Hollow Knight: Silksong, despite being an overall amazing game, is still a Soulslike at heart. What does that mean? Well, it's challenging and will test your skills at almost every corner. However, knowing that, some people are going as far as to negatively review the game.
As time has gone by, Silksong's review aggregation on Steam (I excluded Chinese and other ones that were proven to be review-bombing the game en masse for trivial reasons) has been decreasing. From 80% positive yesterday to 77% positive today, there is a clear downward trend in the reviews. This is out of 93,296 reviews at the time of writing, so a pretty substantial sample size.
Scouring the negative reviews beneath the game's Steam page, I've noticed one primary theme: difficulty. Players are complaining, and not in small numbers, mind you, that Silksong is way too difficult, bordering on unfair. There are several gauntlets in the game, mandatory ones, which can drain your energy pretty quickly; traps are laid out at unpredictable and untelegraphed locations; some enemies can do two health points of damage instead of one, while you can only heal for three by default, and so on.
Additionally, the Rosaries and other currencies are so obscure and hard-to-get but easy-to-lose, leaving most players completely broke for the majority of the game and locking them out of items crucial and otherwise (like maps, markers, etc).
All of these are valid concerns, and some I myself would include in criticizing the game, which still doesn't deserve a negative review or a bad score (for reasons I've outlined in my feature about Silksong, which I ask you kindly to check out).
Here is what some negative reviews have to say, though, so you be the judge of whether they're right or justified:
“Unfortunately it’s a torturing experience for me so far,” said one, citing a lack of checkpoints and massive runbacks to bosses, who are also pretty difficult. “Balance is completely gone as way too many things do two masks of damage... bosses have really tedious runbacks... [while] 90 percent of save points and fast travel spots cost money,” expressed another.
“There is a lot to like here, but the game has weird, fundamental issues that make it overall annoying to play instead of fun,” added another still, highlighting the overwhelming nature of the game's combat, which usually requires you to use a lot of items and tools, i.e., everything you have during every encounter.
And these are just some out of nearly 13,000 negative reviews the game currently sports (in the English language).
As more time passes, more will be inclined to comment on the game and dwell on the idea of recommending it, giving us a clearer picture of player sentiment when it comes to Silksong and, particularly, its (un)fair difficulty and challenges.
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The post Hollow Knight: Silksong’s reviews are slowly eroding as players find it ‘too difficult’ appeared first on Destructoid.
