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I was, as is my normal way, not on the hype train for Silksong. I wasn't reading updates, I wasn't Silkposting. I wasn't desperately waiting for a release date. I had no emotional stakes in its existence.

I really liked Hollow Knight, but I didn't crave more of it. It genuinely helped remind me what the weird, vibey 'genre' we clumsily call Metroidvanias are actually about. They aren't about color coded doorway and breaking blocks, but exploration. Yet the tools that could be used to create a sense of exploration became the genre in peoples minds. Hollow Knight forwent most of those tools, most of the "Quality of Life", and let players get lost. It rewarded them for getting lost, by making sure there was real, substantial content in every direction. You weren't left struggling to find the golden path, because there was, at least relative to the rest of the genre, little sequence to break.

Hollow Knight... woke me up, in a sense. The first hour or two of playing it, I assumed it wasn't actually that great. The map just seemed wrong... the flow seemed wrong... areas seemed too samey -- how am I going to avoid getting lost, if you're designing like this? Isn't your invisible hand supposed to be guiding me?

... And then I actually got lost.

I didn't particularly care for the art style(I don't get why THIS is the thing every HK inspired game chooses to copy) (Though I respected it). I didn't really dig the whole bug thing(I wasn't a bug mother yet, okay?). I didn't enjoy most of the bosses that people swore were really good. None of that mattered. Playing a game that rejected 10 years of indie metroidvania "common knowledge" revitalized my mind.

Silksong revitalized my heart.

I don't mean that in the sense I might talk about an Undertale, a game with a story that genuinely moved me. Silksong has it's moments, but that's not the type of feeling I'm talking about. Silksong is a game that reminded me why I love videogames. My mind, hands, and heart; all in sync. Moving felt better, all the characters felt more fleshed out, the boss fights finally fun and engaging. Sure, I was getting less lost, but in exchange I got more of a sense of place. Hallownest feels like a core sample taken from deep in the earth, showing all the layers of rock and sediment. By contrast, Pharloom feels real and lived in. Pilgrims trace paths through the world. Popup 'towns' show up, both for mutual survival and sometimes simply profit. Instead of descending deeper and deeper into a dead world, you climb through the rungs of society. The ruins of old forgotten societies still exist, but they feel more like the outliers. Like Bloodborne, it doesn't feel like you're a thousand years too late, but that you are there in the moment.

Like Bloodborne in a Lot of Ways, Actually

If you wanna skip the difficulty meta-commentary, just click here

It is impossible to talk about this game, so close to it's release date and not talk about the discourse surrounding it... but in doing so, I also want to talk about Bloodborne.

Bloodborne is pretty universally loved, at this point. One of the most loved Fromsoft game for those with a PS4, and one of the most envied titles for those without. I practically stole my friend's PS4(Thank you, April) for a year to fully enjoy it. Bloodborne fans will even do their own version of silkposting, expecting the announcement of a remake or sequel during every gaming news show. Nevermind that there is no evidence Sony cares at all. Nevermind the fact this isn't like Demon's Souls(I would not wish a Bluepoint remake on my worst enemy), which was locked on a console most people didn't have access to anymore. You can play Bloodborne on a PS5 already('Well I want them to announce a PC version' yeah well I want UBI, but neither of those things are going to happen). It runs fine... if you aren't a huge baby. Or just emulate it -- sorry SORRY I got off track here...

... I don't think people remember the initial discourse around Bloodborne.

People were not ready for how Bloodborne played. They weren't ready to not have a shield, they weren't ready to be aggressive, or fight more aggressive bosses. Some people were kinda pissed, but the outrage cycle wasn't as strong back then as it is now. Also Souls fans, for all their many faults, are definitely good at quashing that kind of thing. Still, it's to be expected. People had been playing a specific style of Souls-like for like 6 years, until Bloodborne came out and asked for something outside of some player's comfort zone. The game honestly is no harder than any other Fromsoft title, but it being the first major change(You can argue DS2 is very different but honestly besides a few enemy behaviors, its still very Souls), it took people awhile to adapt. Now, years later, few people remember its early reputation for being destructively, devastatingly hard. Okay sure, we remember what a motherfucker Father Gascoigne is, but basically he gets all the focus(Him and blood vial farming) at this point.

I've had people tell me they Steel Souled Hollow Knight yet found Silksong to be too difficult. "I should be good enough for this game," they fairly assume, not realizing their over familiarity with Hollow Knight is oddly a curse. Almost comedically, all the people I know who weren't as invested in Hollow Knight on average seem to be having an easier time.

