible to help someone with a disability. Enjoy a medium that requires certain minimal physical traits.
The color blindness deafness rebindable controls as many things that can help the disabled and these should be expected whenever possible. Hell a lot of these are built directly into your operating system and don’t require any effort from a game developer. They just need to make sure not to get in the way of already existing tools.
But gameplay accessibility is an entirely different beast and even very minimal. Gameplay accessibility can create an entirely new gameplay experience to the point where it’s not the same game. If the developer wants to add those, it should be up to the developer and what they’re targeting, both as an audience and as an artist.
We should always demand disability accessibility. We should never demand gameplay accessibility.
Colorblind accessibility is easy to implement and pretty much everybody can do it after reading a wikipedia article on colorblindness.
On the other hand, balancing a game for several difficulties is not easy and takes a lot of time. Plus, it doesn’t always make sense. Part of the game is the struggle. If you’re skipping the struggle, then you’re missing a part of the game.
The main goal of a game is to be fun, not to be a bragging right; even more in a single player game.
If someone, for any reason, prefers a more casual experience, let them have it. On the other hand, if you prefer to brag, go for it and cramp up the difficulty.
There us no point of gating a single player game. Single player games should be accessible for all.
A single player game shouldn’t be accessible to all. It should be accessible to everyone the creator intends it to be accessible to.
Devaluing and demanding an artist or team of artists compromise their vision and intent is flat out a shit take. You have to be a massive self centered asshole to think it’s even remotely acceptable.
Nintendo expects Mario games to be played by everyone, thus it’s reasonable to expect accessibility features and difficulty controls. To allow for the widest range of players.
A Mario game with out either implicit or explicit difficulty controls would be a fair thing to criticize when Nintendo’s clearly stated goal is to reach the boardest audiences and be a game for the whole family.
But a game made by say kojima IS NOT trying to reach the boardest audience. Thus, expecting any amount of control over the experience is just being an asshole on the part of the player. The game is designed for himself first and foremost. He’s making something he wants to make. Tell a story he wants to tell. If the player enjoys it then all the better.
Games are after all first and foremost art. Art can be a product or can be a passion. A product even if art is reasonable to expect it to be made for the consumer first and cater to them But never should any reasonable person. Assume a passion should bend the knee.
Fun is not the same for everyone.
Some people like visual novels. Others prefer games with frame perfect precision that push the player’s reaction, attention and concentration.
Nothing could be for everyone and that’s fine. Something not being for you does not make it a bad design.
Don’t coddle whiners, make them git gud or get out.
Runbacks are a lame attempt at artificially increasing difficulty. I’ll happily die on that hill. I love difficult games, but there is a fine line between frustration and difficult.
Elden Ring (at least all the bits I played through) and Sekiro absolutely nailed it. None of the run backs were particularly egregious, and it let me really focus on experimenting and learning to feel out the difficult fights. Celeste is another good example. I have dropped hours on some of the later levels trying to master them, but never once got frustrated.
Hollow Knight I never finished because I got stuck on a boss and the runback was just way too long and annoying. I loved everything else about the game and want to finish it eventually.
Edit: I think they have their place as “mods” that you could enable to increase difficulty, and i’d actually probably enjoy it that way. Just designing the game around them is where i draw the line.
To be fair, From has like many games to learn from that while Cherry only has HK. I’ll never forget the sheer pain of the Frigid Outskirts from Dark Souls 2.
At least that’s an optional area. Now, the run back from pre-SotFS No Man’s Wharf? That was a pain.
The run to Blue Smelter nearly gave me a coronary.
Although DS2 gave us a reprieve with despawning enemies eventually, making runbacks feel rather poignant when you’re walking an empty world.
Yeah, I remember a few sad runbacks with populations looking pretty sparse…
I hate that I only completed Frigid Outskirts because all the horses respawned. The bosses were absolute rock there too.
Unpopular opinion but I like boss runbacks.
To me it feels like “if you don’t survive the journey, you’re too weak for the boss itself” it brings me down and makes me calmer until I reach the boss.
