Hollow Knight: Silksong

Reached that boss last night. Gave it about 10 tries before I had to quit for the night. Definitely feels long, and for the first time in the game I realised I'd run out of shards (well, have a few of the bundles I'll have to break open) because I was using throwables (and had used quite a few in another boss fight previous). I like the fight in general though, seems pretty fair. Was able to get him to second phase easily enough. It's the runback that's the worst part of it…

Had a better time last night in general, mainly because I left the area that was annoying the hell out of me the night before and found another direction to go. Went back to some earlier areas and got some upgrades and stuff too. I think I just need to use more of the throwables in general, particularly against flying enemies (though even trying to hit the pricks is a task in itself).

Yeah as Johnny said, there are other crests you can get which vary your attacks slightly, including downward attacks. I was worried switching to it from the diagonal would make platforming a bit harder due to less horizontal movement, but it seems forgiving enough and with a wide enough swing that I haven't had many issues with it. Just have to remember which one I have on.

Can't disagree with this take to be honest;

Had a decent enough time last night. Beat the Act 1 boss (really liked that boss battle in general) so into Act 2, got most of the way through some of the new areas. Enemies are tough but nothing hugely difficult so far. The worst part is just trying to a) find benches, b) sometimes having to pay for benches, and c) not being able to find fast travel, so even with shortcuts it's still going to be a pain to try and backtrack as I ended up returning to an Act 1 area to finish out last night.

I've kinda hit a wall in my interest in this and not that fussed about continuing. Really like the majority of the boss battles and a lot of the exploring, but so much of the backtracking, general mob enemies (cannot understate how much I hate the flying enemies), exploring but finding dead ends (which results in more backtracking), and lack of continual incremental upgrades (where you essentially play the exact same for 10 hours and then get a huge damage boost) can make the game a chore at times.

Can't say I agree with everything in this VGC review, but most of it is fair.

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/review/hollow-knight-silksong/

It's not for the vast majority of the game. There are just some design elements that can unnecessarily cause frustration.

I'd rather spend 50 tries fighting a tough boss than beating them in 25 tries but having to deal with the excessive runback each try. I'd happily explore with the map system as it is if I knew I could just fast-travel between benches rather than also having to find (the much rarer) fast travel locations (and there only being one in each zone). I'd happily fight flying enemies if they weren't always buzzing around platforming areas flying just out of melee range and throwing projectiles at you.

It's why in general I think there's a difference between a game being difficult by design (the typical Fromsoft way) and a game being designed to be difficult (Soulslike clones who think punishment and screwing you over is the same thing as challenge).

Fromsoft games can be tough, but the majority of the time there's a simple and clear strategy to learn and adapt to. Whereas other games try to imitate this by just throwing a load of sh*t at the player.

I don't know if Silksong has swung quite that far in that direction, maybe in some areas. Adds during boss fights are often much harder to deal with than the boss themselves, and mostly serve to catch you out either while dodging boss attacks or by throwing projectiles which give you no room to escape. But then there are other boss fights which are damn near perfectly designed; fair but very tough, with clear progression in their movesets/phases.

Add in runbacks for when you do fail, and it all compounds into a frustrating experience at times.