You can go explore and get a whole lot of stuff, but a lot of it seems totally useless?
Oh yeah I totally feel this. I’ll complete a quest or some fiddly pogo area only to see the reward and go “huh?”
Still liking the game a lot, to be fair.
Comment on The Purpose of Difficulty | GMTK Mini
Thorry@feddit.org 22 hours ago
I agree with a lot in this video, but disagree on one key point. You can go explore somewhere else and get upgrades and stuff.
I really liked this aspect in Elden Ring, where the bosses could get pretty hard, but you could always just go explore. Explore the lands, level up, find cool weapons and upgrades to get really OP. Then return to the boss and kick their ass. Once you’ve put 500 hours into it, you do challenge runs like SL1. But if you only want to put in 100 hours, you can easily beat it, no matter your skill level. The exploration feels great, the world is interesting and there is a lot to find. As compared to the previous Souls games where the game would just put a big roadblock boss in your path and good luck getting past it. Or a game like Nioh that gives you a tutorial boss, with which one struggles a bit but then beats pretty fast, only to almost right away throw in the next boss which is so hard about 70% of people quit on him (according to stats I’ve seen).
However, I feel like this doesn’t apply to Silksong at all. You can go explore and get a whole lot of stuff, but a lot of it seems totally useless? You can get one damage upgrade, which does fuck all (haven’t looked it up, but feels like 15% maybe?). The different crests are really cool, but won’t help you beat bosses. There is maybe 1 full mask or 2? But as everything does 2 damage, that’s only 1 extra hit. The secondary weapons are mostly useless and as the video said, you need to farm resources to be able to use them.
I consider myself pretty good at these kinds of games. Not great, but pretty good. I’ve played the fuck out of DS1, DS3 and Elden Ring. I’ve beaten Nioh 1. I’ve done SL1 runs and all sorts of challenges in DS1, DS3 and Elden Ring, I’ve done randomisers etc. I’ve beaten Hollow Knight 3 times, the third time I did 112%.
For Silk Song I’m about 20 hours in, I’ve beaten Act 1 and did pretty much everything I could find (not spoiling myself on anything). I’m part of the way into Act 2 and I don’t know if I want to play anymore. Every enemy is a bullet sponge, requiring a lot of hits to get out of the way. Everything does so much damage. Simply exploring and finding shit feels like a slog. I’ve had many completely unfair deaths where I got booped by an enemy only to fall into a pit of spikes and die. You go from full health to death very fast. And the bosses just keep on getting more difficult. It feels like a grind instead of fun.
On the other hand, I love the way the game looks, I love the boss music (not as much a fan of the level music, too much atmospheric, too little actual music), I love how smooth it feels to play. And I love the world and want to explore it all. That’s where I disagree with the video, I’m not in the rage quit phase, I’m in the this isn’t fun to play phase.
Maybe I’ll continue, I know I have the skills to beat the game. But if I’m not having fun, what’s even the point of playing anymore?
catalyst@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
simple@piefed.social 20 hours ago
You can get one damage upgrade, which does fuck all
The first damage upgrade increases your damage by 80%, the second increases by 44%, the third increases by 24%.
The different crests are really cool, but won't help you beat bosses.
Wanderer's and architect will definitely help you beat bosses.
There is maybe 1 full mask or 2?
You can get 3-4 masks in act 2 I think
Like many complaints it sounds like you are ranting that the game is hard to be honest. Especially in act 2, the game really opens up with many different paths to take. Stop trying to brute force the game.
Thorry@feddit.org 20 hours ago
You misunderstand. I was limiting what I said to act 1, just like the video did. The things you are talking about are in act 2. I’m glad to see it gets better in act 2, however I’m not as far into that yet. Most people running into these issues will quit before beating act 1 most likely, so it’s kind of a moot point.
