There are mods and cheats for this game already—and they even run on Linux. I turn 50 next month: though I'm still playing, I don't have as much time for gaming as I used to and my reflexes aren't what they were. I haven't entirely removed the challenge with mods, but I feel no shame in tweaking this game to go easier on me and chew up less of my time as punishment for failure. I wish they had these as accessibility options built-in, but I'm fine with hacking it.

Anybody telling me I should "git gud" can pound sand: I'm already good at a bunch of things that get me a paycheck. I play games so I can relax and be terrible at something for fun. I'm certainly not playing for bragging rights.

If you're not able to commit to learning new strategies and using game mechanics to adapt to a game's difficulty, and experience it as the developers intended, maybe it's not for you. You can always watch a lore video or let's play by other gamers to get the story if that's the goal. This is Dark Souls 2 all over again, and I will personally say as someone who initially hated it, then gave it another chance; When you persist and triumph through grit, the game leaves a lasting impression and sense of accomplishment that you cheat yourself out of with a difficulty slider. That's my favorite game in the series now, which is a deeply unpopular opinion, unsurprisingly.

This debate pops up every now and then and my opinion remains the same, there are plenty of games that aren't meant to be a challenge to choose from. Part of games that are built to be a challenge is being able to reflect on how far you grew in the process, and people hate to hear it but 'git gud' is a real thing for those who believe things worth doing are hard.

Sigh this shit again, if it's the creators decision to have a game with finely tuned hard difficulty, so be it, that's the creators creative decision and it should be respected

I personally think Outer Wilds should give you the whole lore as an audiobook, not everyone wants to go hunting for clues and reading a bunch of old conversations between dead people in order to figure out what's going on...

Don't like it, don't buy it. I'm happy for team cherry and their success. It's not for me but I don't resent them that it isn't. This nothing burger discussion is yet another herring designed to drive clicks and traffic off of the work of people who ACTUALLY create something of worth. Modern parasitism at its best.

In my opinion, the game is not particularly difficult. That is, if you've played through the original Hollow Knight. Which most people haven't. In fact, it looks to me like a lot of people jumping on the hype don't have too much experience with metroidvanias and soulslikes.

It's a sequel, so intended to be played after the original. Why do we care what people who haven't played the first game think?

My biggest complaint is the sheer lack of rewards when I finish a fight. Give me any currency.

I have spent so much of this game broke, unable to buy the things I need to advance any side plots.

I'm currently stuck on the fight for the Music in the top left of the citadel. The double boss at the end is brutal. But because no enemy in that fight drops monster parts, I have to quit to grinding it to go grind more materials to build equipment, despite having slain 20+ enemies each run.

I'm about 10 hours into silksong and it's amazing, don't get me wrong. But the majority of the boss fights seem... cheap?

Like, their difficulty doesn't come from their various attacks, or their environment. Instead, it usually comes from the fact that they do double damage, or the fact that they spam the same two attacks over and over way too quickly, or the fact that they can do the same add summon three times in a row and make what was a controllable situation practically impossible

Now, I've 112% the OG hollow knight and beaten true radiance, so I'm not against difficult boss fights. In fact I relish the feeling of learning their moves and patterns after every single death

But when the moves are "ram into wall. Then ram into wall again" it becomes incredibly annoying

Runbacks are a lame attempt at artificially increasing difficulty. I'll happily die on that hill. I love difficult games, but there is a fine line between frustration and difficult.

Elden Ring (at least all the bits I played through) and Sekiro absolutely nailed it. None of the run backs were particularly egregious, and it let me really focus on experimenting and learning to feel out the difficult fights. Celeste is another good example. I have dropped hours on some of the later levels trying to master them, but never once got frustrated.

Hollow Knight I never finished because I got stuck on a boss and the runback was just way too long and annoying. I loved everything else about the game and want to finish it eventually.

Edit: I think they have their place as "mods" that you could enable to increase difficulty, and i'd actually probably enjoy it that way. Just designing the game around them is where i draw the line.

People forgetting that when you ran out of lives you used to have to go back to the start of the whole game.

A lot of comments tying runbacks to difficulty, when they have nothing to do with each other. I haven't playing silksong but I played about half of the original and uninstalled it, despite the fact it is so many people's favorite metroidvania and metroidvania is one of my favorite genres.

Not putting checkpoints close to boss fights is not difficulty. It is disrespectful of the player's time, which is a problem hollow Knight was full of.

We should definitely talk about how levying criticism, especially thoughtful criticism, is treated as a personal attack by other people playing the same game. It's a bizarre form of tribalism.

I spent 3 hours stuck on one boss fight.

In most games, finally beating it would have me saying "thank fuck its over".

In silksong, I'm saying "fuck yeah that was a good boss". It's a very different feeling, and one that I haven't had the pleasure of enjoying in quite some time.

That said.

I think both hollow knight and silksong should have easy modes. It would be fine. It doesn't hurt me any that someone else can have an easier time. People need to remember that video games are entertainment, and the sweaty "hardcore gamers" can fuck off with their usual judgemental elitism.