Note: If your main thought on this piece is “BUT SILKSONG ISN’T A SOULSLIKE,” I literally do not care. It’s close enough. Touching grass is so important in these trying times.
I have a weird relationship with soulslikes. I tend to enjoy them, but only to a certain point. Depending on the game, I usually duck out around the halfway point. Usually, there’s one boss that is taking me multiple hours, and I just don’t have the patience to fight it anymore.
This has especially become a problem now that I’m a parent. Back when I could spend hour after hour playing a game on a day off, it was frustrating, but not a huge deal if a particular boss was taking a while to finish. Now, if a boss takes me 2+ hours to beat, that could be an entire night of gaming that I just threw away. My gaming time is incredibly precious to me at this busy point in my life (admittedly, a blog and podcast don’t help on the free time thing). It makes boss fights very tense for me if I’m enjoying a game. Because even if I don’t really want to abandon a game, it doesn’t take much for me to decide it’s not worth it anymore thanks to that time scarcity. I like to experience new things, and being stuck in the same area for a few nights combined with my limited time is a bad mix.
Also, I despise checking guides to create builds or trying to look up the cheap exploits for a given boss. I get that this is stupid, but doing stuff like this takes away the entire point of playing these games for me. I’d rather win on my own terms or just quit the game. Even with the soulslikes that are starting to come out with easy modes, I still tend to prefer playing on the default difficulty as well. I honestly enjoy the difficulty of these games overall. It’s usually just one specific point that makes me decide it’s not worth it.
Of course, most of the soulslikes I’ve played in my life came after my first child was born in 2021. So, to this point, I have never finished a game in this genre. But god damn it, Hollow Knight: Silksong is going to be the one I beat.
I am currently stuck on a “horde room,” where I have to take out something like eight different waves of enemies. The first half of this area is probably harder than any other “horde room” in the game. There were literally multiple points where I thought that I had it beat, only for a new enemy to come. Finally, what I have to assume is the “final boss” shows up, and it is absolutely brutal. I’ve made it to this point five times now. The first two times, I think I had no idea what to do and got crushed. I’ve done better since, but I feel like I still have a decent amount of work to do before I have that fight down. I could probably look up a guide and find a tool that would make this last section a lot easier, but once again, I’m just not going to do that. If the whole point of these games is the thrill of vanquishing something that has bested you many times, then doing something like that would completely eliminate that thrill for me, and would just encourage me to do it all the time.
In probably every other soulslike I’ve ever played, this would probably be it for me. There is a lot to play out there right now, and it sucks to spend this much time on one area. But god damn it, Silksong is so good in so many ways, I am fucking determined. At times, it can be a miserable experience, but the mixture of the incredibly strong core mechanics, the mystique of the world, and some top tier enemy and boss design have me desperate to see this through to the end. Even if it kills me… and kills me again… and kills me again. Here are my impressions of the game around the halfway point.
Team Cherry Hates Metroidvanias, And They Think You Are Stupid For Liking Them
While combat has, of course, given me issues in spots, the real challenge in Silksong for me is just finding the next place to go. I actually quit the original Hollow Knight because of this exact annoyance. Luckily, I don’t think Silksong is quite as bad here. The benches (which allow you to recover health and respawn on death), and the fast travel points are a bit more prevalent than last time, and I haven’t spent days being lost. But I have spent long stretches going back through each area of the map that looks unexplored and trying to figure out what I missed in order to proceed. While Silksong does have objective markers on the map, they aren’t particularly helpful. In fact, the entire map, which is one of the most defining traits of the Metroidvania genre, is purposefully about as obtuse as it gets.
First off, much like the first game, you don’t just get a map to start off. You have to find it, and buy it. You have to do this with each area in the game as well. So, in a genre where you usually have a nice map that allows you to easily find and explore every nook and cranny, Silksong often forces you to play without any map assistance. The map itself is not nearly as detailed as most of its peers, and you even have to equip an ability to do basic things like see where your character is on the map.
One of the biggest joys in many Metroidvanias is going back to old areas with new abilities and finding every upgrade and collectible that you couldn’t get early on. With Silksong, thanks to fast travel points that are still quite spaced out, and the risk of losing out on precious rosaries if you die too much, backtracking is also no picnic.
It’s bizarre. It makes me feel like Team Cherry hates the entire genre, or at least how it is currently constructed. I play a lot of Metroidvanias, and being lost within them isn’t a super common occurrence for me. With Silksong, I am constantly wondering where I need to go next and really having to backtrack to figure it out.
Sometimes, I’ll think I found a path that is allowing me to make progress, but it’s actually just an optional area that only gives the most miniscule of rewards. Even the major rewards in the game can feel paltry. For example, I was able to upgrade my weapon so that it does more damage. This should be and likely is a major upgrade, but I really haven’t felt the difference one bit. Part of this is because enemies don’t have health bars, so I can’t physically see the damage that I’m doing. It also feels like enemy health went up right after I got the upgrade anyway, as plenty of smaller foes are still taking 4+ hits to take down. And it’s rarely a total breeze to land 4 hits on any enemy in this game.
