Video Gamers Podcast - Hollow Knight: Silksong First Impressions – Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan and Ace are finally into the long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong, and we’ve got some thoughts. From its fluid combat to the eerie beauty of its world, is this sequel living up to the mountain of gaming expectations, or are we just caught up in the hype of a beloved franchise? We’re breaking down what works, what surprised us, and how Silksong stands apart in today’s crowded world of video games. If you’re into atmospheric platformers or just love talking video games, this is a must-listen. Don’t miss this epic gaming breakdown on the Video Gamers Podcast!   Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, Gaius, Jigglepuf and Phelps   Thanks to our Legendary Supporters: HypnoticPyro, Patrick, NorwegianGreaser and PeopleWonder   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/videogamerspod⁠ Join our Gaming Community: ⁠https://discord.com/invite/Dsx2rgEEbz⁠ Follow us on Instagram:⁠ https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/⁠  Follow us on X:⁠ https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod⁠  Subscribe to us on YouTube:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@VideoGamersPod?sub_confirmation=1⁠    Visit us on the web:⁠https://videogamerspod.com/⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, fellow gamers, and welcome to the video gamers podcast. You know, if you had told me two months ago that we'd be doing this episode, I'd have called you crazy. But here we are, Silk Song released. That still feels crazy to say. And we've got our initial thoughts on the game. What works, what doesn't, and was it worth the wait? We'll be talking our initial impressions of the world's most wish listed game.

But first, some introductions are in order. I am your host, Josh. And joining us, his first comment was, it's beautiful. His second comment was not something that I can say on this show when he fell all the way back to the start of the game, it's Ryan. What's up, guys? I'm just running back to this boss.

I'll see you in a couple minutes. That's all. Oh, man. And joining us, I know for a fact, he's rage quit at least two times and probably more that he didn't admit to. So I guess it's time to say, get good, scrub.

It's Ace. Savage beast fly, I curse you. You beast. Ace knows how to trigger me, man. I hate that. I love it. He just keeps sending me pictures of the Savage Beast fly. And I'm like, bro, they're not even good.

That's not nice, man. That's not nice, man. Oh, my goodness. Well, guys, here we are. It's real. It is real. It's real. It's real.

You played it. You played it, Ryan. It's real. I finally did. I did. Oh, my goodness. I was a day or too late, but I got on. I got on. I do love, poor Ryan. Like, you know, Ryan has had just the craziest schedule you can imagine over the last two weeks. My work has been absolutely kicking my tail for the last month. Thankfully, like this weekend, I actually did get some playtime. I'm on the tail end of the busy season for my job. and we got some playtime. Now, I asked you guys before we got into this episode.

I said, hey, what's your hours on this? Because I think we kind of span the gamut. Ryan, you said you got about five, six hours in finally over the weekend. I thought I had like 12 to 15 and I figured Ace was in the mid-20s. I checked, I'm 22 hours in, boys. And I asked Ace and Ace is like, I'm 22 hours in. We're both the same amount in.

Yeah. Yeah, but Ace is in a different part than I am. So apparently I got distracted. I was doing a bunch of side quests and stuff like that. But here we are. We get to talk about Silk Song. We are going to give our initial thoughts. We are going to come back and do a full deep dive later on.

So for those that want spoilers and an overall, just give me the deep dive on Silk Song. We will be doing that. This episode is going to focus on kind of initial impressions, what's working, which is a lot. what's not working which might be a lot and kind of just the overall vibe of how we're feeling about silk song having gotten the chance to actually put some hours into it at this point yep but before we get into that boys guys we got some people to thank man oh we got some people to thank you know and my goodness hey you know what every person out there that supports this podcast you are the reason that we are still able to do this podcast after so many years guys we've been

this podcast for like five years now. Do you guys realize that? It's a long time. Like five years, dude. That is a crazy amount of time. Somehow, some way, we have managed to carve out a spot in the podcast world, especially when it comes to video games. That is an impossibility. You cannot compete with the likes of IGN and giant bomb cast, which I don't even think exists anymore. And game spots, podcast and all this, you know, kind of funny games. That's no shade any of those guys respect for what you all do but to be an independent gamers that have started a podcast in this space without a multi-gillion dollar website behind you is something to be said so we're very proud of that but all of that to say we could not do what we do if it wasn't for the people

that support this podcast and anytime somebody signs up to do that one of the ways that we say thank you is thanking you on this show because it is important so we have a huge shout out to guys, we got a few of them this time. We got, yeah. Julian. Julian joined the Discord server as a supporter. Wasn't even in there initially and just boom. Here's the new guy showing up and chat with people. We're like, Julian, my man.

So thank you to Julian. Thank you. Nate Nicol, Nate, if you have a Discord handle, I don't know what it is. I'm sorry, but Nate Nichol signed up as well. We've got Stouffer who signed up to support the show. And just this morning, I was going to say this one this morning. Yeah, this one this morning. old Tedward Cisor Hands.

