I'm sure it isn't luck but at the same time I watch these things and genuinely don't understand how they do it. Particularly the whole thing of seeing and reacting that quick.

It reminds me of how bad I am with rhythm games. I can't even get through Easy on DDR because the arrows move too fast. It's like I can't read them and react quick enough.

Typically I do much better with games where the point isn't to see, process, and react within milliseconds. I definitely think there is a type of brain that can play games like these and another type that can't, and I'm in the latter.

Bullet hell shooters are deterministic. Mob behaviour in Silksong is random. It is entirely possible for a boss in Silksong to spawn several mobs that all do inconvenient attacks at once, boxing you in.

Some of the optional bosses in Silksong (e.g. Savage Beastfly, mentioned in the article) do have that issue: high damage + high health + spawning mobs with uncoordinated random movement. It makes for a prolonged sequence which is ultimately unlearnable but must still be performed perfectly.

I believe that our brains are not the same in such aspects and some people can, and some just can't.

I think that’s a slightly uncharitable take. Yes, it was originally DLC, and yes it is unforgiving, but it’s nowhere near as hard as the White Palace from the first game, and it’s not brutally punishing (you are quite agile and get good upgrades pretty early on).

Everyone repeats this, but is there any information that confirms it?

Yes, it started as a DLC for Hollow Knight - but the devs have known for the past 5 years that it would be a standalone sequel. Is there any evidence that they designed it as "extended content for people who had already beaten the secret harder stuff", rather than approached it as a game on its own right?

At one point (2020) they did intend for the difficulty to be similar to Hollow Knight:

> So Team Cherry is not out to make a more difficult sequel, then: they're hoping for it to be a "comparable" test of skill to Hollow Knight, Pellen says, while Gibson explains that starting with the clean slate of an entirely new kingdom with its own lore and new characters is another way in which Silksong is designed to be "a perfect jumping-on point for new players. We're trying to be really, really mindful that we want this to be a game that new people can come into, and experience as their first Hollow Knight game — that it sits alongside the original game, and the difficulty also sits alongside the game in that way."

https://www.reddit.com/r/metroidvania/comments/oebdg6/the_ho...

I had a sobering experience with one of the Hollow Knight optional bosses, Nightmare King Grimm.

After a few tries, and getting demolished in a few seconds by its relentless onslaught of attacks that span much of the screen, I realized that I'm simply too old and too slow to beat this boss. No regrets, I've had a great run -- my gaming life started back in the days of analog TV Pong "consoles". But my reflexes just aren't what they once were; and there was a boss simply beyond my physical capabilities. So it goes.

To Hollow Knight's eternal credit, I just kept at it because the fight was so engrossing. There was a borderline meditative quality to it. The speed, the relentlessness. The rhythm of it. Sometimes I would just not fight back, only dodge and see how long I could last.

One time, confusingly, the boss started doing a move I had never seen before. Bosses aren't supposed to do that, right? They've got patterns and phases, they don't spawn new moves out of nowhere.

Yeah, so that was its death animation. I won and I never even realized I was winning.

Later another DLC added a boss challenge area where you can re-fight Nightmare King Grimm with only one hit point. You get hit once, you lose.

It took me two or three tries, tops.

Hollow Knight will always remain very special to me for having a higher opinion of what I can achieve than I did myself, and proving to me it was right about it.

(EDIT: Oh hey didn't even notice your username. Hi dude!)

I agree. I used to play Path of Exile a lot, recently joined the new league in Path of Exile 2 and the balancing is so bad you have to play a particular build to beat the campaign in a reasonable time. In a game that is all about build versatility...

Common responses from the playerbase: skill issue, build issue, etc. While the game clearly has a balancing issue (which is fair considering its not at v1.0 yet). Bosses should not outregenerate your damage. 90% of the playerbase is playing the same build.

Its just not fun following a particular guide just to play with the highest efficiency possible. What makes videogames fun to me (especially action rpgs) is the ability to make my own build.

Its also the reason why I do not play any multi-player games anymore. There are barely people who play for fun, everyone just wants to win win win.

I also found the escape sequences in Ori to not be much fun at all. Though when I replayed both games a couple of months ago, somehow I did the sandworm on my first attempt -- which was a huge relief because that one induced so much rage on my first playthrough.

Same for me. I appreciate stories and standard gameplay loops more than bossfights.

I did stumble upon a game where I enjoy the bossfights though - in V Rising. There is a TON of bosses in the game, but the game is so full of quality of life stuff that even dying repeatedly is not a big deal.

I generally dislike when my time is a stake in the game. I have so little of it in the first place, I don't like risking it in this way.

Yeah.. I've actually stopped playing games because of boss fights. In fairness, I generally don't like Single Player games, so the threshold for me to just quit one is actually pretty low, but an annoying Boss Fight is a surefire way to do so.

I played through Cyberpunk, and for each boss fight I just flipped the difficulty to the easiest possible setting. It's just not fun to me.

EDIT: apart from the bossfights in Cyberpunk, I actually did enjoy the game. Took me about 6 months to finish it though lol. (no DLC, and started about a year ago so when it was actually stable & playable).

I grew up in the era of boss rush segments towards the end of a game to add filler and absolutely hated them.

FWIW, I'm also much bigger fan of difficult levels over difficult bosses.

I also think that the level of perceived difficulty depending on the player plays a large part in the enjoyment. When I play a video game, I'm also imagining that I'm actually that character so every death essentially means that I was defeated in that world for real.

I absolutely hate games where one of the win conditions is to be forced to die numerous times to discover an otherwise inscrutable pattern.

Your post could be reworded to talk about learning just any musical instrument.

I felt this way two days & 2 hours of playtime ago. Now I'm a bit better with the controls, beat lace & am using hunter's march to farm rosaries.

I think I'd be bored if it were easier. I don't want to 'press A to win'.

[dead]

so much this

Most AAA videogames seem to teach people "mash attack button until enemy goes away, move forward to the next shiny dot on the map, repeat". It's crazy that when a game asks the player to actually take stock of the situation and learn from their mistakes, it gets billed as "brutally difficult".

For what it's worth, I find Silksong challenging, but I really don't get the "impossible difficulty" complaints. I think I'm about halfway through the main game and the most I've spent on a single boss is ~30 minutes.

And I don't think I'm a crazy pro gamer with insane reflexes - I play only a few videogames a year (I mostly care about the art), every time I've tried a multiplayer FPS I get utterly destroyed by other players.

Mantis lords is a fantastic boss fight, because it's really hard, but super fair.

There's an attack during which you can consistently heal, so once you recognize that it just becomes about mastering the reactions to each of their attacks faster and faster and faster as the fight goes on. It's sooo satisfying.

Rare to see Dunkey mentioned on HN, lovely.