I recently beat Act III and I loved it. Team Cherry did such an impressive job making a Hollow Knight But More that plays so differently from HK.
I will say I liked the two damage. Since you start with five health, you die from three hits just like in HK. It does dilute the strength of mask upgrades but also makes bosses feel stronger than chumps.
Btw, I followed you after reading the Elden Ring and The Witness posts (and then replaying The Witness) so I’m surprised to find out this wasn’t a video game blog
The bit about how lucky we should all be to get a game that's just more Hollow Knight really resonated with me. Never played Hollow Knight (nor Celeste, nor Hades, nor... any of the hit games of the past five years...) but I adored Shovel Knight when it came out, and was amazed when they released the Plague Knight expansion and it was simultaneously exactly the same game but also its own thing. And then they pulled that trick off two more times!! Every time I thought they'd mined the retro throwback genre they proceeded to mine it even further, and to better effect. Amazing.
Anyway, Silksong looks cute! I like the little bug people. :')
Shovel Knight is a great comparison! We’re verging on the Ice Cube “do it the same but different” gag from 22 Jump Street but also why not? A demand for pure novelty is as stunted as a demand for exact similarity
I am in the Last Judge area and I put it away. I might come back to it in the future though. Beautiful game extremely frustrating, made me feel like I wasn’t good enough at video games lol
Blasted Steps is so miserable lol. It’s a lot less annoying once you have more movement abilities but the runback for Last Judge attempts was killing me
I think I stopped when I went the wrong way to a boss with two giant flies, but I hadn’t gotten the bench cause I went left instead of right. There’s a lot of stuff I was encountering that was very fuck you to me (narratively is good) but for me very demotivating
Damn I meant to make both these points where I compared it to Bloodborne but forgot. The fuck you level is often Bloodborne tier and the shard system is the Bloodborne consumable blood vial problem all over again! Makes it feel bad to use them and demotivates use in boss fights because if you don’t win you just eat the loss. Also the prices are way too high—seven shards for one spike snare thing? Get the fuck out of here
Which like not to say all games should be fun all the time, and I understand the challenge in relation to the narrative, but I found when I eventually overcame the parts that I was hard stuck on I didn’t experience much emotion beyond relief and that was the cycle I was stuck on in act 1. I’ve heard act 2 is a smoother experience overall
I think Act 2’s bosses are a lot more “tough but fair” whereas yeah in Act 1 losing often felt bad and arbitrary. Beating the Bilewater boss is the most relief I’ve felt on a win in years—heart pounding, hands shaking levels of thank god it’s done
Started it when people kept talking about it, and I must have beat a boss or two. But there was certainly a spot where I died or fell and said “I don’t care anymore,” and I haven’t touched it since.
It definitely has a bit of the Dark Souls 3 problem where it leads with some of its least interesting areas. And Bell Beast hitting for two damage is crazy for being the second boss. I’m sure a lot of people tried that fight twice and gave up, overly hostile design for sure
I recently beat Act III and I loved it. Team Cherry did such an impressive job making a Hollow Knight But More that plays so differently from HK.
I will say I liked the two damage. Since you start with five health, you die from three hits just like in HK. It does dilute the strength of mask upgrades but also makes bosses feel stronger than chumps.
Btw, I followed you after reading the Elden Ring and The Witness posts (and then replaying The Witness) so I’m surprised to find out this wasn’t a video game blog
The bit about how lucky we should all be to get a game that's just more Hollow Knight really resonated with me. Never played Hollow Knight (nor Celeste, nor Hades, nor... any of the hit games of the past five years...) but I adored Shovel Knight when it came out, and was amazed when they released the Plague Knight expansion and it was simultaneously exactly the same game but also its own thing. And then they pulled that trick off two more times!! Every time I thought they'd mined the retro throwback genre they proceeded to mine it even further, and to better effect. Amazing.
Anyway, Silksong looks cute! I like the little bug people. :')
Shovel Knight is a great comparison! We’re verging on the Ice Cube “do it the same but different” gag from 22 Jump Street but also why not? A demand for pure novelty is as stunted as a demand for exact similarity
I am in the Last Judge area and I put it away. I might come back to it in the future though. Beautiful game extremely frustrating, made me feel like I wasn’t good enough at video games lol
Blasted Steps is so miserable lol. It’s a lot less annoying once you have more movement abilities but the runback for Last Judge attempts was killing me
I think I stopped when I went the wrong way to a boss with two giant flies, but I hadn’t gotten the bench cause I went left instead of right. There’s a lot of stuff I was encountering that was very fuck you to me (narratively is good) but for me very demotivating
Also shard system pissed me off
Damn I meant to make both these points where I compared it to Bloodborne but forgot. The fuck you level is often Bloodborne tier and the shard system is the Bloodborne consumable blood vial problem all over again! Makes it feel bad to use them and demotivates use in boss fights because if you don’t win you just eat the loss. Also the prices are way too high—seven shards for one spike snare thing? Get the fuck out of here
Which like not to say all games should be fun all the time, and I understand the challenge in relation to the narrative, but I found when I eventually overcame the parts that I was hard stuck on I didn’t experience much emotion beyond relief and that was the cycle I was stuck on in act 1. I’ve heard act 2 is a smoother experience overall
I think Act 2’s bosses are a lot more “tough but fair” whereas yeah in Act 1 losing often felt bad and arbitrary. Beating the Bilewater boss is the most relief I’ve felt on a win in years—heart pounding, hands shaking levels of thank god it’s done
Started it when people kept talking about it, and I must have beat a boss or two. But there was certainly a spot where I died or fell and said “I don’t care anymore,” and I haven’t touched it since.
It definitely has a bit of the Dark Souls 3 problem where it leads with some of its least interesting areas. And Bell Beast hitting for two damage is crazy for being the second boss. I’m sure a lot of people tried that fight twice and gave up, overly hostile design for sure
I did actually beat that one! But yes, why was it so hard 😆
I may pick it up again now that we’re talking about it