Yeah. Signed up as well. So thank you to all of you that signed up to support the show. Listen, if you like this podcast, you've been listening a while and you want to support this and keep this thing running. There is a link in the episode description. It takes like two minutes to sign up. There is no commitment whatsoever.

It's not like you're signing your life away. It's just two minutes. Unless you want. I mean, we'd love it if you did. There you go. So thank you to all of you out there. all right and then guys we have one other quick thing that we have to address on this show Ryan I owe you an apology oh for trolling you I'm going to sit hold on hold on I'm

let me let me just oh okay I'm about the way apparently yeah I am part British I guess the queen's English because the word respite came up uh-huh and you said respite. Yeah. I trolled you for that. I said it's respite. Yeah. And you said no. And you took it like a champ. And it turns out that in modern English, there are people that say respite. For shame, Josh. How could you correct him like that? At some point, I'll, I'll give you that apology. But it's what I know. Listen, so I want to know, I want to know for real. Like, have you never like, have you never like, Like, did you, like, do you not, have you not heard that word, like, said that way? Or how, how did that happen?

I always read it as rest might. I will say, I'm with ace on this one. And I have, I have heard respite. Like, I need a respite. We talked about this. That's what the benches are called in ender magnolia and ender lilies. They're called respites. So I've always read it like that game.

Where did they develop that game? Well, see, there you go. So this is the tomato tomato thing. I think it's Korea. But I have never seen so many linguists come out of the woodwork to support Ryan on this? According to this, you said it right. And then I was like, day it.

And I was like, all right, I got to, I got to give Ryan the, the, the, he liked how such a weenie I am that I'm just like, I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, you're right. I must have been like, oh, I must have said it wrong, Josh. Oh, man. But yeah, so, yeah, take that.

Yeah. So, all right, you were right, Ryan. You were right. Thank you. Thank you. I will, I'm surprised you didn't burst into flames. I will take my respite here. A little respite myself. A little respite for me and you. I'm full of a little respite out.

I still think respite sounds better. Listen, you're wrong plenty of times. So add it to the list. That's true too. That's one thing we never pretend this to be. Yeah, exactly. All right, boys, let's talk about Silk Song. Let's get into this. You know, again, Ace and I are 20 hours into this thing.

Ryan's five, six hours in. I love that we kind of have this spread of playtimes. For people that are worried, we're not going to get into any kind of major spoilers. We're going to talk about the game, which, you know, we're going to mention a boss. We're going to mention a level. We're not going to mention any kind of huge spoilers or story moments or, you know, any of these things like that. So if you're worried about spoilers, we're not going to spoil anything, but yes, we are going to talk about the game. So if you don't want to hear a boss's name or the name of a level, maybe come back to this episode later on,

but we're going to not spoil everything for those of you out there either. But let's be honest, the whole world's playing Silk's off right now. So, like, you guys are there with us. You know, like, this is not anything different. So, okay, we have all played Hollow Night, correct? Yes. The very first question I have is, does this feel different than Hollow Night to you guys? Oh, significantly different than Hollow Night.

It's way faster-paced, in my opinion. okay the the the the resemblance i had was um uh kind of like with doom where you have you have your tank and then you have your like f-16 fighter jet your fighter jet and like you are a fighter jet silk song you are a fighter jet and like you have the movement you have the speed and a hall the night you're just kind of like a blah blah blah you know tank you're a bouncing ball yeah bouncing ball going through the world so yeah i there's definitely that um that difference between the two of the speed that's the thing that caught me so off guard is how fast you are as as the silk song you know in the silk song game how i i think i agree

with you guys on that one where it definitely feels faster pace to me um i will say the biggest challenge for me was not having like the downward slash and it's like you do the you do a diagonal and then I was like, what is this, man? Like, I need to bounce off of things, you know? I miss my pogo. Yeah. And in Hologna, you could pogo off the spikes on the ground. Yeah.

You know, and now it's like, you can't do that, man. She attacks in a diagonal motion. And this is like, my brain was like, what? You will still be expected to do that. Yeah, I kind of figured. Yeah, you still have to do that. They're going to keep some of this stuff. So I will.

say like other than just the speed of the game does it feel much to i'll be like for me it really just feels like i'm playing hollow night but like maybe a little bit faster pace it's a faster it's a faster i would say more difficult in some aspects hollow night but also the animation is so much smoother yeah like you really feel the flow of hornets combat compared to when you played you know as the uh the vessel in hollow night so so So did you guys, what are you, are you guys both on PC? I'm on PC. Yeah.

You guys, okay, so I, I bought it because I, obviously, I leave in, what if it's Sunday. So I leave in two days for my trip. So I'm like, I'm going to get it on Switch. That way I can play it on my flight. I can play when I'm out of town. And I will beat this game and do everything I need to do within this game before I come back. Yeah. We'll see.

