Hollow Knight and Silksong

I played Hollow Knight in 2017. Not at launch but a bit after. I went in expecting not to like it that much, but it was an inexpensive game, and I thought I would give it the old college try as they say. It came as a surprise to me that I really liked it. I am really not very good at metriodvanias at all. I don’t have the reflexes and my hand-eye coordination is just not up to par with what you need but I did well enough to embarrass myself only a little. I was also at the time predominantly keyboard and mouse so I was pretty rubbish on controller which doesn’t help.

There are many things about this game that people find fantastic and I feel it richly deserves the praise it gets. The art style and stylistic direction are amazing, from the world to the characters, to the subtle story telling through a mix of visual cues and cryptic conversations right down to the world language they created that draws you in. The way it leads you through the game, gently tugging you in the right direction when you need it and seem to have lost your way, is masterful. I struggle with many of these types of games and often feel I am aimlessly wondering through the world but in this game, I felt that whenever I was flailing a little and losing my way there was a developer performing a little head nod in the direction I need to go with subtle clues or glaring empty areas in my map. In most metroidvanias I just get frustrated. The backtracking, even through really beautiful environments, frustrates me and games such as Ori made this easier with fast travel that alleviated this a little. I often suffer through the controls and just don’t have the dexterity I need to perform as well as I would like to. The issue is I always I lose interest in the end. This happened in Hollow Knight as well but I feel that when it happened I was more disappointed in myself that I drifted away from it and it is a bugbear of mine that after almost 30hrs of the game, I never finished it.

When I saw Silksong was in development I was really happy for the developers. They had made an incredible game and deserved to be able to continue making games. This was the type of stories we all love in gaming, a developer that made the game they wanted to, smashed it out of the park and because of their hard work and creative vison, they created a situation where they were able to make another game. Everyone was rooting for them and in no time at all the snowball began to roll downhill and before we knew it Silksong was the most wishlisted game on Steam. On top of that people were willing to give them time to make the game right and as the developers wanted it to be. People didn’t rant and rave on about where the game was, there was only a woeful, quiet constant question of where the game was every time there was a games showcase of any kind.

After multiple proof of live showings, a date was eventually announced and the world lost it. The game sold like mad even though it was on Game Pass. The consensus overall was it was an amazing game in a year of amazing games. It is ‘very positive’ on Steam with a review number of 83 000. The major gripe seems to be difficulty.

I thought this might be the opportunity to redeem myself (in my own eyes at any rate) so I downloaded it on Game Pass (although it is only around £17 or $20). The game is great but now I am 8yrs older than I was when I played Hollow Knight and to no one’s great surprise my dexterity and reflexes have sadly not got any better. My personal issues with the original game remain.

My overall feeling before and after playing Silksong was it is more Hollow Knight, and this is definitely not a bad thing at all. It has all the comparable art style and characters that fill the world. Although there are differences in the movement and combat mechanics there are similar enough for someone coming from Hollow Knight to be comfortable in saying this is familiar to them. The dialog is alike in how the characters interact with the main character in both games and the characters individual personalities are similar as well. The map and metroidvania mechanics are the same and so on and so on.

I think the main issue I had with both games was with the control mechanics. I actually like the combat and acquisition of different skills, charms and the upgrade system. The issue I had with both games is I felt that the game never did what I wanted it to. The jump has a system where the longer you push the button the higher or further you jump. Although I liked this, I often felt that the difference between jumping too high\long compared to too short\low respectively was too tight. Again, I need to stress that this is a me issue. I couldn’t quite get the timing right and often jumped too high into spikes or not long enough to jump over an enemy. Specifically, the bounce on something (like an enemy or the red metal flowers in Silksong) was erratic in when it worked. I would push down and attack on the controller to do a downward attack in order to bounc on the thing I needed to and then do it again in order to bounce off another item to get higher and instead of doing a downward attack I would just whiff an attack in the mid-air. I did see other people struggling with this exact problem and many people said the solution was to use the D-pad as they had had better success with it. I am too well trained now after many years of using the analogue sticks to do this. I also never really liked the D-pad as I always felt it was too imprecise.

As to the difficulty that others complained about, I didn’t get far enough into Silksong to comment on this, but I can see that my personal difficulty would be fighting the controls and my lack of dexterity and timing. This is how boss fights and even basic enemy fights were in Hollow Knight. I would often end up hitting enemies and taking damage on touch from the enemies, because of these issues I have with the controls and be left feeling like I couldn’t get the game to do what I wanted it to do, and I was fighting the controls rather than enemies. To make it worse, I would from time to time know what it felt like to do it correctly because I would every now and then get the controls to do what I wanted them to do.

One of my biggest bugbears, not specific to this game by any measure, is the damage on touch. This has been an annoyance of mine from the first time I saw it. It makes no sense at all. If the enemy took damage as you do, maybe this would make more sense. I get why this is a thing, but I cannot get behind it as games that do not do this do not suffer from any side effects but only benefits. They could make your player character or the enemy move or dodge each other with a sweet ballet move or ninja sidestep. I know damage on touch can add another level of difficulty and encourages accuracy in your movements, but I cannot get onboard with this.

I doubt I will go back to Silksong not because it is a bad game, as I think for may people this is game of the year material, and to be fair I can see why. I believe quite strongly that Team Cherry did exactly what they needed to do in order to make this game successful. It is more Hollow Knight with mechanics that are different and yet similar enough to please old fans and elaborated enough on the game to keep both the old fans and any new fans happy at the same time. I think we have seen enough sequels that have not done this successfully to know this is no small feat. I hope Team Cherry go on to make a new game in this world. I am not sure but I will assume they will continue to make metroidvanias, but I would love to see what it would look like if they were to bring their world, attention to detail and storytelling to another genre. I think about Moon Studios move from metroidvanis to soulslike ARPG when moving from Ori to their new game No Rest for the Wicked (which I actually really like). This game has a tug to it though and when I think about it I want to play it, but I know if I were to return to it I would remember why I sucked at it and the frustration would just set back in and I would quit.