Video Gamers Podcast - Hollow Knight: Silksong - The Final Verdict - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan, and Ace are finally delivering their FINAL VERDICT on one of the most anticipated releases in gaming history—Hollow Knight: Silksong! After years of hype, delays, and speculation, does Silksong live up to its legendary status, or is this a rare miss from Team Cherry? We’re breaking down everything from its razor-sharp combat and haunting world design to whether it truly evolves the Metroidvania formula for a new era of video games. If you’ve been following the gaming discourse around this title, you won’t want to miss our take on whether it’s masterpiece material or just another chapter in gaming’s long list of overhyped releases. This is a packed episode on one of the most beloved IPs in the world of video games. DON’T MISS IT   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

During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, lease a 2026 X-E-90 plug-in hybrid from $599 bi-weekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Conditions apply, visit your local Volvo retailer

or go to explorevolvo.com. Hello, fellow gamers, and welcome to the video gamers podcast. Early impressions are important. They capture the initial excitement of a game and the hype that comes with a major game release, but they aren't always the most accurate. Will that be the case for Silk Song? Well, after dozens of hours of playing, we're back to discuss our overall thoughts on the biggest release of 2025. But before we get to our review of Silk Song, some introductions are in order.

I am your host Josh. And joining me, he's the guy that said there's no way he thinks it will be hard enough to be frustrating. Even after Ace and I laughed at him, it's Ryan. Hi, guys, I made it here. I was just running back after I died. And you're dead. It's long run. And you're dead.

Oh, I'm dead. Okay, I'm going to run back. All right. Let's try this again. And you're dead. And you're dead. And you're dead. And you're dead.

And you're dead. And joining us. He's the guy that told me about the wonderful, glorious mods for Silk Song that might might just have changed how I felt about this game as a whole. It's ace. I'm going to say it right now. I would not have gotten near as far into Silk Song as I did without mods. So thank you, modding community.

I thank you greatly for allowing me. Mods are the real one, man. Those are the savings of the world. Oh, my gosh. The mods for Silk Song are legendary guys. And we're going to talk about some of those. So first of all, welcome in everybody. Thank you for joining us.

If you have not listened to our initial impressions episode, you should go back and listen to that one. That is where we kind of break down some of the game mechanics, kind of our initial thoughts on the art style, the movement, that kind of thing. So if you want to know a little bit more about just the basic game itself, that's the episode for you. This episode is the promised follow-up to that one. We've got, you know, we had a chance to put a lot more time in. Ryan got a chance to actually play the game for more than just a few minutes, you know, and so we are all back at this point feeling confident to say, hey, these are our final thoughts on Silk Song.

We've all played it. We all have very different takes when it comes to gaming. Silk Song is, you know, I said it, is one of the biggest releases of the year. I'll be honest, we didn't know if we were even going to be playing Silk Song this year. you know i mean that is that was the great unknown it comes out to the dismay of a lot of other indie developers not to my dismay since i drafted silk song yeah yeah yeah yeah the game of the year draft but here we are and this episode we're like i said we're not going to break down the mechanics of the game again i really want to just spend the time to talk about silk song as a whole what our

opinions are what works what doesn't work for us we will actually give our ratings for this game now we gave a rating initially in our initial impressions episode and so the fun part is after playing it for many more hours has our rating changed and i have a feeling that it has now whether it went up or down remains to be seen so all right let's get into it boys i you know i will say this I think that the main criticism for Silk Song, if you are on the internet and you read reviews and you're not looking at the poor Chinese localization on this game is the overwhelming kind of consensus for people that did not find Silk Song to be the best game they've ever played is because of the difficulty level. we talked about this in our initial impressions episode has any of that changed for you guys

as you got more familiar with the game and you started to get the mechanics down and any of that stuff did you kind of go hey I was wrong okay the game's not that hard it's not that frustrating did that change for you guys at all no Suk Song killed my firstborn

burned down my house and stole my dog as far as I'm concerned get good bro I made good. I made that run back to finish Act 1 probably 50 times. Is that the final judge? Yes. Is that the boss?

