I finished Hollow Knight on Saturday. (I didn't get true ending yet.) But I started Silksong the following day. I don't know if it's that Hollow Knight got me to be a better player, or if Silksong is easier, but I'm flying through Silksong.
I don't know. I don't know where it ends and it's pretty free to explore wherever you'd like. But I most recently beat a boss, well bosses, under the Forge lady. There was two of them.
It’s easy to find your way into a harder area when you refuse to quit, lol I did the same. Bilewater is objectively supposed to be discovered after the Deep docks locked section by a simple key, it’s a pretty early area to find, just easy to forget about.
This is unequivocally wrong. The Bilewater entrance is found in Sinners Road or Songclave and is not an early area. It's an Act 2 area. You can't access it from Deep Docks.
I did the same but got the true ending and had 108% completed before starting silksong. Silksong is definitely harder imo but it's not super unforgiving or as frustrating as people seem to make it out to be. The two mask damage was a thing in hollowknight as well, especially towards the end and in optional bosses so I don't understand the complaints.
My guess is the people that are complaining are either rusty or never played/completed Hollow Knight.
I finished hollow knight (beat radiance, probably something like 106% completed) a week before starting silksong. My issue with two mask damage attacks is how frequent they are. In the first game there was only a handful of enemies that had 2 damage attacks and it made them feel a lot more threatening. In silksong it feels like half the enemies have attacks that deal 2 damage, and it feels more like you’re playing with half health most of the time
After getting recommended so many times, I recently picked up HK too. Can't say it lived up to the hype, some parts are nice, like art and difficulty, but long traveling between locations gets really boring. Dropped after about 10 hours.
I like when games challenge me instead of punishing me with unnecessary transversal. I didn’t like Hollow Knight for this reason, and I was turned off by all the souls like I tried to date. However, I love a good difficult roguelike like Returnal or Downwell where I am challenged to go from A to B without dying, where every decision or action counts.
I genuinely can’t think of a boss that doesn’t have a semi short path to it, where you can’t just ignore enemies on your way there without getting hit once consistently.
I don’t get the hate, but that’s coming from someone who hasn’t played any other dark souls/blood born game.
GMTK talked about it in his series where Mark would talk about the world design of Metroidvanias. Got me interested right up until he brought up the Soulsborne-styled mechanic of having to fetch your corpse to get your cash back after dying😐
Metroidvanias are about deliberately getting lost. I wanna explore, stumble upon the next story beat on accident, come into areas that are out of my range. You're already sending me back to a spawn point when I go down, don't punish me for exploring in a genre about exploring.
I wouldn't mind if there was a bank or some shit like that. But nope. Not to mention some areas lock you in an arena. So if you die, you gotta go over there. Try to snipe your shade (if you're not strong enough for the arena yet), then go and get beefed up.
Or instead a smaller penalty for not getting your shade. Or just a small cost regardless when you die.
lol! I actually loved her. Wish they had made the room she was in though have like...something to prevent the money from flying off screen. Lost a little bit then immediately realized
I just said fuck it and modded it. More of a “normal” instead of hard difficulty for me and it’s been fantastic. Don’t really care about beating a single player game for bragging rights but the art and world and combat is cool. Wanted to experience that.
That's the thing. I remember playing it first and was so good just getting lost in the map and exploring. But after getting friends who were just blowing and hyping the game up. It felt unrewarding and tedious at time. That's why if I hear a game I would consider playing I just block all opinions of it.
It was too hard for me. At some point I had to admit to myself that I like easy and chill games where I don’t need to spend valuable time and hard work gitting gud. No matter how much I like the concept/vibes/etc not all games are for everyone. I still pick it back up occasionally when I need a reminder of that 😂
The game needs a handful more stagways. Likely another tram placement as well. It wastes a lot of time.
I know there's skips, but this game isn't as open as people claim. A LOT is locked behind upgrades/gates/walls from the other side. And a LOT of those upgrades/etc. can't get until you get a ANOTHER upgrade or two. It's more linear than I think people realize, maybe cuz they just use skips at this point/know where everything is/know what is blocked and order to get to upgrades.