Okay. But I thought it's still even so. the switch looked amazing. I thought it was very fluid. I thought the graphics, I'm like, oh, this looks. I remember right away, I loaded in, I'm like, this looks so pretty. And then I went off and I played for an hour and a half, and then I somehow fell down a hole and I ended up back where I started.

And I thought it was just as pretty, the first time I was there, which was interesting. But, uh, this is a universal thing where, look, I haven't talked to anyone that hasn't done it, by the way. Everybody in our Discord server was literally like, I did the exact same thing, dropped down this hole back at the beginning. And I'm like, why did you guys do this to people, man? Like, this is just Team Cherry being trolls at this point, you know? They're just trying to get us, man. Yeah.

I will say the animation is incredible. Yeah. This game screams polished to me, dude. Like when we're talking about initial impressions, zero bugs, zero laps, zero lap. I don't know. There's a lot of bugs. I've seen quite a few bugs. Yeah.

Okay. That's fair. There are a lot of bugs. but I mean you can tell they took their time with this they developed this game it runs flawlessly it acts flawlessly every button input responds the way that I feel like it should like this is an absolutely polished to the hilt game the music's beautiful the graphics are beautiful even when you get into those somber kind of dark areas where the sound just goes away you know it's like you can hear your footsteps and that's it like even those moments are just top notch to me so it's like

everything about this screams polish in my opinion i would agree uh what do you think though about the difficulty does it feel harder well that's how i see ac read my mind i was gonna say guys and and ryan may not be here yet but there is a giant elephant in this room right now and that elephant is the difficulty level of silk song ryan's waving his hand i cannot wait dude i would not buy this game i will not buy this game on a mobile console i'll crush it my Because you're going to throw that. I will crush it in my hands. Ryan's looking.

He's like, wait a minute. What did I get myself into here? Oh. Look, let's just talk about it. Because Ryan, I mean, you experienced a tiny bit of this with just falling back to the beginning of the game, you know? And I will say this, this game, my first few, probably five hours in, no problem. You know, got hit a couple times, lost a little bit of life.

Bro. Okay. We are accomplished gamers, dude. Ace, you've, you've beaten Eldon Ring. Yes, I have. Millennia. Yeah. You've beaten some hard games. I've beaten Bloodborn. You don't shy away from you. Yeah. Ryan, I know you do not

shy away from difficulty. Oh, yeah. You know, you'll sit there, you'll grind through it until you get it. I mean, I love just being pummeled. You know, people know I like difficult games. What the heck, dude? This game is so hard. Here's the problem. And I know, bro, I know right now that the internet is going to internet and they're going to get good, dude, there's not a problem.

The Sucson's not hard. Okay. Yes, it is. Bro, you can brag all you want and try to fool yourself that you don't think that there's a like a higher difficulty level in Silk Song than there was in Hollow Night. And that's not to say the Hollow Night didn't have its challenges. But the difficulty level of Silk Song is sometimes, not all the time, is sometimes infuriating to me, dude. And I'd like a challenge. got no issues fighting a boss 30, 40 times.

Are you sure? I reach with a song this morning. Double damage and also there's no eye frame. So you take that damage immediately again. Oh, yeah. Or if we're going to talk about this because look, the get good scrub crowd, right? I hear you, I hear you, buddy.

And I got no problems getting good. Be better. If it's on me, if it's on me, that's fine. If I got to learn a boss's move set and get the timing down right to do this, to beat this optional boss or something like that, I'll fight that boss a thousand times if it means I got to learn that move set and the animations and stuff like that.

The problem that I have with Silk Song is it is not about your skill level. It is about the freaking randomization and ads and boss moveset that it's just the most random thing. Bro, like I mentioned this stupid savage beastfly. I thought that son of a 50 times, dude, 50 times. And you know what?

It's not about, I can't memorize his animations and his moveset. It's the fact that spawns, ads will randomly spawn through like four different sets of bugs in the game. And if you get the wrong RNG on this boss fight, there is no way. No way you were meeting that boss with that bad RNG. And then you got a freaking run back. And look, it's not a super long run, but it's still 40 seconds, 30 seconds of running back, every single time. That's too far. How was that bench? Every single time. How was that bench the first time you sat on it too? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then the bench that's close to this boss fight is, I don't want to spoil anything, but let's just say that not all things are as they seem. Not all things are as they seem. Let's just say that. Yeah. I don't like artificial difficulty. Me either. Like, and this is why I say, Melania, she's got a move set. It's difficult. You might have a very small window of how you. You know, you respond to a move winding up or an animation or something like that. I get it.