I like them because I will think what I did wrong, not just going to do that wrong thing again until I get lucky with my wrong strategy.
I like them because it forces you to try to salvage a fight instead of just conceding after a bad start. The time spent getting to the boss is investment you don’t want to waste.
I think this is really just an issue of the tools and abilities not being inherently linked to the related bosses.
FYI quickhop attacking is faster than ground combos and you can weave in the trio dagger throws when you are dodging away from close attacks. Also your attack will negate enemy attacks weapon hitbox(but you still have to dodge bodily contact). The poison tool upgrade is overbalanced and makes a lot of fights a joke.
This is a really good point.
I’ve also found myself messing up the run back but committing to the fight anyway with a few masks down. You can either heal back up by breaking the cocoon, or practice starting the fight low and keep the silk for later (one of the best changes from the first game IMO is making the cocoon an asset in contrast to the ghost that would harass you).
Another aspect is the run back itself. When you struggle a lot with a boss (as I often do), you will have to do the run back so many times that you passively start getting better at traversing the map. And even if the specific combos you used on the boss itself don’t necessarily translate to other bosses, the movement skills likely will keep being useful.
I’m about 10 hours into silksong and it’s amazing, don’t get me wrong. But the majority of the boss fights seem… cheap?
Like, their difficulty doesn’t come from their various attacks, or their environment. Instead, it usually comes from the fact that they do double damage, or the fact that they spam the same two attacks over and over way too quickly, or the fact that they can do the same add summon three times in a row and make what was a controllable situation practically impossible
Now, I’ve 112% the OG hollow knight and beaten true radiance, so I’m not against difficult boss fights. In fact I relish the feeling of learning their moves and patterns after every single death
But when the moves are “ram into wall. Then ram into wall again” it becomes incredibly annoying
My biggest complaint is the sheer lack of rewards when I finish a fight. Give me any currency.
I have spent so much of this game broke, unable to buy the things I need to advance any side plots.
I’m currently stuck on the fight for the Music in the top left of the citadel. The double boss at the end is brutal. But because no enemy in that fight drops monster parts, I have to quit to grinding it to go grind more materials to build equipment, despite having slain 20+ enemies each run.
Don’t like it, don’t buy it. I’m happy for team cherry and their success. It’s not for me but I don’t resent them that it isn’t. This nothing burger discussion is yet another herring designed to drive clicks and traffic off of the work of people who ACTUALLY create something of worth. Modern parasitism at its best.
There are mods and cheats for this game already—and they even run on Linux. I turn 50 next month: though I’m still playing, I don’t have as much time for gaming as I used to and my reflexes aren’t what they were. I haven’t entirely removed the challenge with mods, but I feel no shame in tweaking this game to go easier on me and chew up less of my time as punishment for failure. I wish they had these as accessibility options built-in, but I’m fine with hacking it.
Anybody telling me I should “git gud” can pound sand: I’m already good at a bunch of things that get me a paycheck. I play games so I can relax and be terrible at something for fun. I’m certainly not playing for bragging rights.
I think we don’t have enough language to talk about difficulty in a productive way.
You could keep all the boss mechanics the same in a game but add a 1 minute unstoppable cut scene at the start and the game is “more difficult” because it takes you longer to learn boss patterns and experiment with different strategies. But that feels very different to narrowing the windows to react or expanding the move set of a boss which feels different again to changing the values so you need to grind more/fewer levels or resources to pass it.
“Runback too long” and “git gud” sound a lot like people talking past eachother, but maybe thats just an artifact of the journalist reporting rather than the discussion itself
they are related and compound each other. it’s harder to “git gud” if you have to do a bunch of runbacks too.
I think we have the language and you just proved it, but often people are just not reading or thinking enough about other perspectives before talking, and so do talk past each other like this.