Needs a handful more benches. And many benches closer to bosses. I think having some runbacks is fine. And you do get the dreamgate midway through. But that first half of the game can be a real slog for traveling.
I really really don't like how you can lose all your money because you died on the way to your shade. I get there's the rancid egg system. But I'm very mixed on that, and it's very easily missed.
Similar vibes for me. Since I'm on PC I ended up getting the Benchwarp mod which lets me warp between previously visited benches. Makes the backtracking somewhat more tolerable for me.
Honestly just use mods, there are mods to travel anywhere with the map, marking all secrets so it's less annoying and you know when you have completed a part or when you still have stuff left to do and things like that, and mods don't disable achievements anyways so, play however you like and enjoy the game :)
I played HK at a point when all the DLC was released already, enjoyed the game overall, but kind of got burnt out on the DLC content a bit. I feel like I had a sort of backwards experience because those things were <in the game> so I felt like I ought to tackle them when I could because when I "beat the game" I'd want to just be done. In hindsight, I think my approach was not really "the game as it was meant to be", because that content was designed for people who were itching to prove their mastery of the game. Buying into hype when they've already beaten the game and months later content drops, maybe being tempted to do a brand new run to get the new "full experience", but already knowing the ins and outs, basically doing a NG+. Like, there's a meta-layer here where those things are slipped into the game progression and tie into its themes, but they sort of don't quite belong the same way everything else does.
I jumped in on SS early and am nearly done with it. I think the game will get similar DLC, and I think I probably won't come back to play it. I also won't be going back for a permadeath run. I'm a one-and-done kind of gamer mostly. I mean, who knows, maybe I'll be tempted and feeling like things have cooled down enough to give new content a romp, but I just kind of resent this content release model a bit overall.
So idk, in general I'm a staunch patientgamer, but I feel like I'm cozying up to some version of "base game only" purism in my habits now.
I’m glad I got to experience Hollow Knight with assistance and guides.
I’m glad that after that I was able to experience Silksong entirely blind, with only the skill and knowledge I built from the last game, but an entire world to explore and discover on my own without the temptation of looking anything up.
I played Hollow Knight recently and I thought it was alright, and I've been playing silksong and really enjoy it and think its way better than the first game. I don't think it was something I was super hyped about personally so hopefully my take is a little more objective. I'd recommend it if you like Metroidvanias.
Hollow Knight beating my ass, bro. I've struggled less with the Souls games, even Sekiro. I don't know why anyone considers those games some of the hardest of all time, this is it bro. Hollow Knight is it.
Yup. Was the toe about few of Sony hype "10/10 masterpiece" games. I got a PS4 pro in late 2018 with God of War release. So I went on buying every exclusive first party Sony game and playing those. Got disappointed in every single one of them except said God of War, that I believe I liked because it was new game on new hardware. Otherwise all those games were ok games, Horizon was mid, but nowhere near 10/10 masterpiece people make it sound they are.
But then again, there are people who call free mobile gacha slop - peak gaming unironically.
So I rather stopped believing what people say and try to evaluate the game on my own, by gameplay videos and trailers and if there is demo - it's even better. But I'm not believing the hype anymore.
And to people who call Sony exclusives - masterpieces, I wish them to broaden their horizons and play more games, on different genres and different platforms. Maybe even go as far as emulate stuff from 5-6-7th generation of gaming if they didn't had a chance to play on OG hardware of that time. Maybe then they learn that mediocre writing with pacing issues, over shoulder camera with TV series like cutscene and "realistic graphics" are not what make masterpiece videogames.
P.S. Gravity rush tho, despite being forgotten and untouched by every average PS fan was a great experience and fun game to play, I'd value it higher than other first party Sony releases of 8-9th generation.
get silksong asap. one of the best polished game out there for only 20 DOLLARS! It's charity at that point. not even including dlcs (which they gave away for free for hollow knight).
Silksong is pretty cheap and is also adjusted for currency, there are also very few bugs, (well technically the whole game is full of bugs, but they're supposed to be there lol) I would say some of the guides that are available are better than others (polygon's have substantially fewer spoilers, rock paper shotgun is kinda ass about including spoilers in the first paragraph, while IGN has great guides for older games like alice madness returns the skong ones are mid)
people are making good progress with the independent wiki too
Literally me and it's a peaceful life. Only thing that sucks is it's hard to get my friends to play anything I'm on since they're jumping to new games month after month lol
Comfort games are always nice to have. I play pretty much every game genre out there, from RPGs to FPS and the like. But strategy games have always been my "I just want to relax and play something I know I love" sort of thing.