Practice will make you perfect. It might take a long time, but ultimately you can do it. That is not random difficulty. The problem I have with Silk Song's difficulty level is for the most part. It is just random crap that they throw at you and they say, hey, okay, you can beat this one bug because you can focus. Okay, here's three bugs at the same time that are all moving around randomly and doing how am I supposed to focus on that dude like you're fighting this boss that's a tough boss fight oh let's just spawn an ad okay well I can deal with the one ad right you take the ad out you focus on the boss oh okay well that wasn't hard enough here's two ads at the same time and oh by the way you never know what ad you're going to get and one of these ads will absolutely wreck you

because you can't attack him because he does a swirly spiral chop that just blocks everything that thing you know okay I don't I don't love the difficulty level of some parts of silk song. So when we want to talk about what is the elephant in the room, to me, it is this artificial difficulty where they make the game hard for no reason hard. And Ryan, you are not there yet. And I cannot wait. I cannot wait for you to get there because I'm already pissed off. I got on. Misery loves company. And I want you to be miserable with Ace and I. Ace the other day said, bro, I had to walk away. He's like, I had to stupid. I had to take a silk song break. I think I said, I have to take a silk song break. I'm going. crazy. Oh my goodness. Do you guys remember what I said my least favorite thing in any Metroidvanias when I was talking about? The runback? Is it the long run back?

Walkbacks are part of it. The other thing is contact damage. I cannot stand contact damage in a game. It drives me crazy. Because how am I supposed to be skillful with what I'm doing if I land on a boss and I take damage for it? That's not my fault.

Yeah. You know, I can touch a tiger. and it's not going to kill me You know You can touch Malania Malenia doesn't hurt you Yes If you want to make it contact damage

This thing better be dripping with acid At that point You know Then yeah exactly Then it's like Oh I shouldn't touch this thing Oh I should jump on your head Okay

It said I messed up a pogo And now I lost two health Because contact damage counts as regular damage That's no I noticed that too on It's pretty early on for you guys I'm sure, like, uh, the bell boss, like you're in there and, and it's running across and you go and you try to like dash, but you don't dash and you fall down and you just land on its tail and then you take two, two damage damage. And I'm like, oh, come on, man. I didn't even, you know, he didn't

attack me. Like, why am I taking damage if I'm not being attacked? I, I agree. I think the contact damage is absolute garbage. I don't know why we still have it. Man, I don't know. I don't why it's ridiculous you know what game doesn't have contact damage and it's a sequel to another metrovania it's also really good ender magnolia oh really they took the contact damage i've never heard it yeah i never heard it you never talked about that game before ender ender ender what oh yeah you have full names ender magnolia bloom in the mist maybe check it out everyone but their first game ender lilies had contact damage okay people didn't like that in inter magnolia they took it out and it made a significantly better experience for me

because I didn't have to watch where I was landing every time I wanted to land an attack. I just had to learn boss patterns and learn how to fight. We got to move on, but to me the glaring, the glaring downside to Silk Song right now is just artificial difficulty. I love a good boss fight guys.

You know I love mechanics. You know, I will go for the hardest difficulty challenge and things like that. But it infuriates me to just go, let's just have random difficulty we'll just throw in more ads we'll randomize this stuff and it's like it doesn't make sense dude like I get

I have to be good I'm not saying that but when you throw random into the mix that infuriates me and that is probably my biggest complaint with Silk Song at the moment is just I can be trucking along having the best time ever going bro this game

is so good and then just hit one area or one combo of monsters or a boss fight where they just go, yeah, we're just going to tick you off for no reason whatsoever. Yep, here you go. Be mad at us. Let's make them mad.

Why would you do this to me, man? The needle goes like this on Sok-Song. It never stopped. It really does. You're loving it. You're hating it. You're loving it. You're hating it.

So I haven't. My wife laughs at me. So I haven't hit that yet with you guys that you, you know, this crazy difficulty issue because, like, I, you know, I'm only five, six hours in. and I did the standard Metroidvania, like battle thing where, you know, you go through five, six fights, you learn the skill set, you learn what they're going to do, and then you go no shot, and you don't get hit, you don't get touched, and you smoke them.

You're like, all right, cool. You know, and you keep playing. So, like, I'm still in that mode where, like, I'm feeling good about this. So I am intrigued to see where that's going to happen, where I run into, like, oh, this is what they were talking about. this is why they were they were so stinking mad about the way this game is like set up. Mm-hmm. You're going to see. Part of it too is that, and I'm okay with this, but there's no health bars on bosses.

