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I am a decent chunk through Silksong. I'm about to fight Lace 2, and have done plently of other stuff around the map. I am trying to set everything up for act 3, and I'm fairly close. So, is Silksong a bad game? Of course not, silly. It a fantastic, but difficult game, that successfully expanded on the base Hollow Knight formula. Contrasting this to the first game, I thought that the Metroidvania aspects are especially strong. More on that in a second. I’d like to start off by making a bad point that I can’t quite figure out why its bad.

To be completely frank, I haven’t felt that much of the alleged combat improvement in the game. This isn’t to say that it hasn’t improved, just that the game is lauded for extending the combat, and I want to damper some of the excitement. My reason here is pragmatic: this is one of the first things that get mentioned in reviews, but I don’t think it has much of an impact on the “everyday Joe.”

So, I get the excitement, but consider this a fantastic, yet minor, quality in terms of reviewing. I suspect that it is because the advanced combat strategies aren’t really my thing (optimizing builds and all that). It wasn’t my thing in Hollow Knight either. And I suspect that most players, besides hardcore fans of a particular variety, won’t notice a lot of the nuances. Of course, the big differences are the introduction of tools; which are very fresh, yet feel incredibly natural; and the variety of crests, which provide a variety of different move sets. I found myself using two crests: the Reaper, and then the Wanderer (which is, more or less, the moveset from the original). This is, I would imagine, a very common progression. This also leads to me underappreciating the combat extension Silksong provides over the original. Is it amazing? Of course! But it is not something that most players, I suspect, will emphasize.

So maybe I’ve figured out this point: if you aren’t that into combat, you are going to find what sticks. Most players are going to get attached to Reaper and then Wanderer. If you are super into combat, it will open up later when you find some new crests. So, a bulk of the game did not hone into combat. So consider me puzzled that when reviewing the game this gets so much emphasis.

Bad point aside, I was very surprised about how Catholic the game was. I just didn’t expect the bugs to be Catholic. It feels to me like one of the better Catholic games, as I found myself praying multiple times throughout it!

Now, jokes aside, I will say that the oppressive religious atmosphere went hand in hand with the difficulty of the game. Obvious flavor win. That being said, I did feel more “awe” when I played Hollow Knight, but that might just be novelty bias. The original did feel truly abandoned, like a lost civilization. The Citadel is declining, but it certainly isn’t gone. Something about the original gets me, but I’ll need time to point my finger on it.

The story is much better already in Silksong. Both games are story light, getting by with environmental story telling. Silksong is much better in this department. Everything is focused around the Citadel, and you can feel its polluting, enslaving, and tantalizing influence almost everywhere. The environment feels lived in.

There’s also something to say about colors. I’ve heard that Team Cherry worked hard in that department—the color coordination department, that is. I’m colorblind, so these things are lost on me. So, instead of analyzing why Hornet is red and the Vessel is blue, let me just say that I didn’t have any colorblind struggles with this game. I think in the last one, so that’s an improvement. Gold star.

Of course, if it turns out that there’s some major thing I’ve been missing because I didn’t see it, I will take away the gold star. Give them a silver instead.

Division of Gameplay Labor

Something that I’ve been thinking about lately is how I am supposed to approach and play games. Not just from a mechanical standpoint, but from how us as humans are supposed to interact. Think, for example, about the Wii and how it incorporates movement into the mechanics. This is more of a bodily integration. Think about Astro Bot and how you play with the remote, rather than using the remote to play. There are little innovations to be made in this department, and Silksong got me thinking.

Well, there’s no way you can explore this map on your own. It’s too big, and there are too many secrets. A couple times, upon knowing exactly where the secret was, I was unable to find it without looking up a YouTube video. Rather, the community explores the map together, figures out the secrets, and tries their best to communicate in ways that don’t impact the overall game experience. The labor of exploring is divided amongst the community of players.

Now, this clearly isn’t a wrong way to play—as I hinted I think it is the way to play the game because of our limitations as humans. And I don’t think the game is particularly amazing at being “personalized” or “individual,” such that each player has a unique experience in terms of progression. Because, when it gets down to brass tax, you either grind the boss or find a specific implement to deal with it.

I feel as if my words aren’t coming out right. To try again, I think an important part of the Pokémon experience was that you got to talk to your friends on the playground and trade secrets… and Pokémon. The social side of the game, not just the multiplayer features, are bound up in the experience of the game. This generates something interesting: knowing that a player is going to interact with the community at large while playing the game, what should the developers do?

Think about a Zelda game. If you practically require a guide to complete it, this seems to be a count against it. Zelda games present mechanical and navigational puzzles, and you are supposed to find those solutions yourself. This is not the case for Silksong, and arguably not for Metroidvanias in general.

A rebutting line of thought. You might think that Silksong is made with a non-completionist intention, such that whatever the player finds is what that player finds, and they’ll get to the end in their own way. Then, further, you could think that this aspect is implemented well. I think the first is false, and then so is the second (albeit, trivially). Is this line of though really capturing what a Metroidvania is? I think not.

Anyway, I made a puzzle for a game developer. I’m sick of writing tonight, so let me leave you with an elegant solution. Dark Souls has a system where players leave marks on the ground that spawn phantoms which you can observe doing game actions. This can prompt players to find secrets that they otherwise wouldn’t. This isn’t something that Silksong could implement (2D space is too restricted, there is not really a lore reason for it, etc.) but it is a solution to the problem. Disincentivize looking for information elsewhere, because there are community hints in game that’ll lead you in a good direction. Game developers have a great deal of control over the game itself, not about the communities that surround it.