Two Damage is basically a meme at this point, and something I would have never thought twice about if I played this game without being exposed to any discourse(Of course I wouldn't have played it if not for the discourse and longtime friend Trynant gifting me a copy, likely to bait me to write about it). Two damage seems like a perfectly normal amount of damage for things to do. A Link to the Past had enemies who could hit for two hearts, and that's a game where some things could hit for only half a heart. I've watched people twist themselves into knots, insisting the first mask upgrade you get is worthless, because moving from 5 to 6 health still has you dying in 3 Two Damage hits. Nevermind the fact that not everything does Two Damage. Nevermind that few... if any?? bosses can't damage you for one health. Nevermind the fact that even if one exists, you heal for 3 health, and your first heal will leave you with one more additional hit of survivability. People will say "Well stuff didn't do two damage in Hollow Knight until later", but this is a whole ass different game. You have to engage with it as something new.

The memetic nature of a lot of complaints become self reinforcing. You can find threads on reddit about people furious about Savage Beastfly, an optional(People will fuss and complain like 'how do I know its optional???' and come on that's the one part that's the same from Hollow Knight. Just go somewhere else!! If it IS gating progress, by the time you come back you'll be stronger.) boss with two whole attacks and manipulatable movement. The only real complication to the fight is him summoning additional(I refuse to call them adds, you MMO people get away with too much already) smaller enemies, sometimes two at a time.

"Some of us can't spend 12 hours learning a boss fight!" one poster(I can't find the original post and it might be a bit different but anyways it's probably best not to put a rando on blast) yelled after... spending 12 hours on the boss fight, before editing their post to say they got it in two attempts after changing their strategy. They don't have 12 hours to spend learning a boss, but they have 12 hours to spend banging their head against a wall, not thinking about what they're doing. When I said I did the fight in 20 minutes and that it was both fun and fair, I had someone yell at me, swearing up and down that I must have gotten lucky. I did the trickier refight(Honestly, the refight is kinda easier? You have more horizontal space to work with, and the floor break gimmick is trivial to deal with. Atop that the summoned enemies are consistent and die quickly) in 15.

Once you're convinced by people that's something is bullshit, you engage with it like it's bullshit. The failure of the Git Gud mindset is it doesn't tell you how to get good. It's the game equivalent of "Draw a circle. Now draw the rest of the Owl". People think they must endure, and through suffering they will improve. That if they try, and die hard enough, they will become an elementally better, more capable person.

Learning and improving doesn't work like that. This isn't lifting weights(Though you will accidentally learn technique while lifting too). Encounters are like puzzles and you have to use your eyes, ears, and mind to engage with them. What are your biggest threats? What is the safest place to be on the screen? A technique my friend Sophie uses in fighting game tournaments is "keeping a ledger of what killed you". Where do you take damage? How do you avoid that situation? This applies to single player games too. Identify the problem area, and try something different.

I streamed a bit (no promise on how long this footage will be around) because I wanted to show how I play. It's easy for me to talk shit without any context behind it. "Oh well you made IWBTG, of course you think it's easy." I'm no God Gamer, though. I'm patient and I learn fast(My Fighting Game opponents would disagree), but that's about that's about it. I die like a dog like everyone else.

I fought Moorwing and Splinter Sister on stream, and it couldn't have gone more perfectly as examples. I eat shit. I die from my own mistakes. I try things out that don't work. But then I say "I'm dying to X, so I'm going to do Y", and do better. I die to something else. "Well I should try this when that happens", and a few tries later I'm even farther. Eventually, as each problem gets solved, I win with an almost perfect run. It's not about brute forcing problems with raw gamer skills. I'm old, and my hands are starting to feel less coordinated with each passing year. It's about making the problem simpler, similar to the mental stack. When Savage Beastfly summons some enemies, I don't think about how to pixel perfectly position myself to attack them while dodging the Big Boy. I do silkspear(If you actually SPEND YOUR METER ON SPELLS that will make the situation you're in easier you won't get HIT TO BEGIN WITH so you WON'T HAVE TO HEAL) or throw some tools and kill them. I can't worry about all those things at once, so I find the fastest way, most reliable way not to. I can't react to everything, so where do I stand so that I don't have to?

