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.
pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
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.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 17 hours ago
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.
pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 hours ago
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.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 9 hours ago
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