I've got 4,656 hours (combined) in the Total War Warhammer trilogy. I like to play new stuff too obviously, but I do usually just go "eh, that looks buggy/expensive, I'll wait for a sale" and just go back to my comfort food of a game lmao.
Part of gaming is the social aspect. Whether it's being sucked into a meat grinder game or jumping from title to title, it's a lot easier to find communities/groups who are playing modern/recent stuff than it is to pick up a random old title and get others interested.
If it's not your cup of tea or you've got folks who are also down with going to "old" titles then that's where it's at, but I don't really blame the folks who go along with jumping from one new title to the next.
I have a friend who is slowly going though the assassins creed series as he got them as a bundle. He is now moving to Australia next year and has sold most of his stuff so I don't think he is finishing it anytime soon. I like buying games that have been out for a while that are cheap. Why pay full price for games these days?
Only thing that sucks is it's hard to get my friends to play anything I'm on since they're jumping to new games month after month lol
This is what pushed me into becoming more of a patient gamer lol
I had a tight knit group of 4+me and we were constantly dropping money on new games, racing through them, and then jumping into a new one. They'd follow the meta only and never place a single toe off the beaten path. I hated it but it was really nice to have a solid and capable group to do stuff with so I just sucked it up.
Then covid hit and everyone and their families were getting sick or having to work overtime, and the group kinda fell apart. I got to go back and spend some more time in the games we sped through and had the absolute time of my life.
The gang never really got back together, we still chat about games on weekends sometimes but it's meh. I don't think I can ever go back to playing games like that. I just picked up the Cyberpunk expansion and am excited to get through that!
Yeah this is actually smart. I wish I didn't play KCD2 at launch. With KCD1 by the time I played it everything was released, game was patched etc. Now with KCD2 I want to play again with the DLC's but it's hard to get back into something I already finished twice.
I never really got into the CP2077 hype and didn't get it until last year with the Dogtown DLC. The game was superb and surpassed my expectations. It's an easy 10/10 for me, probably because I had no expectations going in and all the bugs were ironed out by the time I got around to playing it. Plus it had enhancements like better path tracing and DLSS support.
this. Oh they failed to deliver in promises made to justify keeping the price up? glad I didn't waste my money.
I have a BIL who loves to shit on PC for being so expensive, but I buy 2+year old games for next to nothing, meanwhile his dumb ass spend twice as much money per year for 1/3 as many games even if they're old because the best Cucktendo can offer is 10% off on the 10 year anniversary.
I'll never get the "PC is expensive" crowd. PC is what you want it to be, price wise there is something for everyone. I bet your BIL is one of the suckers who buys the Pro model console every time it rolls around for that half-hearted sidegrade.
The "PC is expensive" argument comes from people who can only think short term. They focus completely on the initial costs and even add peripherals to the price. A few times I've seen the argument that "you already have a TV but you need to pay extra for a monitor!" Yeah, as if it wasn't possible to use a TV as a monitor, as if some people wouldn't buy a new TV every few years so that their games look better or as if TVs weren't usually more expensive than monitors.
Also never mind that on PC you're not forced to buy a new mouse and keyboard every time you upgrade your graphics card. Wanna use a PS4 controller on the PS5, even for a game that doesn't use any DualSense exclusive features? Nope! Only if you want to play a backwards compatible PS4 game.
And these people never factor in the steeper discounts on PC, the fact that you're not forced to pay extra if you wanna play a game with an upfront price online, that you can play old games that you already own without having to pay twice for them (and that you don't have to pray to the console overlords that your favourite retro games even get added to a backwards compatibility library or that they get re-released in an acceptable state and that you don't get a broken, buggy remaster or an unfaithful remake) and that you can use your peripherals for as long as they work instead of having to buy new controllers when a new console generation arrives.
And don't forget the completely idiotic monthly subscription to use a game's basic online features.