People have played enough Fromsoft games that they've kinda learned what to do through sheer exposure, even if they haven't learned how to intentionally learn. I feel like this weird new Hollow Knight-like subgenre hasn't had it's Bloodborne moment until now. Is Silksong a harder game than Hollow Knight? Sure, but for most people, half that difficulty comes from mismatched expectations. Ultimately, these first few weeks of the game will be forgotten, reduced down to a fun bit of trivia people will bring up from time to time. Like Bloodborne, it's simply too well crafted to be ignored. People will conform themselves to the game and its expectation because it is worth conforming for.

I don't even necessarily think the difficulty is perfect, or it has to be unconditionally hard. It could be easier. It probably should be easier, given Team Cherry's stated goals. What makes the game so great would still survive. What puts me off isn't the idea that the game should be easier, it is the defeatist obstinance.

Sorry, had to get all that out.

The Blissful Joy of Silksong

The point where my expectations of Silksong changed came just a bit before release. The quote that they've just spent 7 years "having a good time"(MUST BE REAL FUCKING NICE I'M NOT JEALOUS, YOU'RE JEALOUS). That this wasn't just a side project, or the result of burnout, working with an old engine(I'M NOT PROJECTING, YOU'RE PROJECTING)... just people enabled by success and financial stability, making the art they want to make. I wanted to see that. Some people will claim that "Without capitalism, no one would want to make anything you love!" and Silksong says no -- this is what great creators can do when they are unbound. They'll make a game, underprice it(I don't want to go even more into the weeds talking about Silksong pricing and Shadow Dropping, so I'll just say quickly that I think the pricing is fine -- one game shouldn't cause a change in expectations -- but the Shadow Dropping is something that larger games really should be cautious about. Granted, given how much they've been hassled for 7 years, I get why they did it), while over-rewarding their old kickstarter backers. The goal isn't profit, it's creation. The question isn't "How efficiently can we make this", but "How much love can we squeeze into every moment?"

Much digital ink has been spilt making claims about Silksong's "Empty Masochism" or "Joyless Combat"(I SWEAR I'm not going to harp on this stuff the whole time, but please bear with me). Now, taste is subjective, and I respect anyone who doesn't enjoy this game, but I feel like it is ridiculous to posit that this game is made to be cruel and without joy. The game yearns for you to interact with it. Combat feels so vibrant compared to Hollow Knight. Hornet is responsive, and so are her enemies. You can't just walk up to things and stab them to death, you need learn how to interact with them, how to chase them, and how to avoid their offense. The game wants you to dance with it. It wants you to practically play footsies. Healing is more risky, but more rewarding. To do it safely you have to understand your enemies. You have to communicate with the game. You have to inhabit the world.

Silksong will not let you get away with a one-sided conversation. This isn't sadism, but instead a desire for mechanical and narrative intimacy. This isn't a selfish request. A player metaphorically Monologuing to a game will never as rich of fulfilling as a two-way dialog. And the game actively rewards you for engaging with it. New areas, fun items, satisfying strategies, new lore and NPC interactions... it's trying to be a good partner!

The Silksong characters stand high above those of Hollow Knight. Giving Hornet a speaking role fundamentally changes the interactions we are able to have with the world. Hornet is... charmingly aristocratic, speaking in that high borne way where you say things without actually saying them. A type of dignified and articulate low-key sass. Again, a two sided conversation is always more interesting. She can push back on ideas presented to her, she can give hope to those around her. Hornet's polite candor works perfect. She will present her views on things, but her dignified air prevents her from being too overbearing. She's not going to preach. That's for those high up in the city of Citadel of Song. Characters are free to chase their own foibles, even with Hornet's diplomatic disapproval. Yet everyone rubs off a little on each other. Words sometimes take time to set in.

It's hard to compare Cornifer, the Hollow Knight mapmaker to Shakra, who oozes personality, her singing putting the former's humming to shame. Instead of pages littering the ground, you have rings, her weapon of choice, leaving you to follow a trail of bodies until you hear her proud song. Her rapport with Hornet is charming, sometimes having her be condescending to the "Child Wielding Needle", but also at the same time being both protective, and respectful. As time goes on, she realizes what a force of nature you are. Yet these two hardened women can't help but keep up a small wall up between them, only rarely letting vulnerability leak through(The song for Shakra's master is a WONDERFUL scene). They desperately need to kiss.

