Hollow Knight: Silksong (2025)

Why does every single boss fight need a runback? When you lose against Karmelita, the game fully heals you, reloads your items without cost, and puts you right outside the entrance to try again. But no, it can't be that simple. Even in this ideal situation you still have to watch a cutscene, fully circle around the stage, and defeat 3 waves of enemies before she even dares showing up.

I absolutely loved the fight but my god this is getting ridiculous.

You know, it's interesting.

Most of my problems with games with large open worlds that encourage seemingly directionless exploration stem from that exact thing...a large open world that encourages seemingly directionless exploration. Look, I grew up playing extremely on rails, linear games. That's what I want. I wanna be told what to do, where to go, when to do something. I don't wanna fucking explore. That isn't fun. That's just running around wasting time.

Except, and I don't know why, in the case of this franchise.

For some reason, both in the original and especially this iteration, exploration is my favorite part. Perhaps it's the fact that it's a world built around bug kingdoms, and I'm an enormous entymology girl, or perhaps it's just a very well crafted world in ways that nothing else is, or perhaps it's the fact that the world never seems devoid of discoveries (another big problem I have with games such as this, is that they encourage exploration and then are endlessly empty) but whatever the reason is, it's nice to know that sometimes the aspect I hate the most can, in the right hands, become the aspect I love the most.

Don't get me wrong. I love the fights. I love the lore. I love everything else. But I have my most fun in these titles when I'm just adventuring and then accidentally wander into something that then takes me 2 hours to get through. Or I discover something that isn't exactly tied to the plot but is interesting in its own right. A little side story, like the flower quest in the original. Wandering around the kingdom as Hornet, just bumping into shit and then trying to figure out how to continue? That I could do every day forever. That's what I really love.

I hate open worlds. I hate exploration.

But GOD DAMMIT do I love bugs.

I gave this another shot, and am now enjoying it more. Ultimately, I think I finally crossed the hurdle of getting enough abilities that the traversal is fun.

I recently went into the area with the broken bench and found the path to get it fixed. I died half-way through and my corpse was in the midst of some nasty platforming elements. I managed to juggle on the spikes long enough to reclaim my beads and finish the area to fix the bench. The platforming is really satisfying when you are in the right groove.

Since starting this game ~26 hours ago, I've been curious when Silksong was going to get as hard as people were complaining it was. Now I'm circling the drain of act 2, trying to finish every single quest and get every single item, and I'm still not seeing this insane difficulty everyone was complaining about on release?

This isn't a humblebrag - my aging eyes and brain can't process things as fast anymore, and I barely even use abilities.. I'm really not great at this game. Here's a video of me taking down First Sinner last night. It is extremely unremarkable and unimpressive. I barely used any abilities, missed half the hits, and basically relied on my own reaction time + the dodge-attack, which is great for the faster bosses:

I have found that if I hammer on a hard boss 15 or 20 times, eventually I just know exactly what they're going to do and muscle memory sorta takes over; autopilot if you will. I save nearly all of my silk for healing, instead focusing on taking my time with the boss and making sure I get clean hits in, to keep my silk levels topped off.

Perhaps the main difficulty comments stemmed not necessarily from the boss difficulty, but the unforgiving nature of the 2-health hits paired with the Last Judge runback? Either way perhaps it was just growing pains/people forgot how tough Hollow Knight was, but I'm finding this difficulty perfectly difficult, if that makes sense.

I have a feeling there is going to be a bonus act after I take down the "lady up the elevator" but already I'm eyeing my next game... and I'm heavily leaning towards finally pulling the trigger on Elden Ring. I've put it off for years because I really never liked Dark Souls, but this game seems like a must-play, and if Silksong taught me anything, it's that I'm pretty damn good at pattern recognition. It might be time.

There's been a lot of talk about how the game rewards exploration by putting a lot of roadblocks on you, and then making them easier to clear by going somewhere else and trying again later. While I think it's a completely valid approach to reward exploration, I don't think Silksong does a good job encouraging exploration.

One of my main problems with this is how disconnected act 2 feels from act 1. Not only does it take place inside its own separate area of the map, but it features its own fast travel system and even blocks some of your exits after you enter. Everything about its design says Don't exit until you're done!, all while wanting you to continue exploring outside.

The money and shard system also contribute. You need to pay for tools, maps, benches, bell stations... You need to buy so many things that even trying to explore without enough rosaries in your pocket feels like suicide. But also, you lose your money when you die, so make sure you're extra careful or exploring with many rosaries will also feel like suicide!

This is especially bad in areas where the enemies don't carry money. One time I found Shakra but wasn't able to pay for the maps, so I went back to the previous area to get more, and then came back just to find her gone. So now I'm locked out of this area until I backtrack all the way to town just to find her again.

Idk, it feels like the game just keeps sending me mixed signals on what I should be doing. I got stuck on an enemy gauntlet and after bashing my head against a wall for a while, i decided to exit the citadel and explore Pharloom. It's been a few hours and while I've gotten a lot of rewards and skills, it doesn't actually feel like I was supposed to do this. Its like being outside the citadel is a punishment, instead of the intended way to progress

But what do you think?