I simply can’t believe those damage numbers. I was talking about the nail upgrade in the town. Is there some other upgrade I’m not aware of? All the low level enemies seem to take the same number of hits. In Hollow Knight the upgrades to the nail were very noticeable. The nail upgrade in Silksong felt like it did nothing at all. Bosses might have gone from 16 hits to 12 hits per phase, which is still a whole lot of hits. Especially as windows for damage are brief and far in between and bosses have 4 phases typically.
simple@piefed.social 20 hours ago
You misunderstand. I was limiting what I said to act 1
Fair. Act 1 is fairly tough but one can still go through the mist to skip last judge at least which is where most struggle.
The damage values are real and I'm also talking about the town upgrade, you can see the wiki to confirm ( https://hollowknight.wiki/w/Needle )
It goes from 5 dmg --> 9 dmg --> 13 dmg. It felt noticeable when I got it, enemies that took 5 hits take 3.
Thorry@feddit.org 19 hours ago
I haven’t done a whole lot with the crests as I found the starter crest to be very versatile and I got used to the moveset. I have played around with the Beast crest which is really fun, allowing you to just go ham on enemies. However I found against bosses the Beast crest doesn’t work at all, as the damage taken is too large for the lifesteal to overcome. Unless you are dodging and weaving, which defeats the purpose of the Beast crest a bit.
The patches that have been release will probably help a lot of people with the bosses as, if I understood correctly, they’ve decreased the contact damage. This will help a lot with the feeling if boss fights being unfair due to hits taken are often compounded by subsequent contact damage. On many occasions I’ve gone from 4 health, doing OK to dead in less than one sec. This can feel very unfair. Especially after going through a long and annoying run back and then 2 easy phases, just to get to the hard part and die right away.
It feels like if one were to simply be able to practice the hard part, bosses would be defeated much faster. The runbacks (which often include shortcuts it must be said) combined with long easier phases contribute to a feeling of unfair difficulty. It also makes things take up more time than needed, leaving people to feel like the game is wasting their time. Or difficulty for the sake of being difficult. As the video stated, difficulty is a tool that most be wielded carefully.
When doing for example a SL1 run in a Souls game, the player must play at a high level without many or even any mistakes. Boss fights will take longer and the stakes go up. The difference is, one chooses to do these challenges. Often only after already mastering a game. For many people Silksong feels like being thrown into the deep end, without being able to properly swim.
Phelpssan@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Fair. Act 1 is fairly tough but one can still go through the mist to skip last judge at least which is where most struggle.
Though that’s quite well hidden and very few people will find that without some Google help. I’d also argue that it’s probably harder to go through Sinner’s Road and Mist than fighting Last Judge, though YMMV.
It goes from 5 dmg --> 9 dmg --> 13 dmg.
That didn’t match my experience, I did a lot of tests after getting the first upgrade and it definitely didn’t cut down the hits by that much.
So I was looking into that and according to tests made by a redditor there’s some kind of “damage reduction” stat in place that negates some of that buff. Their page is a work-in-progress but they’re documenting the exact damage and # of hits to kill each enemy with each upgrade.
ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 hours ago
What’s unfair about getting booped into spikes? That’s a classic video game death!
Thorry@feddit.org 19 hours ago
Man fuck those Ninja Gaiden birds
__Lost__@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 hours ago
And those damn Medusa heads!
Phelpssan@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
The secondary weapons are mostly useless and as the video said, you need to farm resources to be able to use them.
I’d argue these are some of the few “useful” upgrades since some of these tools are really strong. But I agree they made them quite annoying to use due to the need to manage/farm resources.
Katana314@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
I think the death run back and the option of exploring for upgrades were always at odds. When you respawn, getting things back is your first task as a form of loss avoidance. But then you’re standing in front of the boss room, maybe after jumping some spike pits, and you might as well just go in. There’s no thought to going other places at that point.
Shovel Knight used a death run to reclaim your lost treasure, and it worked out because it plays as a linear platformer, egging you on into accomplishing the daring feat you just pulled; gating little important behind upgrades.
Soulslike Tunic basically abandoned the death run back, just having you lose 20 gold (which hangs in that spot), and the game didn’t really suffer for it especially because exploration of old areas is so key to that game.