Oh my gosh. Before I, dude, I was sitting in a voice call with our friend Alexi and you know Alexi likes to talk and I was trying to play this game. Alexi loves to talk. I was getting so mad that I just didn't. letting on a string of expletives. I cannot repeat here. And Alexi was like,

I have never heard you talk like that in my life. Everybody shut up. I just want to play. I'm scared. Oh, my goodness. Dude, this is offensively difficult, in my opinion,

compared to like, especially coming from like Holonite. Hollenite did not feel that hard in comparison. Now, you know, you just need to get good at home. I don't. Good,

good, all right. I'm just saying, I'm so sick of that is what that is what the internet's going to tell you like if you're good enough it's easy enough man right and I mean we've had people in our discord server that said hey I beat silk song like there were a couple moments that were difficult but I did not find the overall difficulty level to be distracting from this game at all there's a right I mean uh next of us is like hey you guys kept mentioning like all the difficulty you know I I what uh what uh what What part am I going to reach that? Are am I going to hit that at any point here soon? And yeah, whatever. Whatever, next of us.

We all know you're a video game prodigy. Semi-progamer. Yeah, whatever. Sitting in Japan, like, yeah, this game's not hard at all. What are you talking about? In Act 3, there is a runback in this game. If you don't find the hidden bench that is close by, the runback is seven minutes. I timed it.

Seven minutes? Seven? Wait, so that's, wait, you're saying if you don't get the bench that's close? If you don't find the hidden bench. Oh, it's a hidden bench. Okay, okay, okay. You have to find the hidden bench. And that only takes it down to like four minutes.

It is, it is a nasty run back. Guys, that is unacceptable in a game in 2025 to, oh, there's a lot of things. We got to talk about that. Oh, yeah. No, so here's the deal. like speaking of the runbacks like the runbacks alone i was talking to a friend of mine really good he's a solid awesome gamer slightly autistic awesome dude he's very specific and and um and very good i played a lot of destiny with him he's he's an amazing guy he was telling me he liked the runbacks

because it would it would make him uh kind of interpret the boss fights differently and how he would approach them and all these things i'm like no dude seven minute run back four minute run back like all that there's no reason you should ever have to do that in a video game in 2025 like i don't want you to teach me like oh you should take better care of how you attack this boss like no i'm here to have fun this is a game this is where we paid for this and this is supposed to be fun games are fun i'm so okay so i'm so tired of hearing You need to stop playing Silk Song like Holo Night and you need to play it like Silk Song. Because what does that mean?

What do you mean? I got to play Silk Song like Silk Song. It's Hollow Night. Silk Song. You got to get good. I get good. Okay. Well, we'll talk about some of the arguments that people have made on this.

I do want to, I kind of want to go to Ryan because when we did the early impressions, Ace and I were like, yo, there's some frustration involved here. And I don't know if this frustration is going to go away. And why is this game frustrating? Now, I will say this. You guys know me. I love a challenge. If a game has no challenge to me, it is an instant just I don't like this game.

I need a reason to play the game and I need a reason to say, why am I doing this? I need to overcome these challenges for the little bit of dopamine hit to the brain. I love Dark Souls. I love Eldon Ring. I grew up playing Nintendo. I beat Contra without using the 30 extra lives. like I have a history of enjoying difficult games. Okay.

So, you know, yes, I have gotten a little bit older. Maybe I'm not at the peak of my gaming abilities at this point. But like, bro, I, I've been through the fire. You know what I mean? Like I've been, I was forged in the fire of difficult games. I still love difficult games. I mean, you guys just saw me. I just beat Remnant 2 on Apocalypse mode because I'm like, bro, I just,

I want to beat this game on the hardest difficult. setting. I am Eldon Lord, I beat Melania. Again, I am no like slouch to difficulty in a video game. In fact, I actually crave it to a certain degree. We'll get back to that because we mentioned this to Ryan and Ryan was like, well, I'm not far enough in, you know, that's not your fault. Ryan, you had left for vacation, but you did say you got a good chance to play a good bit on vacation. But then all of a sudden, you came back to Anthony and you were like, bro, what the heck? So, Did it hit? Did you hit that frustration? Did you hit the difficulty? Did it matter to you? Yes. I hit the difficulty. I hit the frustration. I hit it so much because I had, you know, I flew to the East Coast from the West Coast. I had a five, six hour flight. So I'm like, perfect. I'll pop on the switch and I'll play this game. And I would get to spots and I'm like, dude, I got nowhere to go. I got nothing to do. I'm just going to keep dying and doing this run. back and I would go and I would go and I would go and I would go and I just kept going like this I just kept clenching my fist and my wife was like what are you doing and I'm like I'm trying not to break the window of the airplane and throw my switch outside because of how frustrating this is dude it was there's a million different ways we can address this but I'm just I don't I don't understand the intentional difficulty for some things and then also like I know we're going to talk about this, but contact damage. Man, it's 2025, dude.