Connection to the characters benefit from the fact that everyone is moving in the same direction. Where most in Hollow Knight are just focusing on survival, characters in Silksong are on the same journey as you are, even if their purpose and exact final destination are different. From Shakra, to Sherma(what the fuck do you MEAN Sherma is a boy???), to the Flea Caravan, to Garmond and Zaza, or even little Pilby. We get to watch the bright faced Sherma change over time, faith politely challenged by Hornet before being shaken by the eventual, undeniable truth. Yet Sherma grows and finds purpose.

Before one gets to appreciate the tragedy of The Green Prince, we get to appreciate his story through the Cogwork Dancers. It is an incredible boss fight where music, themes, and simple mechanics are leveraged and combined perfectly together to create beautiful gay dance between two clockwork Mantises. The 'rules' of the fight are clear, yet the the predictable movements of the two dancers ends up still catching you. Eventually, the music crescendos, and the dancers are now alternating, attacking on half steps. You finally destroy one, expecting a final phase, with one enraged, powerful dancer... Instead what you get is broken. The two can't exist without without each other. The music turns sad, and hollow. The survivor's attacks are feeble. When he goes to dive into his lover's embrace -- a dangerous attack that exists in all prior phases -- only to find nothing, he falls to the ground, trembling in sadness. The final phase isn't challenging, it's tragic. Something beautiful has been destroyed, and the survivor barely has the will to go on.

This creation, the final creation and sacrifice of The Green Prince's lover, mirrors their own relationship and tragedy. You learn the story before you even learn who the story belongs to. Once you see the Green Prince's sadness over the body of one of these machines, you realize what happened without having to have it be explained.

So many boss fights aren't just some random, environmental enemy, or the ruined husk of a once ancient being. They are people of this word, coping with their existence. Those legendary figures exist, and you get to fight them too, but for every Lost Sinner or Karmelita, there is a Lace or Phantom waiting. Lace is as developed a boss fight as she is a character, arrogance and feigned confidence concealing the ways she is emotionally damaged by her personal relationships.

It is rare to play a game where the characters, world, and gameplay all feel equally rich. You are rewarded for doing practically anything... not simply in items, or rosaries or whatever, but in the sheer joy of the experience. You find something new that Team Cherry has designed with love and care, just for you.

The Oppression of Capitalism and Economies

A somewhat fair criticism of the game is, at least at the time of this writing, the economies around Rosaries and Shards. It's hard to muster the same level of defense for these things as with other aspects of the game. They are obviously less well tuned, but I'm still going to try.

A thing that tends to be true in Souls games is that losing souls feels worse than it actually is. By design, the amount of souls you get in new areas, and the amount you get from Bosses, supersedes whatever now feeble amount you lost in the area prior. It's a psychological trick to add drama and to encourage you to return to dicey situations. In general, if you didn't have enough souls to spend (through level ups or buying items), you didn't have enough souls to miss... and if you do die with several levels worth of souls on you, well that sucks but also what the heck were you doing!!

This scaling does not apply to Silksong. This is a game with like only two real farming spots. What keeps the system working at all is that you barely need them.

Rosaries don't let you level up. They're not your XP. There is a finite amount of things to buy in the game, and the pricing scale generally involves a few minutes of farming -- often right near the vendors. If you have nothing to buy, converting to necklaces is a perfect way to stash a big bank account at only about a 20% penalty(I mean it's not 20%, its 20 rosaries regardless of size but whatever). You get the TENSION of a Souls system, but without any real risk. So little, that they actually also tied your silk meter to it. They really want you to feel like you have to do a corpse run, even though you absolutely do not.

It also plays into the capitalistic themes of the game. The underworks are caustic, but you really only need to pay to sit on a bench once. You can quit and restart or suicide you skip paying that tax again. Even if you don't intentionally exploit this, you will when you eventually die. The exploitive rest stop in the Far Fields is dystopian, but you can simply break the door's mechanism. The purpose isn't balance or gameplay, it's story. Engaging with currency is a part of engaging with the world.

Is it good that the fear and the whole system is largely artificial? Not really, it would be better if the economy functioned a bit more, but even despite the smoke and mirrors, it's adding to the play experience.

Shards are a little harder. You either have too many or too few at any given time. They allow tools to be strong -- very very strong! And they encourage good player behavior. Boss fights aren't just spamming cheap tools over and over. If you do that, you'll run out of shards before you learn the fight. You either need cost effective strats, or you need to save your resource dumping for the final phase. Tool use takes consideration.

