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."
You can make the case that it’s not a fun use of our time but how is it not tied to difficulty? Being able to get to the boss with enough health or consummables is certainly part of the intended challenge.
I haven’t played silksong, but most games like Dark Souls and the like, getting back to the boss without taking damage is pretty easy. It’s not difficulty, it’s just time.
I’ll admit I don’t even remember doing runbacks in hollow Knight (or even having to fight any boss in the part of the game I played more than one or twice), but in other games where you have to run to the boss you normally just run past everything without fighting it and go into the boss with full resources. No challenge - just running past everything, which not only wastes time but also totally breaks immersion for me.
In any case, my overall discontent is with all the time wasting added together than any specific thing.
I will say the run backs in Silksong/HK are better than, for example, DS1 for the reason you give. In DS you just run past enemies and it’s trivial. In the HK games running past enemies becomes a platforming challenge. Yeah, you can still do it, but you still have to engage with the enemy even if that’s just jumping over them. DS you just run past them and they almost always too slow to engage with you if you’re sprinting.
You can make the case that it’s not a fun use of our time but how is it not tied to difficulty? Being able to get to the boss with enough health or consummables is certainly part of the intended challenge.
I haven’t played silksong, but most games like Dark Souls and the like, getting back to the boss without taking damage is pretty easy. It’s not difficulty, it’s just time.
Also in Fromsoft games runbacks are a deliberate design choice that forces the player to take a quick break after dying to a boss.
I’ll admit I don’t even remember doing runbacks in hollow Knight (or even having to fight any boss in the part of the game I played more than one or twice), but in other games where you have to run to the boss you normally just run past everything without fighting it and go into the boss with full resources. No challenge - just running past everything, which not only wastes time but also totally breaks immersion for me.
In any case, my overall discontent is with all the time wasting added together than any specific thing.
I will say the run backs in Silksong/HK are better than, for example, DS1 for the reason you give. In DS you just run past enemies and it’s trivial. In the HK games running past enemies becomes a platforming challenge. Yeah, you can still do it, but you still have to engage with the enemy even if that’s just jumping over them. DS you just run past them and they almost always too slow to engage with you if you’re sprinting.