Why do we have contact damage in 2025 on a Metroidvania? It is so mind-boggling to me. And again, all the guys are going to come, get good scrub, you know, yeah, whatever. Yeah, kick rocks. I don't care. There shouldn't be it. I'm here to have fun. I'm here to play this game and have fun.

If you want to make it super hard and diabolical with contact damage and stuff, you know, do whatever your mode, difficulty slide. and then we can select that but but man this this hit for me in a way that I didn't think it would where I I was ready to rage and then I got it I got through a part and it made me feel good and it gave me that dopamine and it made me feel happy but then I was just nothing but more pain pain and misery and I'm like this game is so beautiful it is so amazing I love all the aspects of it but I hate playing this right now like that's how I feel like why do I hate this. I should not hate playing

this game. I should not hate doing this runback. When I played God of War and I'm fighting the Valkyries and the first God award, you know, 20, 2017 or whatever, I enjoyed going back to those Valkyries. Josh, I know you loved re-fighting Melania and doing all these

fights there. Like, it should be enjoyable. This was not. And that was my biggest issue is that I found it to be extremely frustrating to a level where I have all of these highest highs of how much I love these

different aspects, but the main part, the gameplay drove me nuts. Yeah. Yeah, I will say I felt the frustration with this game. It did not get better for me. You know, my initial, when

we talked about our initial impressions and I said, hey, there's an unnecessarily level of frustration here. I don't even call it difficulty. I just call it frustration. Yeah, that's a good point. I like, I like difficulty. If I'm making progress on a boss fight and I got him to 50% health, it's like, okay, that motivates me, right?

Oh, okay, this time I got him to 30% health. I'm getting better, you know? And then, you know, there's always that, okay, well, he like two shot at me within the first 10 seconds of the fight, you know, but now, okay, now I got him down to like 10%. Oh my gosh, I'm so close. Silk Song doesn't do that because, again, there's a certain randomization that happens with the bosses and the ads and the, you know, increase. like, you know, it just brings in extra monsters and there's randomness to that.

We've covered all that before. For me, it didn't get better. In fact, it got worse, right? You know, there is, there are notoriously a couple spots, but the most egregious one in Ace, and I didn't make it to Act 3 in this, this seven minute runback would have made me just smash my computer, to be honest, dude. Like, I did make it to the Act 2, the boss called the Final Judge, that, is one of the worst runbacks that I had experienced is,

and this is the one that you kind of see on the internet, it's the example that they make because there is difficult platforming elements in the runback to the boss from the bench. And not only is there difficult platforming element, I say difficult, it's really not that hard, okay? Let's be honest. But you also have flying creatures and creatures that you cannot jump over attacking you at the same time.

And not only that, but the flying creatures are shooting, ricocheting bullets at you that bounce off of the platforms and hit you while you're trying to platform just so you can make it back to this boss fight that you are going to get pummeled on. I fought this boss 30 times. Like legitimately 30 times. If I had to make that run back 30 times, I would have, I don't eat guys. We wouldn't even be doing this episode right now because it would have just been like this is not they don't even have time on this one there's a mod this is when ace told me this is when ace told me about the hey dude just mod the the mod that makes it where you don't have to run back when you die you start at the beginning of the stage that you were on like

the the the actual like window that you were on so in the boss fight I just start right back there I just got to run a second to the right and boom the boss fights on dude that was a game changer. A game changer for me to get it to where I actually wound up beating the boss. But here's the problem. It doesn't stop the inherent frustration that is built into this game. So I beat that boss and make it to act two. Act two really opens up. You weren't a much wider kind of, I don't want to say open world, but just open level where there are multiple branching paths in every direction. There's elevators, there's secret tunnels, there's all this. just the game expands to another level. And, you know, one of my complaints about Metroidvanias in general is I get lost.

So it's like you just up the simple navigation difficulty for me in this, which is frustrating. Yeah. Why do I have to fall for 10 seconds to then spend three minutes climbing back up because I hit a dead end? And then you have to choose to have a compass so that you can see where the frick you are on your map. Like, which takes up an inventory. Yes, it takes up an inventory. Oh, if I want to see where I am, I have to use an inventory slot. What the heck, dude?

That's, oh, God, there's, there's so many things on here, man. I just, I don't, man, I don't, I don't know where to go with this. I don't. All right. Well, I mean, this is where we're going with it, because I'll be honest. I'm just going to say it. The inherent built-in frustration level for Silk Song is a huge negative for me. Yes.