I like your comparison to an unskippable cutscene; these are, I think, universally reviled at the start of boss fights. For some reason I don’t think long runbacks are reviled in nearly the same way, yet repeatedly running through the same area with no challenges (jumping off the staircase for the shortcut to Ornstein & Smough in DS1 does not count ffs!) is not really any less boring.
The ideal runback to me has a few enemies that you can soon work out how to run around. You actually get a feeling of having accomplished something, but don’t have to get perfect at defeating those enemies, nor waste time doing so (running will always be faster than fighting, pretty much).
I think “git gud” is just a knee-jerk meme though - there is no reason to believe that someone saying it has engaged in the slightest with what has been said to that point; they’re just trolling.
Add an easy mode just half the boss health and damage. Easy fixed
So glad they fixed the slow/boring difficulty curve the first game had. I shouldn’t need to slog through 20 hours of gameplay before I feel challenged.
Binged it all weekend, it’s a great game, but folks whining about some of the game’s earlier challenges are unlikely to finish it.
The runbacks don’t bother me too much so far. I do think there’s some skills in the runback, but it relies heavily on the level designer as well. An ideal runback:
- is relatively short, you should have time to reflect on the boss, but not get sidetracked
- has enemies that drop currency, so repeated runs slowly build you up (assuming you always collect your shade)
- has enemies that train you on the bosses timings or counters (if the boss is parry heavy, put a tricky-to-parry enemy enroute back)
- has a “speed route” that let’s you bypass most or all of the run once you’ve figured it out
These factors make a run both interesting game play and still a form of progression. A badly designed run lacks these factors, being just a slow slog to get back into the boss fight.
My biggest complaint so far is the double damage. Every boss and so many common enemies do nothing but double damage. Why even have 5 HP instead of 3? And it being 5 (and bind healing 3) have compounding effects with this problem. Taking a single hit on the way to a boss actually costs you an entire “boss hit” so runbacks are worse all around. Trying to heal mid boss only gets you “one and a half” hits back which takes a lot of silk to build up and probably is a worse deal for you than just using the silk to power more attacks.
Double damage would suck a lot less (and be a better mechanic) if you had 6 HP to start, or if you healed 4 at a time, or if bosses didnt always do 2 damage. There’s no tension to avoiding punishing hits because every move is equally punishing. It makes fights feel very conservative which is maybe intentionally meant to evoke Hornet as a careful hunter, using traps and plans to take down big foes.
I find the opposite though, she feels fragile and reactive. I wish starting damage was higher too. I had this issue in Hollow Knight as well, everything takes too many hits. Common enemies are spongy, bosses take at least 33% too long across the board. Especially it gets annoying since a lot of bosses so far get spammier and faster towards their final phases, so you spend so much time dodging the same attacks and looking for openings to chip hits in. Skills and traps don’t do enough damage to feel especially useful either.
I also hate, and this is another compounding factor, the complete lack of enemy HP bars. On regular enemies this is annoying (gotta count my hits) but on bosses it feels negligent. Bosses have multiple phases and take so long to kill, it would be nice to know if my last run was just a hit or 2 away from the end or if I still had a 3rd phase to plan for. It adds to the poor perception of skills and traps as well. Sting Shard and Thread Storm both seem to hit several times, around a half-dozen, but neither seems to do much more damage than a couple of regular hits.
Overall I’m really loving Silksong, the art and music are top notch. The DLC for HK convinced me that Team Cherry and I disagree about some fundamental ideas in game design, and HKSS bears that out.
Skills and traps don’t do enough damage to feel especially useful either.
There’s one trap that actually is pretty strong if you know how to abuse it.
I’m not going to spoil where or how to get it, but flying beetles that home in on the enemy and repeatedly bump into it to deal damage can be pretty busted… especially when they still attack during phase change animations that stop the player from moving.
I also especially like a particular early game trap for this:
trap spoiler
the cluster spike trap, because if you throw it well just before initiating a boss cutscene, it can activate and hit them 6-7 times while they are doing their initial taunt.
deleted by creator
I definitely agree that the constant double damage just feels horrible. Hollow Knight was always about balancing heals versus punishes (one reason I loved Dark Souls 2 so much) but you basically need to heal if you get tapped once and… yeah.