Still, recovering from a deficit is tough. It bugs me that the most effective way to farm shards is to just farm rosaries and buy them. This feels like it should be a different activity! Managing shards doesn't feel like a major issue until you're dead broke, where suddenly it becomes a huge problem.

More so than rosaries, I feel like there should be higher shard drops, or at least spots more optimized for shard farming. As much as farming feels like a waste of time, routing a farm and executing it is a way to reward your knowledge of the world and abilities.

The quests too, get some flak. Most of them are pretty fun, but some of them do verge on MMO. Collect 15... cockroach... guts. A friend worried this would be the part of the game I found the most offputting. Yet I found these brief quests fun little excuses to engage with the world. "Wait, where ARE those kinds of enemies? What's the best way to route this?"

Having to do maybe... one of these short, optional quests for every 5 or so hours of gameplay kept it from feeling like pointless padding. This game needs no padding. If anything, it's too filled with quality content (... I can't imagine them adding MORE to this game, even though we know they will). The goal of quests seem mostly to be an excuse to keep you checking back, coming to see the friends you made on your journey. An excuse learn more about Pharloom. Sometimes the quest is like when a friend asks you to help them move. It's not fun, but it's bonding. There is something to the fact that you take rags from the bodies of haunted bugs, watch the graphics change to represent that, and then see those same cloths being used by bugs in the town you retrieved them for. This isn't low effort content, even if it is shallow content. Perhaps a bit of monotony is a reprieve after some of the tasks this game asks of you.

Even as someone who thinks the difficulty of Silksong is overstated (hard, but not cruel), some of the platform challenges actually surprised me. While the surface climb was quite fair for optional content, I was a bit shocked Mt. Fay was required. I expected to get to the top and retrieve a crest or something. This challenge was 100% in my wheelhouse so it was pretty fun for me, but I can see that being a real brutal wall for some people. I think a big difference between masocore-esque platforming segments and challenging combat, is that the platforming often has very limited solutions. You cannot simply "find a strategy that matches your playstyle". As someone who made a game entirely of these kinds of challenge, the inflexibility of them is what lead me away from the genre. Part of this makes the Abyss escape sequence annoying too, a precise, long, but not exactly truly challenging segment that is too difficult to be a breezy setpiece, but too setpiecey to be an engaging challenge. Still, in a game where the movement feels fun and responsive, these required segments are far from awful. Just... tiring.

... As is the length of the game. Act 3 Fatigue seems like a real thing. When I beat the game with 95% completion, I asked myself if I was going to go for 100%. I just laughed at myself. I needed time away from this massive, massive game. But what would you even cut? Even the things that could be cut aren't long enough to put that much of a dent in the game's pacing. By the time I was finished I was definitely relieved. I don't know what my actual play time was -- too much time was spent with the game idling in the background -- but it was still far FAR more than I'd be comfortable with for a game of this kind. Sometime's it's better to not know(I would love to just hide playtime in general in all games)...

Closing

Ultimately, these things -- these things I can still defend -- are the closest thing to criticism I can bring to this game. There are papercuts, there are some bosses I didn't love(Last Judge is my least favorite required boss, and The Unraveled is the worst boss in general. Neither are much worse than your average HK1 boss). Often things I thought would be problems, were ultimately not, or had alternative answers I didn't look for. I knew, in my heart, there had to be a hidden bench closer to Groal, but in my pride I kept going the long way rather than crawling in the mud until I found a secret. Most of my problems were problems of my own making, and that is one of the things that allow a game to provide players with unique experiences. We spent the 2010s talking about games letting you explore dangerous areas above their skill level, praising Fromsoft for embracing this and criticizing Bethesda for enemy scaling. When we ask for freedom, we have to accept sometimes we will use our freedom unwisely and might suffer for it. The ability to suffer in a game is not intrinsically sadism, or projected masochism. Sometimes it is a reward, a way to let you know that our choices matter. This is a game. We're safe here. Boss runbacks, missed benches, lost currency... ultimately, in our lives, none of these problems are that bad. What is a polished, streamlined, controlling game like Metroid: Dread protecting you from? It wants you to have a good time, but it doesn't trust you. It's not here to have a conversation with you, it wants to tell you a story.

Silksong is interested in you. It trusts you. It wants every new area and encounter to be a discussion. It cares, and wants you to care too. Silksong loves you, because what else would motivate them to make a game like this?

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