A huge negative for me. we are not alone in this we i mean again go on the internet the main complaint is simply this game is frustrating for the sake of being frustrating we're not talking about the fact that it's difficult at times i dig difficulty we have all played difficult games we have all overcome and beaten difficult games this is not shying away from a difficult part of a game this is repeated frustration over and over and over again whether it is from a They run back to a boss, random encounters in a boss fight or on a level with enemies that are just cheesy and not fun to fight. And deal double damage.

To exploration being difficult because, again, you need a compass and you got to find the guy that has the map so you know where the heck you are. And it's like, dude, I dealt with all that in hollow night. And it's like, it was fine in Hollow Night. Like, I don't know why it felt so different in Silk Song than it did in Hollow Night to me, but it did. and maybe the frustration level was just compounded or compounded everything else that made it feel like it's like guys why did you do this man like why did you make these decisions that makes your game just simply not fun man yeah i don't understand it it's it's almost like it was like um they you know oh yeah oh yeah well let's see what you guys can do with this you know

and so then they just artificially made things that didn't need to be there and made things the way that they didn't need to be like um you know i love i love spicy food i love hot stuff i will eat at some places the hottest stuff they have and at other places the most mild because the mild has better flavor hot for the sake of hot is not good hot with flavor is good this was hard for the sake of hard this wasn't hard because it was you know fun and enjoyable like and that's the problem is there was just like you said josh there's frustration, unneeded stuff that shouldn't have been there, and that made it just more agonizing to play this game. Like, I wanted to play. I enjoyed this world. I enjoyed the

characters. I love the atmosphere. I love the audio. All of it, like, was amazing to me. And I wanted to play. And then when I play it, it made me not want to play. And that, that's not good for a game. I just get angry. Yeah, I would just get angry and frustrated, dude. Yeah. So, all right. So we all agree that there's a glaring issue with Silk Song and that is the frustration level of the game. Okay. I think there is another glaring issue with Silk Song that really held me back because again, I don't mind banging my head against a wall, right? I'm a stubborn dude and it's like I can overcome the frustration. Yes, I modded. That is the only thing that kept me playing. You guys are lucky because I was on Switch. Yeah, you're on vacation. So I had no mods. And I'm like, I wish I, dude, I wish I had them because I was like, man, that would make this so, so much better. But like, you know, lucky for you guys, you had them. All right. There is another for me glaring issue on this game.

I want to see if you guys feel the same way because, you know, we are going to differ in some of the other takes for Silk Song. But I'm going to bring that up right after this break. All right. Look, we've talked about the frustration level for Silk Song. We're done with that. Here's the other problem for this game for me. The progression. I felt like they were so stingy with the progression elements in this game, dude,

that it kind of was a little bit off-putting for me. This is a Metroidvania. There is combat. There is movement. And it's like I put 20 hours into this, I think, before I finally just went, yeah, I'm done with this game. but like you know in that time yes i got the the sprint you know the dash uh i got the wall hang slash wall jump thing but it's like but i got three abilities in like a 20 hour time span i still

never got the double jump like bro that's the first thing you should give somebody in a game that has movement and combat especially metro yeah you know what i mean like like i mean out of all the things you didn't give me the most basic thing as a double jump? And I know it exists in the game because there's been plenty of areas where I'm like, well, I need to be able to double jump to get up there. Exactly. I, I just felt like they were overly stingy with the progression in the game. Maybe that picks up. And again, I didn't beat it. I have zero desire to play Silk Song anymore at this point. I've put in my time. Ace, you can answer this because I know you made it further than we did. But like, you know, part of the beauty of a Metroidvania is the, hey, you're, you're

constantly getting new abilities. You're getting new movement mechanics. You're getting new combat moves. You're getting new equipment, a new weapon. You know, that kind of thing. And in Silk Song, yes, I get that you get these things, you know, and you have the, what do they call them? The, the emblems or the markers. The, what is the thing that changes like your attack and stuff? Oh, yeah. One of the beasts of the wonders. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Oh my gosh. I know what the name. Medallion or metal of the wander or whatever. Anyway, the name's escaping me. But it's like, you know, I got the one that lets you do the downslash instead of the diagal. And it was like, okay, well, that's neat. That kind of changed the crest. That's what I knew

started with the seat. Thank you. I knew it. Yeah, I know. And I was like, medallion's not right, but it's different crest that changed, it completely changes your move set, which. Yeah. Right. And it's like, okay. But like, you know, I got the, the one. And then there, I know there was another one, but then I had to beat the savage fly that I hated that guy because again, the run back. And then that was a stupid fight. But it's like, if I felt like I was constantly advancing, that would be the carrot I need to, like, continue playing and overcoming some of the frustration parts of this game. But, I mean, there was a gap there where I think I played for six hours and never got a single upgrade, dude. Like, I found a piece of a mask.