I think a bigger issue is that upgrades feel so much rarer. Part of it is that you have MUCH fewer equipped charms at any given time… so there is much less point in just giving you a new one every 10 or so minutes. And I am not sure if max health is lower but it similarly feels like I find a mask shared maybe every 2 hours or so which further lends itself to feeling weak. And no idea what the deal is with silk but a single pip when it takes like five pips to even do a heavy attack feels pointless?
And while some vendors do sell upgrades, it always feels like a struggle to afford them unless you are actively grinding because of the constant need to buy maps and so forth (something I hated in 1 as well, but that at least had a single currency). Although I did get a nice stretch where I just mopped up and bought out most shops so that is at least nice.
And same with the attacks. Apparently I may have actually ran past Threadstorm while exploring and never even noticed it? And that is the power everyone says to use.
I, uh, have kinda given up on progressing for the foreseeable future. I’m bad at platforming, and after struggling for probably around half an hour to get through one aection that was particularly difficult for me, I was met with a surprise boss fight. Nearest bench before that section. It’s brutal. It takes me about 5ish minutes to do that section now, but fuck I wish I were exaggerating. None of the other fights have anywhere near as nasty a runback and it honestly feels like they forgot a bench.
The game is hard and that’s fine, but that instance I feel ok bitching about and don’t feel like I’m a qhiny pathetic fuck for doing so, which is incredibly telling given how easy it is to make me feel like a whiny pathetic fuck.
I’m not entirely sure which part of the game you’re talking about but if you’re talking about the section I think you’re talking about then you’re probably trying to go the wrong way as that section get significantly easier once you have more powers.
If something feels unbelievably difficult chances are you’re supposed to go elsewhere. There are quite a few points at the start of the game where you get a difficulty spike and that just means there’s a different route to take.
I checked with a friend, and I’m not missing anything sadly. It’s the boss at the end of the windy section, before you can go through the big fancy door.
Okay. I was thinking of another point. I just got to the point you were describing and after exploring every nook and cranny on the map there really isn’t any other route. But I don’t think the route to the boss is that dreadful.
spoiler how to quickly traverse it.
You can sprint jump the first 2 platform ignoring the first enemy. You then climb past the first shield enemy but instead of going right you scale the wall on the left. When you get to the top you can sprint jump to the bell that you can pogo off of and get on the platform with the cart in the background. From there if you want an easy passage to the far right wall wait for the black strong gust of wind. You then jump off and use glide. You will glide faster in the black gust of wind and it will skip the enemy there and get you straight in dashing length of the far right wall. Then you climb up and if you’re confident with the 2 bell jump just go for that or wait until the enemy below comes up so you could kill it and then you’ve got all the time in the world to get the two bell jump done.
If you wait for the gust of wind it should take you about 45 seconds to get from the save point to the boss room
I also hate, and this is another compounding factor, the complete lack of enemy HP bars.
IIRC, HK1 had a badge that turns these on. I’m not far enough into the new game to have found this yet, though.
I’m pretty early into the game as well, so I almost didn’t say anything. But even if theres a charm that adds HP bars later, I would be annoyed about it. Why wait so long? I’m over 10 hours in. Why take a slot with it? I get similar annoyances about the compass, but at least that one I can understand because maybe some people like the challenge of landmark navigation using just the maps. There is a skill there, and it is part of the skillset of Exploration (a major pillar of design in any metroidvania).
The yellow tools, in general, I’m iffy about the design of. So far I only have 3: compass, more shards, and auto-collect beads. Of these, auto-beads is the most obviously useful. You need many beads, and they get lost pretty easy. Shards are super common and don’t have many uses. But none of these are essential, and all of them get less useful the later into the game you get. The tradeoff is only meaningful early game, and seems to encourage a balance between memorizing the levels and grinding, neither are amazing activities.