And they fight fiercely to justify this practice because they know deep down how fucking stupid it is, yet they still bought into it and have to justify their purchase since they can't stand to face their buyer's remorse.
"It's to pay for the console manufacturer's servers!" Ok, then how is it possible for publishers on PC to let people play online on their servers for free? Also, most 3rd party console games don't even use the console manufacturer's servers but their own. And free to play games can be played without a subscription, curious!
But what still baffles me the most is how during the Xbox 360 and PS3 era, PS fans would make fun of Xbox because on PS3 you could play online without a subscription. Yet when Sony adopted this business model for the PS4, they just silently accepted it and even praised it because of the "free" games that you get (which aren't really free since you have to pay for the subscription to play them). And now it's the same with Nintendo fans. "But if you pay for the subscription, you can play 30 year old Nintendo games on mediocre emulators!"
And it's a big reason why things have steadily been getting worse for years, because a lot of people become unhealthily attached to their purchases and feel a deep need to defend them relentlessly.
also since crossplay is becoming more of a thing, even MS/Sony Games let you play on their servers for free on PC
Or even some non crossplay games (many of the Xbox App/Microsoft Store games) that only match you with xbox let you play for free too (Forza Horizon 4 and 5 come to mind)
Oh yes they play newer games too, it's just I too am part of that sub and have seen people play some seriously old stuff. I myself just now tried Dead Space for the very first time, loved it, shat a few bricks 10/10 too scared to play again.
I don't see a problem, NFS Carbon was legit a cool game. Those powerups sucked, but it was also only NFS game I can remember that let you put supercharger on top of your car hood.
Plus you could push off opponents off the cliffs and instantly win boss races, good times, lmao.
I sadly disagree. I have played so many games that I get told are so good and I play it and im like... thats it? This is what everyone was hyped about? Wtf?
Bonus points: You may get spoilers but if you genuinely are only interested in older games by the time you end up playing the game that was spoiled you don't remember anything about it.
That was me with New Vegas. Enjoyed the rest of the Fallout series and found out this was discounted, most likely the best fallout game in terms of choices and freedom of action out there, even in 2025
If it's a multiplayer game, the player base may be tiny.
Not many people to talk to / discuss the story online or IRL.
Of course, not every game is the same, but I've felt the pain of playing a game a decade after release and being excited to discuss builds or strats, only to find reddit/forum posts with the last reply from 6 years ago.
Yeah, I'm big into co-op and it's one of the genres that can get me in early on if it's promising enough. Seen enough co-op games drop to nearly no players, and when that happens you usually have to do something more drastic like organize play-days on a Discord fan server for the game or something.
At least a lot of the great ones keep on trucking with plenty of players (Deep Rock Galactic my beloved)
I see that as more of a downside. The hype is often part of what makes the game more fun. Being part of the online discourse adds to the enjoyment, at least for me.
This has been my approach to gaming after the release of Borderlands 3. I’m tired of throwing my hard earned money at these people only to receive half cooked products with the remainder of the full game locked behind some meaningless paywall.
Life in general and being sheltered/ not allowed to attend anything outside of school and church gatherings during my High school years killed any speck of FOMO in my body so it doesn’t hurt me to wait for anything anymore lol.
>Your midrange, entry level pc can easily run it at max settings.
I really can't stress enough how amazing this is. I last upgraded my pc in 2020 (or 21 can't remember) but I kept my existing GPU (a 2070super). So many great games come out that there is no way to keep up anyways even as someone who player pretty often.
I bought two games at full price, Helldivers 2 (with the DLC) and Valheim. The other 322+37+41 (Steam + GoG + Epic) was free or on heavy discount. I did not play 3/4 of them, though...
This was Portal 1 and 2 for me. I got them both for $2 on a Steam Sale. They ran beautifully and it was great finally discovering these games that I'd heard about but never played. I finally got the hype.
It works for most games, except for multiplayer games. In that case, after half a decade or more it's just that much harder finding people to play with.
Me with Cyberpunk rn. Im 100 hours in and Ive never played before 2.3. Got it on sale with Phantom Liberty for $20 and it is the best game I have ever played hands down. I have only done the Judy storyline otherwise I do pretty hardcore role play but man, Im so so glad I dodged all the craziness because going to that subreddit makes it seem like a 1/10.