Yeah. You know, a piece of a mask. Don't get me start on the mask pieces. They are so stingy. But the thing is, but that's the issue, right? Is you need health in this game because things hit you for two for two. health bars they do double damage compared to hollow night but when i only have five masks it's like okay well there's contact damage which is dumb plus the boss hit me or an ad hit me there's no eye frames in

it so boom i just lost four life bars in the span of a half a second now i'm panicking like okay if i could get a whole bunch of extra you know life to where it's like okay well now i have eight life so i can survive a little bit easier that's one thing but you have to find like four mask pieces to be able to get one more life they're stingy with those you know i upgraded my needle i got the one upgrade and i was like sweet i can actually tell i'm doing more damage now the next upgrade to get the oil to get that upgrade is like a 10 hour quest oh it's awful and you have no idea where these items are it's so bad i got to explore the gigantic world to upgrade my sword one more time and it's not even a different sword all i do is like oh i kill things in two hits instead of like four hits now like

i just i have an issue with the progression in this game. I felt like it was overly stingy. You couple that with the frustration of this game. And it's like, why? Why? Did you, am I wrong in the feeling of progression on this?

You're not. Like you said, I am farther ahead of you. Not only is there very little progression, honestly, it's very, like, unintelligent with telling you

where to go to get your progression. Like the double jump. You completely miss the double jump because it is on a random mountain to the left of a prison that you have to climb all the way up to just to get it. They don't tell you where it's at. You just have to explore it and figure it out yourself. And like, I get it, but like, I, I, I, all right, I'm just going to say it now.

Silk Song is not even the best indie sequel I've played this year. And Endermagnolia completely blows it out of the water as far as I'm concerned with a competent, good, balanced Metroidvania. because Ender Magnolia tells you where to go. It has good progression and it cares about your time. Yeah. There's a bench outside of every boss in Ender Magnolia. Yeah.

You do not have to go far. But yeah. I don't know, man. So, I want to love it because I love the world of Hollinaight. I love everything that's going on in Hollenay. Yeah. But it's such a. It doesn't love me.

It's such a weird dichotomy, dude, because I'm with you. Ryan, you said it, dude. You said, bro, this game's beautiful. It is. It controls so well. The music is incredible, dude. Like, there are so many parts of this game where I just go, whoa. Like, wow, this is so well done.

And then it's like, but you ruined it. You ruined all these other aspects by making the game not fun to play at that point. Well, and here's the thing, too, that blows me away. is that you guys modded the piss out of it and you're complaining like you are like that shows like you shouldn't you know Bethesda absolutely famous we just talked about it on her twig man

like modders come in and then do everything but a lot of that stuff is cosmetic it's kind of simple things you know like all we fix the lamps so we fix the lighting you know different things like that this is like gameplay core gameplay stuff that you guys are modding to make the game

more comfortable to play that shouldn't be something that you have to adjust as a player purchasing this product like that just shouldn't be there and additionally I don't care

how much it costs there should be voice actors for all this stuff you're playing magical bug land like dude this drives me nuts because I have I have no

is not it's the same as Zelda it drives me insane dude it pay somebody there are people that will do it for free like and you'll get quality people get voice actors make it so we can hear what the heck's going on because i just would spam through everything because i have no clue or care to know what's going on because i'm so miserable because i got to run 15 minutes back that way to go try to fight this guy again to die so i don't know this oh man i got so not with ryan i like the bug sounds no no interesting

It much you like Banjo Cazooley. That doesn't bother me about. No. That's exactly what it went out. Hey, Ace, when did Banjo Cazooey come out? I don't know. Like 96 or something. It was a million years old, dude.

That's what came out a bajillion years ago. They could have easily had quality voice actors to make this really, really monumental as far as like the feeling of communicating with these different characters. Because when you would see the people, you would be, you know, excited to see somebody. but then, you know, you have to listen to like, you know, it's, oh, gosh. Oh, I, Ryan's alone on that. I hate, yeah, no, I, that's one thing.