I face that. You don't know if you're supposed to be fighting that boss. Like the first time I came across the Savage Beast Fly was early because I had been just exploring because you can just wander. Yeah. You know, and this guy kicked my butt. And I was like, I don't think I'm supposed to be here yet. So then I went back to him later on after getting some upgrades and stuff. And he's still kicking my butt.

you know but it's like but there's no health bars on bosses you can just randomly come across a room where there's a boss in this room or a tough fight and it's like am i supposed to be here yet i don't know i don't know if i got this thing halfway dead or if i've barely tickled it man you know like how much am i going to slam my head against this wall wondering if i can beat this boss like it it accentuates the joy of the game when you do beat a tough fight but at the same time the negatives that come with that i think sometimes outweigh that like like fist pump moment where I'm like yeah I beat him oh yeah it's just like bro like you're you're just ticking me off right now man so I think I just we got to take a quick break I was exactly I think I just beat one boss and I sighed and I was like it's over it's over yeah like mine's not over because I'm still bang and listen I'm a glutton for punishment I keep telling myself one more run one if I don't beat them this time I'll just go and I'll and then it's like by the time I run back because you got to run back to get your your rosaries which is your currency in this game And I'm like, well, I don't want to lose all that.

So I run back and I'm like, eh, I mean, I'm right here. Let me just try them again. And then it's like a vicious cycle, man. So, all right, let's take a quick break, guys. We'll come back and talk about some other parts of the game. I still can't believe we're here, guys. We're talking about Silk Song. We're talking to initial impressions.

It's real. It's real. Just got done whining about some of the difficulty level in this game. What, I, this is an interesting question, right? Because I know we're a little bit further along Ace, but I, we're still far from beating this game at this point. No, I haven't even locked half the map. Is, is Silk Song what you wanted slash expected from the sequel to Hollow Night? And I know that's a tough question, but it's like, you know, we've waited for this game for so long.

we've all played hollow night we all regard hollow night very very high in our in our video game you know echelon of like great games out there yeah is silk song what you expected and is it what you wanted out of this experience so far and again i get you know hey this is not a final verdict or anything but uh Ryan since you have the least amount of hours five six hours in is it what you expected okay so so uh so far I mean I know what you guys have said which is a little concerning for me going forward, like, because you reserve the right to change the union, right? Because so far, I'm having a really good time. Like, I'm having a really, really good time. Jack, I'm playing with my son, Jack. We're playing, and he's like, Dad, this is, this is like Holonite, but it's a little harder, but it's, it looks better and it's fun. It's more fun. And I'm like, I agree. I know, we're going through the world. It looks absolutely.

beautiful and again i'm playing on the switch because i'm going to have a portable unit while i'm traveling so it looks amazing it plays amazing it's fluid it is uh uh graphically pleasing like everything about it i love so far um i i am just a little concerned with what you guys have said about where it goes from there because i i am totally fine so far fighting bosses five 10 times you know whatever just get the skill set and go. If I'm trying to do 20, 30 runs, then I have to run from my rest to the boss. That's concerning for me. That's something that I don't like. And that takes away from the fun of the gameplay. So I hope that's not, maybe you guys are just like mad at the moment and it's not going to be that bad. I'm hoping that's the case. But I don't know. We'll

see. What about you, Ace? Is it what you expected? Okay, I want to preface this with, we've, I've been hard on Soxong. All right. The funny thing is, as soon as we're done with this recording, I'm going to go play more. That is, like, that's the reality of it. Same with me. Absolutely. It is, in a way, it is what I expected out of a sequel for Hollandite.

I don't know if I expected to be this much harder early on, though. I kind of expected a gradual increase of difficulty as the game went on. This game just throws you right into it. But the art is beautiful. The music's beautiful. the animations are stunning it is clearly as we said polished as it gets it's everything i expected for seven years of work i'll say that but this is at its core this is hollow night too so yeah i i will say that this is this is what i expected yeah you know i didn't think that they were gonna just

completely change the formula um i did feel like that you know hey this is a sequel you've learned some things you know you've had time to polish this it's been in development for six years now so it should feel like it is a complete game. It shouldn't have issues, performance, you know, stuff like that. So to me, this feels like Hollow Night 2.0. You know, you jump in right away. The game just works. Everything works like it should.

You know, the controls are top notch. I mean, everything is just instantly like this is a fantastic video game. I get frustrated with some of the difficulty spikes, but at the same time it's like you said I literally can't wait to play more tonight you know like this game keeps just drawing me in I want to see what the next level is I want to see what the next skill I get is

if I'm being very nitpicky I feel like sometimes the progression you all know I love progression you know I feel like the progression is sometimes like not it's stingy so well it's very stingy with the progression to where it's like I want those RPG elements I want the new weapon or the new

ability or the new tool or the new heel or the new whatever and it's like I'm 20 hours in and while I have gotten a few abilities I'm like I feel like it's like it's very stingy that's probably the best way to put it aases it's like you know and I get that they're they have to pace it and they can't give you too much because then you just break the game and you go places you're not supposed to go that's the thing too yeah like they have to pace it because otherwise you'll be going into way harder areas way too early and then when you get steamrolled you're blaming them for not optimizing the pathing and things like that. I mean, that's fair.