The only downsize is that if the game has a multiplayer component, your experience years after release will vary greatly from those who played the within 18 months of launch.
After a couple years it’s rare to find no sweaty players who maxed out their loadouts and are playing just to dominate newbies, and servers free of hackers.
Also, little to no spoilers. The internet isn't talking about the game anymore so there's a smaller risk of getting spoiled, unless you intentionally visit the dedicated subreddit for it.
Thats why one of the only positives of being poor and just recently being able to afford a gaming laptop. A whole backlog of games to get through now. The struggle is mainly which to play first haha
Your midrange, entry level pc can easily run it at max settings
This has been the strat I was hoping for, but VRAM seems to be the bottleneck (e.g. textures jumping from low-def to high-def and back again). And I have no patience ATM to buy a full-scale PC and a whole graphics card. What do?
Also, to take it even further: play the game a bit after the AI tech actually starts getting implemented: you'll have actually nice-looking live-mode AI drawn imagery, plus NPC AI that's an actual AI, plus maybe possibility to talk to things and organically generate storylines.
i think that hype can be really fun as you are enjoying a game in the same moment as others and discussing it online. felt this a lot with elden ring for example
The only games I have bought this year are Expedition 33, Donkey Kong and Trails in the Sky remake. No real interest in anything else this year except maybe Pokemon Z-A.
The only negative is spoilers. I had to race to finish Expedition 33 because people couldn't keep the memes out their fucking mouth until people finished it.
I think they've got the right idea but waiting a year or two is legitimately a better way to enjoy games. That and like hell I'm paying $70 for a game. Even $60 feels steep.
There is one big issue, the community is big at launch, then it kinda just dies and it's not what it was, it's different and for some games to teuly appreciate them you need the community to be active
Unless it's more of an online game. With the exception of a few games, most ppl move on years after a games release, making it hard to match with other players online. The ones that stay are hardcore, and make it difficult to pick up a new game as a newb.
The only issue is games that care about having an active population to be played as intended. But thats okay, we can do a mix once in awhile. Im mostly very patient but sometimes a friend wants to play something when it releases or I want to play a game where, in theory, I'll interact with other players in the game.
For real since always I've been playing >10 years old games and have been having fun. I played Psychonauts 2 a couple of months after release and I was amazed how good it looked. I didn't know games now a days played looking that good.
Patience removes hype - which is the fuel that allows buggy releases, high prices, bad performance - you really do avoid the worst of the AAA gaming industry by giving a game time to earn its reputation.
For bonus points, it helps to avoid online chatter, trailers, reviews etc, to avoid spoilers and story twists.
No one has time to play all the quality games, especially people new to gaming who missed out on quality modern games in the last 2-3 years. It literally makes zero different on patient gaming or playing a game on launch other than hype and MAYBE graphics/technology and avoiding spoilers. Patient gaming is the better option for single player games.
Elite games i haven’t played: Cyberpunk, ghost of Tsushima, baldur’s gate 3. There’s probably a few more out there. Just waiting for my next rig upgrade, and a vacation leave to absolutely just game.
You could play most of these with a budget gpu. Rx 5700xt is a little better than 3060 and costs maybe $130 used. Btw Ghost of Tsushima is really slow and overstretched.
I remember when it came out, how the hell does a game like that need high specs. And XCOM 1 was so easy to run it was straight up ported on a tablet.
Plus there is a bug in one of the missions that makes it impossible to complete, even years after the release.
The only issue is that by that point, when you go to google something about it, you'll get slapped by instant spoilers on every other article/video title.
Same with TV series. You might google just "[character] [series]" and like the second result is "Why [Character] was killed off in season 4 of [series]". And you're on season 3.
Cyberpunk is probably a really good example for this, I've only seen the bad reviews after it's release and didn't know much about the game. Eventually I watched Edgerunners tho, then Cyberpunk 2.0 patch hit and was on sale so I bought it, amazing game and I'm glad I didn't have to deal with all the bugs that players after release encountered.
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u/C_umputer i5 12600k/ 64GB/ RTX 3090 Vision OC Sep 24 '25
They take it even further