I hate having to read stuff on video games. Like, dude, I'm just trying to play, man. Yeah. All right. So here, here's what I want to do, guys. I, you know, we are expressing the frustration we have with this game because there is the obvious, the obvious. the obvious like this is a great video game like that's where the frustration comes in right is it's

like you have this beautiful world you have these top notch mechanics your controls are on point your you know your sound your audio your controls the vibe like you know this is the sequel to hollow night which is one of the most beloved metroivanias out there like it would be different if it was like this is just a steaming pile of poo right but But it's like, but it's not is the problem. So it's like, as gamers, we can look at it. And we were so excited for Silk Song. So it's like, we can go like, man, I can appreciate the passion and the love and the,

the like skill that went into making this game by Team Cherry. And it's, it's amazing. But it's like, but it has a couple glaring flaws. or at least one glaring flaw. And then a couple other like questionable choices where it's like, why is the progression so stingy? Like, why is this this way? You know, that kind of thing.

But, you know, a long ago, Ryan, before you were even on the podcast, we covered a game called Hood Outlaws and Legends way back in the day with Paul. I remember playing this with Paul and maybe Michael. It might even been Todd way back in the day. And it was like, this is a PVP-V-E type game. and it had one glaring issue and that was the assassinations where people could just swing around you

and assassinate you and then you were dead and it completely ruined the game. Like this one dumb mechanic completely ruined what was otherwise a pretty enjoyable game dude. Yeah. And it's like why? Like why would you do that? And look, I understand before the internet

comes after us, I understand that Team Cherry was making a game that was They're coming after us. That's fine. That's right. We're not the only people that feel this way. You know, and, and, but the thing is that we're, we're not afraid to call out a game, like, for a bad decision or a bad design. Like, we have always been just brutally honest on this podcast. We're not going to glaze Silk Song because it's Silk Song, like, plain and simple. Like, anybody that's been listening to us for a long time absolutely knows we will never do that.

We will always give you our honest opinion, even if it's contrary to, like, popular opinion, you know? And, and it's like, and I feel like our opinions are probably, they're very unpopular right now. to what you would see on gaming sites and the internet and things like that, you know. And it's just like, you know, I, before the internet comes after us, I understand that Team Cherry was, was making an homage to like games of old, like Nintendo and saying, hey, the game is meant to be difficult. You know, it's meant to not hold your hand. It's meant to do all these things.

And it's like, that's fine, dude. This is the, the experience that they wanted to craft. They did it. And they succeeded in what they wanted to do. And nobody can argue that. The problem is from a gamer perspective, or at least from our perspective, those design decisions detracted from the experience in this game, in my opinion, you know? And it sounds like you guys agree on that one where it's like you could have just made a different decision. And it still would have been an amazing game.

But this just detracts so much from the experience in my opinion. Make silk mode. Silk mode. boom you want to play silk mode that's got all these crazy uh things that that make the game more difficult uh less streamlined and and less of an ability to just kind of breeze through and understand the world and and appreciate the world like and then you're good to go but like no it's just this is what it is and i mean i understand what their thought process was but if you're going to do something like that you're gonna upset a lot of people and then unfortunately in this day and

age like the people that like it are just going to trash on everybody else that doesn't you know yeah i this one this one's tough for me i so what i want to do is i want us to rate the game and i'll be honest i don't remember what i rated it i think i think we went like eight point eight for you and i ryan maybe you two are high we were up there i was i was high in the beginning yeah i know i think i was nine two or nine three or something like that i don't remember but it doesn't really matter i know what i'm at now though i'll tell you that that's honestly the thing so here's here's i want us to rate it what i want to do though to be fair to the game is i want you to rate the game as a hey as a video game as people that have played thousands of video games that have

been gamers since you know we could hold a controller i want us to rate the game on what we think the game overall is but i also want to give a personal rating on this one because a lot of times what happens is we say hey i can i can recognize that this is a good game so i want to take that into account when I give it a rating, but I feel like with Silk Song, we have that, that difference, right? Like, we have the, I can appreciate what they crafted, dude. Team Cherry, you made an incredible video game. Like, nobody is saying that you didn't accomplish what you wanted to accomplish. But at the same time, like, I kind of feel like I want to give my own, like, Josh rating on this one, too. You know what I mean? To kind of say, hey, this is how I feel about this

personally. So, you know, if I'm going to rate this game on a, on a, on a, video game scale it's a masterpiece dude it really is like you everything about silk song just screams quality it screams passion screams dedication in that in that situation like bro it this is like a nine five for me if i'm looking at this from like the medium of video games and and like what this game is compared to other games out there i can absolutely like just say dude well done team cherry Well done, because you made something incredible. If I'm rating it Josh wise, like, dude, I, and this is what kills me because my first 10, 15 hours with this game, I really enjoyed and I felt some of the frustration, but oh my goodness, guys, the last few hours were absolutely filled with like, I, I'm going to wind up hating everything about this game at this point. So as much as it like breaks my heart, dude, my personal Josh.

