The 'Silksong is too difficult' discourse feels eerily reminiscent of the 'Dark Souls should have an easy mode' discourse.
What I think is particularly interesting is, like Dark Souls, every criticism of the difficulty seems to consciously miss what the developers are intentionally doing from a design point of view, while subconsciously being a direct response to it.
One of the biggest complaints is that a lot of enemies do two points of damage, so why does Hornet even have 5 health points? Why not just give her 3?
The thing is, Team Cherry could easily have given Hornet 3 health points and nothing would have changed beyond the game suddenly feeling more fair.
The reason Hornet has 5 hit points but often takes 2 points of damage is to establish that Pharloom is an extremely dangerous environment. The monsters hit harder, the spikes are sharper, the poisons are more deadly. The game's world is designed to feel hostile.
This tangible sense that everything is really, really dangerous (the thing which is ultimately frustrating players) would be lost if every enemy did 1 damage and Hornet only had 3HP, even though, functionally, nothing would change about the gameplay itself.
If the game is frustrating you, just think of Hornet as having 3HP instead of 5HP and play accordingly.
Similarly, there is another complaint that everything in Pharloom costs money and, since there aren't many prayer beads available in the early game, finding prayer beads for things like maps and benches is just busywork.
The problem is, the lack of prayer beads early on is, again, a considered design choice by the developers.
The game's currency being the devotional objects carried by the cultists directly plays into this idea of religion as a way as a way to achieve rewards. The higher you climb, the more devoted the cultists/pilgrims are, and so they drop more money when killed. Their faith is directly tied to their material wealth. I'm not yet far enough in the game to see how this plays out, but Team Cherry are clearly going for something.
By the time you reach Greymoor, you should have no issue sourcing beads to pay for items, and I would not be surprised if you eventually reach a point where the amount of prayer beads you're finding outstrips your ability to actually spend them.
The final complaint I've seen is that enemies have 'too much' HP. Really, this is because most enemies can be skipped; you shouldn't be fighting every enemy every time you run through an area. Enemies in the wild serve mostly as a way to train your skills against their movesets so that you can fight them in the 'challenge room' segments without taking too many hits.
Hunter's March is a perfect example of this. If you take the time to learn the Red Ants' movesets in 1 on 1 fights around the area, you should have no problem defeating the challenge room at the back of the area. That said, if you do die, there is also a clear runback path that allows you to skip past every enemy and be back at the challenge room within 30 seconds.
Really, I think Silksong has been doomed by its own success. Like Dark Soulsâwhich it takes significant design cues fromâSilksong is not a game for everybody. Without the extreme hype cycle, it would be a moderately successful experience enjoyed by a smaller number of players more willing to engage with it on its own terms and hone their skills in order to progress.
What has happened instead is the same thing that happened when Bloodborne, and later Sekiro, released off the back of the massive critical and cult success of the Dark Souls games: people who did not expect a game to test them, punish them, and force them to engage with it on its own terms, were frustrated by the fact that they couldn't make rapid progress and started complaining online.
People are complaining now about people saying 'get good' but, again, that comes from the Dark Souls fandom. The games are very similar.
Also, the fact that everyone is playing Silksong at the same time means many players feel like they're falling behind if they have to fight a boss 5 or 6 times before finally defeating itâespecially when some players seem to be having no problem with sections that other players are finding extremely frustrating.
Silksong's difficulty is intentional. The game is finely tuned (fair but uncompromising), and intended to provide pushback every step of the way without ever making it impossible to progress. Yes, it occasionally forces the player to stop and practice before they can move forward, but, like FromSoft's titles, you are not being bullied, you are being asked to learn.
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