Having the compass charm tied to ALL map markers would certainly up the utility of it, though it’s gating another feature behind both a purchase and a charm. I’ve also only found 1 semi useful trap\red-charm so far. Maybe having more traps and skills that required shell bits would put more pressure on needing them and make the charm that gives extras more appeal for a trap-heavy play style?
Again, I grant that maybe I’m too early in the game yet, but I feel like these systems should be coming together and cohering more after a half-dozen bosses and 10 hours of play.
The game is so much more massive than I ever expected. I can tell you that you’re still super early in the game based on what you’ve found. There are many, many red tools and while you’ll absolutely have favorites, there are definitely some that seem underwhelming until you find a specific situation or region where they excel.
There is a crazy huge amount of content and capability in the game, and if it seems like a slow burn for you now, IMHO that’s because the game does a pretty good job of pacing new things so that you have time to evaluate and master each new piece of kit as it comes up.
The other thing about shards is that you have to sort of learn to find a balance with how much trap usage you employ; what seems to me to be the intended design (based purely on vibes) is that you mostly only use them against certain bosses/arena rooms or in situations where your needle can’t easily work due to the terrain.
I thought similarly to you at first, with shards being a huge surplus and not necessary. I think this is an introduction period of sorts where you can get used to how the controls work and experiment freely. But then there were wide stretches of the game where I had a relative drought of them. Now that (I THINK??) I’m approaching the end, I’ve learned to use my shards reserve as a sort of measurement for whether I’m comfortable enough fighting in a certain situation. If it dips below half, I’m leaning too much on traps and need to take a step back and think harder about how to approach things with needle combat.
On the topic of yellow tools… I can definitely relate to the compass feeling mandatory, but there were several places for me where I had compelling reason to choose to forego it for something else. That was legitimately interesting and I don’t have many other examples of games where that’s possible. There are a bunch more yellow tools you’ll find with more interesting effects as well. And eventually (being deliberately vague) you will reach a point where you won’t feel like you’re sacrificing as much to keep the compass equipped if you want. (Though there is also a point where you will have seen enough of the world that you won’t need it, strictly speaking, because you either have the areas memorized or can navigate based on room shapes and major landmarks without your precise location.)
Godspeed, fellow hunter
“Fragile and reactive” IMO is a fair take, but I think what the game is pushing you to do is become comfortable enough with your mobility to be aggressive while still avoiding hits. I don’t know exactly where you are in progression, but you continue to tack on new capabilities to your kit that make it easier and easier to avoid things while still laying out damage.
I am sure there is enough room in the game design for people to take totally different approaches here, though. If you know a given enemy’s movement well, you can absolutely be confident in using your silk for attacks instead of healing.
I agree with a lot of your commentary. A couple times so far a “good run back” has been the grind that let me buy some of the higher-cost items from shops. Sometimes it’s frustrating but usually once you get used to the path it goes quickly. There have been a few times where I didn’t realize there was a closer bench until after I already beat the fight lol.
Double damage would suck a lot less (and be a better mechanic) if you had 6 HP to start, or if you healed 4 at a time, or if bosses didn’t always do 2 damage.
Most of the bosses have 1-damage and 2-damage attacks. Also 6HP and increased healing are available relatively early (still a good way into the game but it’s a long game).
Skills and traps don’t do enough damage to feel especially useful either.
I have to strongly disagree with this. Especially when you start getting more traps/tools and upgrades for them, they get very strong and don’t require you to get dangerously close to the enemy like the basic attacks. Some of the bosses and many of the arenas I’ve gotten through mainly thanks to the consumable traps.
Common enemies are spongy, bosses take at least 33% too long across the board.
Like in most metroidvanias, you start off struggling against common enemies but as you get upgrades they become weaker relative to you. However I do agree that the trash mobs are a bit too tanky. Maybe somewhere between 50% and 25% less health would be ideal. I’m not sure I would adjust the bosses though.
Feels like healing in micro transactions form where you want to buy a thing that cost 3 currency but the shop only sells at five currency.
