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.
Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks
EarlGrey@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Runbacks are shit and 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.
Cybersteel@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Kinokoloko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
At least that’s an optional area. Now, the run back from pre-SotFS No Man’s Wharf? That was a pain.
Underwaterbob@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The run to Blue Smelter nearly gave me a coronary.
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Although DS2 gave us a reprieve with despawning enemies eventually, making runbacks feel rather poignant when you’re walking an empty world.
Nikls94@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
syreus@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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 And weak to being exploited by them.
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.
wols@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
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.
pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
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.