Preemptive Retaliation

So I finished Silksong and I’m still having a shitty time with my novel.

I finished Silksong earlier this evening. I managed to reach what I figured was the final fight during my lunch, then over a few tries across the evening I managed to eke away at the last boss and then – poof, all done. Like all Metroidvanias, finishing the game is never the high point for me. In fact, by the time I reach the end I’m usually so done with the game that I’m excited to put it down, to tick it off my list once and for all. I’ve explored the world up and down, squeezed every last good feeling out of the combat and exploration, now it’s time to wrap a little bow around it and call it a day.

Despite me clocking in about sixty hours, Silksong didn’t wear out its welcome. In fact I started delaying the approaching end, trying to find more and more to do as my completion rate worked its way up to 100%. In the end there was nothing else I could do. No more quests, no more bosses – ah fuck, there is one more! I remember reading about him online. Ah. Oh well. It’s done now.

But how do I rank it? What are my thoughts on the game? Is it as good as Hollow Knight?

Well let’s put it this way. This game was incredible. The lore is rich, and deep without being obscure. It is a stunning work of art, a visual feast to the eyes. The world makes sense and is alive, and the characters are interesting and endearing, and I was genuinely attached to them. The gameplay was tight, very tight, and as I progressed I could feel myself become more attuned to the move set. I would learn patterns, I would dance around them – and that’s the key word, dance. I would dance around them in improvised but exceptionally tight choreography.

But, a lot of the time, the game made me miserable.

There was one particular boss that I was stuck on for four days. I would jump on my Steam Deck, try this boss four or five times, and then put the thing down and do something else. But during that something else I would be so down, so deflated, and it would take me a hot minute to pull myself out of it. There were some bosses in this game that make my heart literally race, pump so hard and fast as I pushed my luck and tried to win, win, win, but when I did succeed it was an almost bitter pill, because all the excitement I have isn’t enough to drag me out of the hole I’ve been dug into.

This didn’t happen every boss. Not even a majority of them. Just a handful, really, but it was enough to really, really sour my experience.

And I’ve written about this time and time again, even in regards to Silksong – I don’t mind difficulty. I like it. But when the difficulty is, at times, heavy bullshit, and the punishment is so severe, it sucks the fun out of the game. And that’s what happened. The fun was sucked right out of the game for me.

This is a bit disappointing. There’s a least one game I play a year that is transformative for me, somehow. A Zelda, or a Celeste – a game that is more than just a game, but is a revelation. An experience that I can learn from, a new instant top ten contender. I was hoping that Silksong would be that for me – a long anticipated, incredibly imagined and executed wonder of a game – but it isn’t. Unless you take the inverse, that this is a lesson in not persevering. This is a lesson of bitterness, of learning when to put a game down instead of bull-headedly trying to prove something (to whom? to the people who don’t care if you 100% it? to your friends who don’t play it? to yourself, for why?).

Here’s my review in full. Silksong is a near perfect game. Gorgeous in many ways. Satisfying and addictive and rewarding, and so, so, so, so fucking good. 9.5/10. Would not recommend.

I’m still struggling with my shitty novel. I would rate it 2/10. Would not recommend.