You know, so it's like, it is what I expected. I absolutely love playing this game. But at the same time, there are moments where I just go like, I hate you right now. I hate you for what you're doing to me for no reason. I curse you, Team Cherry. Also, look, look, before

people think that we are slandering Silk Song, which we are not doing, we're just, again, this whole point of this is initial impressions. I, Metroidvanias are not my favorite genre in the world. I joke that I get lost a lot of times. I have done at least eight loops through every zone in this game because I get to wandering and I'm trying to find something and then I realize, oh, that's not this zone. It's that zone over there.

The map is still the same map system that you had in Hollow Night, which is not the most intuitive for me. You have to buy the stupid little pins to put on the map, which I've done. But then it's like, wait, what does this pin mean? What did I put that pin there for? So I walk all the way over there. And then I go, oh, that was just a vendor, never mind. So it is not the most, like, user-friendly experience in the world.

So I'm a little torn, you know, in that regard to where it's like absolute, can't wait to play this game cussing and rage quitting at another moment. And then walking away, but then 30 minutes later, it's like, oh, I kind of really want to play silks on the game, too. It's like an addiction, man. I was in bed last night with the switch and me and Jack we're playing and we're trying to beat a boss and then like I'm playing and I'm like falling asleep as I'm playing he's like dad dad and he kept nudging me and I'm like oh and I'm like I get

back to it so it it has that draw it has that essence that makes you want to continue to play the game I'm with you though the map thing man why why like it's 2025 dude let's just have a simple easy to work, manageable map. I don't understand like the thing with Metroidvania is where they're like, no, you have to discover the world. And then you have to find everything you need to. And then we're going to make it extra difficult so you know where you are. And they

make the deception. You know, I just, bro, I'm here to play. Let me play the game. Let me know where I'm at. And I already want to play. I'm here. I'm ready to play. Let me know what. level I'm in, what area I'm in, like, it shouldn't be that difficult to run back to different zones and things like that. So, yeah, that was a big thing for me is this, as always, the map issue, um, on these games, but, but so far, I'm not as far as you guys. I have not hit this, this crazy, uh, hiccup as far as difficulty, but I, I, I'm loving it. I'm loving it so far.

I don't, I don't want the difficulty to like scare people off. You know what I mean? It is, it is not very very frequent that you hit these spikes the problem is when you hit one of those spikes you feel it and then i go from loving this game to just being infuriated with the again why why did you make it difficult in this way because again if it was learn the boss moveset that's one thing but it's just artificial i feel like they just went let's just make it difficult to make it difficult and this is not like platforming difficulty fine again that's on me dude If I got to hit my timing, that's my fault. You know, and I'm okay with that.

But like, it's just, sometimes it seems so random. Does it feel like blueprints to you, like to where like you can do all the things right, but maybe some R&G sets you off on the wrong course and then you. I mean, there's definitely a learning curve for a boss. I mean, every boss fight is going to be, you're going to fight it. You're going to die. You're going to fight it. You're going to die.

And then you're going to go, oh, okay, this guy swipes three times after he leaps at me, right? And then it's like, okay, so there definitely is some pattern recognition. For sure. Which I really enjoy. Yeah. The problem is, is that when you throw the pattern recognition into a random spawn of, like, enemies or something else, it just becomes like the, it just feels like it's not fair at that point. You know what I mean? And it's like, bro, give me a fair fight where my skills have to come through.

But when it's not fair, because you've just thrown three other enemies into the small little arena, and I'm supposed to track four different enemies bouncing around, doing things and diving at me and this and that. and I look maybe I need to just farm some mass pieces to get more health maybe that's maybe the problem is me and I haven't done enough of that but like you can get hit like three times total and like A said if you get unlucky and you get backed into a corner there's no eye frames no life you just instantly die yeah this isn't like you get two seconds of blinking on the screen to kind of get to a safe spot this is literally like boom boom you're dead like just instantly dead and then you're like what the crap man like come on like give me a minute to, I don't know. Hollow Night had eye frames, by the way. Hollow Night had those. So like going from that to this. Before we get eviscerated on the internet, I think you get like a half a second of eye frame.

But dude, that is not enough time to actually respond to getting cornered by a boss or something like that, dude. It's really not. And then the heel aspect takes a long time because it's not like Hollow Night where you could just slowly heal. This is, I have to just sit here and

the silk fly around me. motionless for two seconds and then you fully heal or you almost fully heal you know great but it's it's just i don't know dude again i this is not slainering the game and i'm not asking you to make the silk song easier because i like difficult games but artificial difficulty is not a thing that people should be doing in i have a big thing with this with like uh we talk about food a lot a lot on our discord if you're not on our discord you check it out it's the oasis it's an amazing place that aside i love spicy food i love hot spicy things i love it when it when it tastes good though i don't like spice for the sake of spice i don't like hot things just because like hey let's make it four million

scovil units just because like oh yeah doesn't that taste good no my face is melting off no I like things that are spicy and hot, but they have flavor. Like, give me, give me the flavor. I can take a battle that has flavor. Give me, give me something that I'm combating. I have a chance. I can see that glimmer of hope. I can have it.