of Silk Song is like legit like a six eight dude like I mean it's bad it's bad because it's like why why would you do this man and it's not I'm not whining about the difficulty I'm complaining about the frustration dude it's just bad choices in that regard in my personal opinion I really got to where I hated this game at the end, dude. Like, I cannot tell you, if I had not used the respawn mod to just respawn at the start of whatever stage I was on, it, my rating might be lower, dude. Like, it's that bad. To make anybody run back to a boss 30 freaking times and have the, like, the, like, I'm not

even going to rehash it, but it's, it's bad, dude. Like, six, eight for me. Like, I want to say seven, but seven's so neutral that I feel like it's not, like, harsh enough to account for the frustration level in this, man. All right. All right. Ace, where are you at, buddy? Yes. What you got? All right. I've been collecting my thoughts silently here

for a few seconds. Game-wise, it is a masterpiece. It is hard to like look at something like this. They put so much effort into it, so much passion. It's basically like look at it as someone's baby, like, oh, you got an ugly baby. But it's like

which is acceptable, by the way. Everybody that says like a newborn baby doesn't look like a little alien you can't tell them their baby is i mean well i mean you can you may get some weird looks but like newborn babies are weird for me this is still like a nine nine two nine three it's a masterpiece of a game but like it has glaring issues even when you look past the uh the progression and the difficulty like there are just things that don't make sense to me and i made i made i made a very bold statement When, for the first indie episode, we ever did, we did a deep dive on Endermagnolia.

I made the bold statement that Ender Magnolia completely and utterly eclipses Hollow Night. Well, I'm here to say it absolutely completely and utterly eclipses Silk Song as well. Because the Silk Song for me is like lower than you, Josh. It's like a 6-1, 6-2. I was miserable, dude. Until I installed the mods that I had to install so many mods to make myself not hate this game. I'd install a mod that gave me rosary. I should have tried that.

Yeah. And I wanted to play through the game. I wanted to see all this artwork, all this character development, all this music that I was missing. Because I love the world of Hollow Night. And I love what Team Cherry built. But like, I got tired of grinding rosaries. I got tired of my like main weapon upgrades. Bro, we didn't get into the money economy in this game.

That's another frustration there too. Oh my goodness, man. I got tired of doing busy work quest to get the main upgrade for my weapon. which I can't swap out. I'm stuck with that needle. Like, it's not like any other Metroidvania. We can find a new weapon

and upgrade it that way. It's just like, it just felt like it wasn't respecting my time and respecting me the way I respect it. Yeah. And that's, that's my thoughts on it. So 6.1?

6.2. Well, I'll give it a 6.2. 6.2. Okay. Ryan? People are going to hate us so bad right now. I don't, it's the truth, man. As much as people are going to say this,

it's the truth. that's the thing is like we we don't we don't we're not um we're not shell i i like to listen especially when we deep dive stuff i always all go and i listen to a couple other podcasts on their deep dive just to see what other people who are recording who are trying to portray like what they think of a game like what their thoughts are and they're just glazing it's so hard 10 out of 10 it's a masterpiece some of them might have been like the you know bigger people and then of course maybe they're contractually obligated but man

this one for me the biggest part is that you guys are rating what you're rating after you installed all your mods and that that's what makes me so much more comfortable that's not wrong that's what makes me so much more comfortable

in my score too because like I didn't have any mods at all I just I raw dogged it and I just played this game you know like So I think I was in the nines based on what I initially played. And I think this game deserves something like that. I think a 9-2-9-3 is its quality atmosphere. It is absolutely breathtakingly beautiful.

You can tell they put so much work and effort into the design and the world that they've made. And I love it. And so not to take anything away from them at all with that. So I think 9293 overall with what this game could be. The Rye guy score, man, I'm probably like a 6-5. Like this is something this is with no mods. I played it straight up. And I was, dude, there was a lot of times where I was just miserable.

But I like was like, I got nothing else to do. What am I going to play Mario Card 8 again for the 100 millionth time on my switch while I'm on this plane? So I'd go back and I'd play for a minute and I'd rage quit and go play something else. And then I'd go back and rage quit and, you know, come back. So it created an atmosphere where I was just angry at the game. And I didn't want to be, but that's where I was at. Like it just, it doesn't make sense. A lot of the stuff and a lot of the choices they made just didn't make sense.

