With Hollow Knight: Silksong’s huge launch in full swing, community debate about its qualities and flaws has gone back and forth, with some players insisting their criticisms about things like the game's difficulty are valid and shouldn’t be instantly dismissed as "hate."
To each their own, I always think of difficulty and challenge as proportional and relative to the individual. You can just as easily turn the question around the other way: how can you feel any satisfaction beating a Souls game using magic and summons and level ups and items when there are people who have beat it at Level 1 hitless and using a dance pad instead of controller? What’s “appropriately challenging” is way too individual for the bluntness of a single difficulty setting.
And coming up with solutions isn’t even that hard. Add some sliders to adjust the length of parry windows and i-frames on dodge rolls and whatnot and you’re probably a good part of the way there. Gameplay intact, people still go through the same motions they just have a chance now even if they don’t have the reflexes or timing for frame-perfect inputs.
I hate to answer a rhetorical question directly, so please forgive that; my satisfaction would have been much greater, if I was able to achieve those things. I have a realistic sense of what I was able to do given the challenge that I faced and the skill I was able to muster, and although more success would have been sweeter, I am able to be content because I have a shared context with other people who faced the exact same challenge.
I know many have been unhappy with what they are able to accomplish in games with no difficulty settings, and I see it as a choice by the creator to set people apart. It’s a harsh choice that seems most appropriate in grim and harsh stories.
Those who say it is passé argue so very convincingly, but I can’t hide that it appeals to me. It speaks to something primitive, perhaps anhedonic. I was wondering if it’s a generational preference more prevalent among people who grew up during the era of “Nintendo hard”, and if single-difficulty games will fade away in time completely. Maybe this game should have been called Swansong, if so.
To each their own, I always think of difficulty and challenge as proportional and relative to the individual. You can just as easily turn the question around the other way: how can you feel any satisfaction beating a Souls game using magic and summons and level ups and items when there are people who have beat it at Level 1 hitless and using a dance pad instead of controller? What’s “appropriately challenging” is way too individual for the bluntness of a single difficulty setting.
And coming up with solutions isn’t even that hard. Add some sliders to adjust the length of parry windows and i-frames on dodge rolls and whatnot and you’re probably a good part of the way there. Gameplay intact, people still go through the same motions they just have a chance now even if they don’t have the reflexes or timing for frame-perfect inputs.
I hate to answer a rhetorical question directly, so please forgive that; my satisfaction would have been much greater, if I was able to achieve those things. I have a realistic sense of what I was able to do given the challenge that I faced and the skill I was able to muster, and although more success would have been sweeter, I am able to be content because I have a shared context with other people who faced the exact same challenge.
I know many have been unhappy with what they are able to accomplish in games with no difficulty settings, and I see it as a choice by the creator to set people apart. It’s a harsh choice that seems most appropriate in grim and harsh stories.
Those who say it is passé argue so very convincingly, but I can’t hide that it appeals to me. It speaks to something primitive, perhaps anhedonic. I was wondering if it’s a generational preference more prevalent among people who grew up during the era of “Nintendo hard”, and if single-difficulty games will fade away in time completely. Maybe this game should have been called Swansong, if so.