But still, it just works somehow. I think more than anything, Team Cherry is so devoted to their principles that it pays off, even if there’s pain along the way. The map may be the most basic possible “upgrade” in the world, but it means a whole lot every time I find the next piece of it. Finding 30 rosaries after a few treacherous battles may seem like a slap in the face, but I’m pretty much always out of rosaries because of the way the game’s economy works, so every little bit matters. Silksong makes you scratch and claw for every bit of progress, but every time you chip away and accomplish even a tiny thing, it suddenly feels like a big deal.
Fighting As Bugs Has Never Felt More Like Real Life Fighting
Now, having sparse rewards in and of itself isn’t enough to make a game’s exploration fun. Any game could set up a similar structure, and in many cases, it would get annoying pretty fast. Silksong is able to make this punishing structure succeed because of how damn good everything else around it is. If even one element of Silksong was worse, I think I’d be ready to head for the exit by now. But everything comes together to deliver a fantastic experience that feels levels above almost all of its contemporaries in the genre.
First off, there is combat. Much like exploration, this can be incredibly punishing. As I discussed earlier, even common foes can take quite a few hits to take out, and they can often hit you for 2 out of your 5 health points. Enemies are relentless and weirdly smart for a 2D game as well. They don’t always just sit there and take hits. You have to be patient to look for openings. Especially with flying enemies that are constantly retreating the second you get close. Sometimes just traveling from one point to another can be harder than a boss fight, as you might be forced to take on multiple vicious foes at once (you can run through them at times, but that isn’t always plausible depending on the way things are laid out).
And yet, there’s a magic to all of these fights that is remarkable. First off, the game’s controls are incredibly responsive, and you have enough options where things feel fair. Once you have your air dash and some other skills, you can zip around the battlefield and bring the fight to your foes in satisfying ways.
I also enjoy how most battles have a flow that resembles real-life fighting in a lot of ways. When you try and come forward, enemies will back up quite often. And if you back up, enemies will close the gap.
If you are skilled enough to come forward and take space, you can eventually corner a lot of foes once they come up against a wall or other obstacle. There are some enemies and areas where this doesn’t seem possible, but I’ve had more success than I usually do with more ultra aggressive strategies in Silksong. The fact that you have a health potion that generously heals 60% of your health and recharges with somewhat decent speed also helps with that. You can also be more conservative and be more of a counter puncher, which I’ve also done plenty of. It’s an interesting flow that feels kind of unique to me. Even fights against normal enemies can require a fun combination of both reflexes and “fight IQ” in order to win. Finding your enemies’ tells and exploiting them is rewarded nicely.
I also think it helps that Silksong is incredibly fair with its enemy attack animations. Almost every enemy in the game has at least two different attacks, and sometimes more, but the tells on these attacks are always really clear. The game also doesn’t try and fake you out, or have enemies do “feints” like in other games that can make you question every move you are making. Once I’ve seen an enemy attack a few times, it becomes pretty obvious to me what they are going to do. From that point, it’s just a matter of execution.
This also goes for the bosses. While I’ve found plenty of the bosses in the game to be challenging, I’ve never once thought that anything was even close to unfair. Every boss is so unique, and has so many different attacks, but once again, after a few tries, it becomes easy to tell which attack is coming. Bosses tend to be relentless, so you will encounter a lot of attacks in a row, but they are usually easy enough to avoid, and openings will always arise. I usually dread bosses in soulslike games because I wonder if the next boss will be the one that makes me quit. Silksong might be the only game in this genre (or at least adjacent to it) where I actually get a little excited for boss fights.
I Hate This Shit. Give Me Some More.
The other part of Silksong that is keeping me engaged is just how well the entire package comes together. The art direction is pitch perfect, with beautiful and varied environments that help suck me into the world. I also love the enemy design, and the animations are just unbelievably good. The music is awesome, too. At times, it’s eerie. At times, it’s chill, and at times, it is very intense. Whatever is going on, it has me hooked in. I really don’t recall loving the music this much in the original game. That mix of art direction and music has me locked in, even when I’m a bit frustrated with another long run back or when I’m having difficulties finding my next destination.
As much as this game pisses me off, and as much as I do genuinely question a few design decisions, everything about this game is so well done that I really need to see the end.
I want to make it so bad that I’m inventing new tricks in order to keep myself from getting too upset with the game. My basement had become a bit messy the other day thanks to a combination of being sick, and my 3.5 year old daughter naturally creating messes everywhere she goes. So when I played last night, I stopped and took 2 minutes to clean up a few things after each death. That way, even if I’m not accomplishing anything in the game, at least I’m accomplishing tasks in real life. Even though I didn’t get past the area that night, all of a sudden, my basement was a lot cleaner. I’m also learning how valuable it is to just play a different game if I’m feeling too frustrated. It doesn’t feel like putting down a game and picking it up the next day will make me better at it, but surprisingly, it works. I guess this shouldn’t shock me. Some days, I will miss shots that I make all of the time when playing basketball, and then the next day, I’ll be hitting everything I shoot. I guess video games can function the same way.
Silksong has me inventing new methods of playing games and thinking about how I approach basketball when I play it. It has wormed its way directly into my brain. Because as much as I hate this stupid ass game, I also love it, and god damn do I want to see it through.
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