So it was just frustrating, man. It was just a frustrating game. I'm really sad because I looked forward to it so much. I know. It hurts. I'd love Metroid Van. It doesn't have that, man, like that punch that Metroidvania's have, it doesn't have that for me. And I know people are going to argue against it, but for me, like, I didn't feel that and I didn't get that feeling of love and appreciation of the world.

I wasn't able to because he kept freaking dying and I had to run back 15 minutes to go back to my body. You know, and then heaven forbid, I land on a teeny little worm and he does the same damage as the big boss swinging a sword at me because I just touched. him like it's just it's man there was so many choices they could have made differently and they didn't for the sake of just making it like over we're a tough indie you know i don't know if they were trying to like be cool tough indie guys but i don't know i just uh yeah it's i think everybody can tell this kind of makes us a little sad you know what i mean like i i hate that we're all sitting here saying like you know this is a sub seven game like this is we're all in the sixes for freaking silk song dude yeah if you would told me john

Gosh, you're going to rate Silk Song under a seven when all is said and done. I'd have been like, bro, you're crazy. Like, you're crazy. Like, so it just, it sucks, man. It really does suck. The more you play a game, it shouldn't make you hate it. Like, you shouldn't hate the game, the more you play. And that's what happened with Silk Song.

The more you played, the more you disliked it. And that's, that's, and you guys did it with mods, like, which, man. Yeah, I know. Like, so, I mean, again, it's just our opinion, you know, you know, it, it, it, it, it, make your own opinion. I know so many people. Yeah, I mean, we've had people in our community that are like, dude, I think Silk Song is the best game of the year, like hands down. Like, it's my favorite game that I've played in years. I love that for people. I mean, I think that's what everybody was hoping for. And the people that love it, I absolutely love that for you. It is just this is, we're, we're three very different gamers, you know, we might all be on the same podcast. But I mean, I think that there's something to be said for our reaction to Silk Song. Um, you know, and, if you haven't played it yet, if you're one of those people that were kind of waiting or whatever, you know, take this with a grain of salt, but also

be, understand. We are not unique in this frustration take on this game at all. Maybe that's why they made it 20 bucks. This is a warning. And this is why it's on game pass. All right. This is why it's an insanely well-crafted game with just a few glaring flaws in my opinion. So, all right.

Guys, I don't want to bash Silk Song anymore. It just makes me sad. This one, this one hurts a little bit because it's, like I hate that we're all saying this because it's otherwise it's such a good game. Let me ask you this. It is kind of a little bit of a bummer. Either of you didn't finish, right, Ace? I beat

two endings. I didn't beat the true ending yet. The true ending or whatever. But like Josh, you didn't finish and I didn't finish. Do you have any desire to play anymore? I'm uninstalling it the second. I have no desire to check it out again. Like, I have bosses that I want to be. It's just not fun for me. And I have no

desire to try to grind it out. I want to re-download Andrew Lilies and Inder Magnolia. so I can feel joy playing a Metroidvania. This game made me want to play those games. Yeah. See, that's like, that's the biggest problem is that I just did not find enjoyment in playing this game and we play video games for enjoy. You should find joy when you play games. Yep.

That's simple. All right. Well, there you go. That is our, I mean, brutally honest. Brutely honest. If you've ever questioned, anybody that ever says we're paid by game developers or whatever to give. Nope. There you go.

And, and, you know, I don't care. if we're the only three people in the world that feel this way, but it is the way that we feel. So, um, you know, it's sad, but again, I can appreciate the, the craftsmanship with Silk Song. I think we all can, but it just, it lacks in the fun factor after a certain point. I, I mean, I loved my first five, six, seven hours with this game too. So it just builds. And when it starts to build, it doesn't go away. And that's the problem is that for it's just, it just keeps piling on frustration, frustration. So all right, well, listen, thanks, thanks to everybody out there for joining us. If you have not rated the show, please remember to rate us five stars, leave a

review. Hop in our Discord server. It is the most awesome place on the planet for gamers. You know, people are always talking to new game releases, opinions on games so that, hey, you don't have to take our word for it. There's other people that would love to share their opinion on a multitude of games with you. You know, people are asking for advice on handhelds and consoles and PCs and all this stuff too. It is awesome. You don't want to miss out on that. There's a link in the episode description. That's going to do it for this one, everybody. Until next time.

Frustration-free gaming. Peace out.