And I know what I have to do. It's just if I can do it. And if they have that R&G implemented in, and it's always just like, oh, well, you know, sometimes, you know, get good scrub. sometimes, you know, too bad. Like, that's what takes it away. So if there's too much R&G, it really affects that boss fight. So, man, if it gets to that level where you just can't, you can't use your skills to fight this boss and win,

like without the R&G messing you up, and that's going to be a tough, that's going to be a tough thing. You'll see. I mean, I'm curious because I'm excited to check it out. Now I'm excited to see what it's going to be. what you guys are talking about. And then I'll be like, oh, no. But what's weird is we have people in our Discord that has said,

I thought Holo Night was harder. Like, we've literally said, you know, maybe, maybe it's just how people view. I mean, maybe some people have better, like, tracking for four things happening on the screen versus, like, the focus on this one boss and the animations that are happening and stuff like that. Everybody's different. Yeah. Again, this is the, this to me, and it sounds like to Ace, is the glaring,

is the glaring just downside to, if we're saying, hey, what's not working with Silk Song, you know, this is the difficulty spikes sometimes just seem out of place to me. And to me, it seems like it's artificial difficulty versus, hey, here's just a tough boss fight. You know, learn, learn and get good. Practice makes perfect kind of thing to where it's like, this isn't any amount of practice. This is just I got lucky and I managed to avoid this ad or I got lucky on the ad spawns kind of thing or something along those lines. so all right listen we got to wrap this up guys i can see all the comments now if you had to rate it i can see all the after just well i want to do this because i don't want people to think that we're

slamming it we're just pointing out what is the the obvious but if you had to rate this game right now and ryan i know you don't have as much playtime in it for sure if you had to rate it right the second what would you rate it man uh so far i think it is graphically absolutely amazing The depth within this game, and again, I'm playing on the Switch, so it's not the fidelity, like the way it looks is not the same as like a PC version of it, and I'm still blown away. I think it plays fluid. I am a fighter jet that's destroying these bugs, you know, so overall, I've had nothing but an enjoyable time so far. It's absolutely in the nines for me. I would say probably like a 9-4 so far, 9-3, something like that.

It is amazing. If I hit some crazy wall where I'm like, okay, this just isn't fun because I can't get past it, it may change. But as of right now, early on initial response, I think it's low nines. Okay. What about you, A's? Even lower nines. Oh, yeah.

Okay, so you hit the hard spot. Yeah, I've definitely hit the hard spot. But it is beautiful to look at. I love watching the animations. It feels very fluid and Hornets combat is completely different to the nights. It is so much more acrobatic and aerodynamic for lack of a better word. Yeah. The inclusion of like the tools and things like that into the, you know, your kit is also super nice.

But the glaring issue is the artificial difficulty that they've just kind of thrown in there. And the runbacks to the boss are absolutely killer for me. but you can't really say like a work of art is bad. So it's like a 9.1, 9.2 for me. I will say, I mean, I was just going to, for me, it's a 9 out of 10, honestly. Like, I can't wait to play this game. And again, I hope it doesn't sound like we're griping about the game because overall, this is a fantastic game. Like, this is a way a video game should play.

It is polished. It is clean. It works. It's beautiful. It's memorable. Like, it keeps me wanting to come back for more. Is it a game of the year contender? Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. This is what a video game should be. Like, this is what a video game should be. There is absolutely, like, nothing about this game that doesn't scream quality. And again, I know it seems like we're complaining, but what we're doing is we're pointing out, like, you know, I don't want to come on here and just be like, Silk Song's the greatest game ever made. That's not true. Like, isn't one of the best games of this year? Is it one of the best games I've played in a while?

Like, absolutely. But I'm not going to come on here and just be like, Suk Song's perfect. oh my gosh it's the best game we've ever played in my life like no it's not it is a phenomenal video game that i think is slightly and i do mean slightly held back by an artificial difficulty level you know and so if it wasn't for that and they dialed that difficulty in i think it would be a 10 out of 10 i think it would absolutely be a masterpiece of a game to me right now it is absolutely incredible It is phenomenal, but I would not, I'm not going to say it's a perfect game right now. Maybe that changes.

If there's no boss run back, you start right back in the same room and you're ready to rock. Do you think that would help a lot? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. That would help a lot. You know what I mean? That is part of the frustration is why do I have to make this trip for the 50th time? Why can't you just give me a spawn right outside the door?

I agree. Eldon Ring did this. You know what I mean? And it doesn't detract from the game, dude. like, it's like, I don't understand this. You're just wasting time at that point. Unless you, yeah, unless you think I'm going to beat this boss within like three runs, there should not be a boss runback.

There should not in any way. There's just quality of life stuff. That's honestly the best way I can put it is quality of life stuff. It's 2025. Again, quality of life does not mean easy. So for everybody that's going to say get good scrubs, listen, I hear you, dude. I love difficult games. I'm not, I'm not disagreeing.

But there's a difference between easy and quality of life. And the thing to me that is holding Silk Song back is just some quality of life issues. Yeah. Does that detract from the game? A little bit. Is it still a fantastic video game? Like, yes. It's incredible.

I can't wait to play it, dude. I want to play it right now. And I will, but it's just not perfect, you know? And so that's the initial impressions, everybody. These are our initial thoughts. We will do a deep dive. Maybe it changes. Maybe they start giving me that progression I've been craving.

And by the end of the game, I'm ripping through things. and I'm just like, bro, I'm so awesome at this. Maybe, but we'll find out because we're going to come back and we're going to do a deep dive on this. But initial impression wise, there you go, everybody. If you're not playing Silk Song, you should probably be playing Silk Song. Yeah. You know, it's good.

It's pretty good. Hopefully this episode encouraged that, even though we did have a few complaints. And it's 20 bucks. That's going to do it for 20 bucks. Real quick. Hold on, real quick. I was going to wait for the deep time. How about that?

How about that, dude. $20. $20, $6, seven years in development. Everybody would have paid $50, $60 for this, and they come out $20, man, $20. I, I, man, I just, that, that blew me away. Okay, since we're, since we're on this and we're going slightly long, guys, this should be proof to the video game world, to the video game industry, there were zero pre-sales, there were zero preview copies, there were zero review copies, there was. pricing of $20 on this.

There were no collector bundles and any of that stuff. You know, the websites didn't get access to have a review ready. Teen Cherry said, no, why would we let you play it

when the people that have been waiting for this game for six years don't get to play it? They said backers first. You don't need all this stuff. You don't need the early access. Hey, give us $70 and you get to play

three days early and all this stuff. Like, this is proof positive that the video game industry that you can make a great video game that's made with love and passion, give it to gamers, and you will make a fortune, dude.

You will absolutely make a fortune. This is the proof that you don't need all this other crap out there. And it'll tear down every game server ever. Yeah, take a lesson from Team Cherry. Understand you don't need all this junk and bloat in your games. You don't have to do all this stuff to jump through hoops. All you have to do is make a great video game. The gamers will take care of the rest, dude.

We will absolutely do our part to tell friends, tell the world about this game, buy this game, give you our money, reward you for your hard work. That's the way it works. That's what it shows. And there's more than 15 million copies sold.

What? 15 million worldwide. That's what I'm looking at right now. It's only been three days. Yeah. The game is richly imagined with insects were devoted I think that might be hollow night sales.

That's got to be hollow night. Are you sure? Maybe you're right. Maybe. That's a lot. We'll verify when we do the deep dive. But I think I read that same article and I think the header that's a little misleading because I think it's including Hollow Night Sales in there as well. I don't think we have official. Maybe it's both. Maybe it's both. Yeah. That might be both. Because they haven't come out with the sales figures yet. But I imagine it's through. It's got to be insane. If that numbers wrong, my bad. I'm sorry. I'm just trying to look. Has another game ever broken every distribution platform ever? I know. I mean, it's shut down. Not all at once. I mean, it's shut down. Not all it wants. I tried it all day that day. I'm like, I'm like,

it won't work on the computer. It won't work on my phone. Like, it's just, it broke everything. Like, that's how many people want this game. And that shows.

And it was, I mean, and it was 20 bucks. It was like two hours, too. There's like, two hours straight, couldn't get into Steam. Yeah.

I was like, yeah. So takeaways, look, if this is your kind of game, reward the developers. You know, does it have some hard parts?

Yes, it does. But it doesn't, the game is still a phenomenal game. So, you know, take that for what it is reward team cherry for what they've done this is what we've been asking for this is what we want the video game industry to follow and the way that we support that is you buy

this game you play this game you enjoy the game and you support what good developers do so all right that's going to do it for this episode everybody thank you for hanging out with us we will be back with a full silksong deep dive to give our final thoughts on this game um it'll probably be a few weeks because Ryan's going on vacation for a week. And honestly, I do want to take my time with this game. And, you know, we're about to cover. Our next episode is going to be what's left in 2025. What's coming out? And, you know, the initial response is, who cares? I got Silk Song to play. But guys, there's still some really good games on the way. But the good news is you have a little bit of time to play Silk Song until that happens. So that's our next episode. Make sure you join us.

make sure you rate this this podcast five stars write us a review we read them on the show support the show like everybody did shout out once again to julian nate nichols stoffer and tedward scissor hands for signing up and support in the podcast until next time happy gaming see you get good Thank you.