This is an article from a player who’s been playing Castlevania games for 20 years. It’s not about turning Silksong into a Baby-Bus-Game, or wrecking the existing gameplay or world-building—it’s just about making certain designs more humane, industry-standard, and conducive to players immersing themselves in the game itself, rather than wasting energy justifying the game’s unreasonable parts or attacking casual players for lacking skills.
1. Add respawn points near every boss room. Hollow Knight’s boss design philosophy is about encounters and surprises, so it won’t have dedicated rooms with special doors like traditional Castlevania or Souls games. Placing a physicalized Stakes Of Marika at the door might ruin the design intent, so just revive players right near the boss room. But respawning at a bench also serves another function: swapping builds. So, suggestion #2 only makes sense if implemented alongside #1.
2. More flexible equipment swapping. If a game designs a ton of builds and gears, it’s encouraging players to experiment a lot—the best way is to mimic Castlevania Order Of Ecclesia, letting you switch builds anytime, anywhere. In Silk Song, on one hand, it provides players with rich equipments; on the other, it constantly restricts players from trying new gears. This design is probably limited by dev code complexity, since swapping gears, character stats, animation modules, and saving the game progress in a fixed safe spot is obviously a safer, more stable implementation. In Hollow Knight, this works because even the default little knight is super strong and doesn’t need frequent builds swaps. In Silksong, though, some gears are tied to enemy/map difficulty—certain builds let players beat the game easier, adding playstyles without systems to match them, which ruins the fun. If you could swap gears anytime, players would eagerly try multiple styles to fight the bosses. Combined with respawning at the boss room door, players could focus more on the core fun part: using the right build to fight the boss itself, instead of pointless runback hell and backtracking pressure.
3. Redo the key bindings. This is an improvement targeted for controller players. Obviously, I think Silksong’s development was keyboard-first, because it completely wastes the left stick and D-pad. But more importantly, the devs probably didn’t realize that controller button layouts are designed around button frequency—more frequent actions should go to easier-to-press spots. Thumb flexibility > index finger flexibility; single-button triggers are superior to combos. Single-tap priority > charge/hold triggers. The game’s difficulty should come from the game itself, not misinputs or inconvenient controls. For example, the map view wastes a often-use-button. I know playing Hollow Knight is like walking two steps and checking the map, but compared to combat, map-checking frequency doesn’t justify hogging a common index finger button—switch it to right stick press, which makes sense intuitively since the right stick already handles up/down/left/right view; pressing it for the full map overview is logical. Besides, the Needolin function shouldn’t hog a single button either. Needolin is standalone, and even less useful in combat than the Dream Nail—you only want it for opening doors or peeking into NPC minds. In Silksong’s constant ambushes and boss fights, Needolin is utterly useless, so it shouldn’t waste a button—especially since you have to hold it. If you free up the Needolin button and make it the interact button for NPCs and doors, it won’t change the existing experience at all. Then, take one of the freed map/Needolin buttons for tool activation. There is already a tap-triggered button for silk thread skills, utilize a freed button for Tool 1. You might ask, what if you’re running Architect build with three tools? I really want to say “fuxk it, stop wasting the left stick—use the D-pad!” Don’t waste your right hand’s second-most flexible finger on pressing b button healing. But I guess I’ll never live long enough to see Hollow Knight devs implement D-pad uses, so I compromise: the third tool could be combo triggered. The other button goes to a function everyone in Silksong performs a billion times: THE pogo attack (downward attack). Silksong demands way higher precision for pogo than the prequel, and pogo isn’t just downward movement—it’s often first pogo—immediate bounce—left/right position adjust—second pogo… repeat like that. On PC, keyboard layout is compact with near-zero misinputs, but on controller, after the first pogo-bounce, the second pogo can easily turn into a horizontal normal attack due to individual’s muscle memory and nerve sensitivity differences. Making pogo a single-button single-tap trigger ensures more people can enjoy the “challenging platforming” (I am not enjoying it one bit,dude!) and reduces frustration from misinputs. Difficulty from shitty button design isn’t “hardcore game feature” or “for fans only”—it’s just ignoring peer excellence. I’m talking about Nine Sols.
4. Change Hornet’s collision box height to forehead-level, not horn-level. In every Castlevania game, early flying enemies are player nightmares—even in real Castlevania games. No jump = no hit; jump = get hit. So most players facing flying enemies go first try jumping once, miss, then wait the enemies come to them on the ground. Hornet’s absurdly huge collision box and attack visual effects tell players that default upward swings don’t even reach the mask’s two horns. Jump and swing—the blade clearly hits the enemy, but the game prioritizes collision damage on you. I’m not even touching flight AI reads/instruction/positioning, or suggesting longer attack range (which might insult core fans’ superiority). Just lower the collision box a bit, and you won’t get the counterintuitive “my blade hit it, why am I dead?”
5. If you can patch down the bench fees, lower them more—the fee is 80 or 20, it won’t affect portraying Pharloom’s oppressed underclass bugs at all. Want to build world-view? That’s just one simple sentence description. Paid benches are non-mainstream design to begin with, so even charging 5 lets players get it: “Holy shxt, benches are free in real-life parks, but charged in this game world! Damn evil bug-capitalism!” If a game needs core players rationalizing world-building to cover negative experience, that world-building itself is… not that reasonable. Same for rosary drops: make basic enemies drop few, late-game ones drop more. You know why? It’s because underclass grunts lack faith, abandon their god’s teach, don’t pray, so they just have fewer rosaries! See? Does that ruin Silksong’s world of oppression and misery?
6. Optimize the reward system. There are games where beating a boss is the reward itself—like fighting games, or Monster Hunter (a fighting game where you fight monsters). I get the catharsis of conquering strong foes, no worldly praise needed to validate my success. But is it possible that some people just don’t like Silksong’s boss fights? They don’t see combat or even world exploration as rewards—do they not deserve to enjoy Silksong? I hate extreme fans because they’re so exclusionary—they’ll righteously tell you, “Silksong the masterpiece artwork isn’t for you tasteless noobs.” A lot of Silksong’s bad reviews stem from backlash against that community vibe. So add rewards to boss fights—mask shards, silk-growth items, even a healing item (prequel’s statue something)—that’s more mass-appeal and positive. Experts still enjoy the fights; noob players feel rewarded after battles. If your game, movie, or book both caters to core fans and arrogantly ignores/disrespects casuals needs, just add to the title: “Don’t buy if you are a retarded/noob/junior high dropout.” Then I really won’t buy it, so I can’t leave a Steam bad review, and on Steam page, the game is always overwhelmingly positive..
Silksong is undoubtedly a sincere great work, the game has extreme fine visual styles, music, map details, enemy varieties…, but if a game needs the prequel’s halo, the devs’ tremendous effort and hard-working attitude, and external aids like detailed guides or cheats to justify a game’s quality and to deliver the joy that other games provide out of the box, I think going mainstream like this only hurts casual players’ feelings and the devs’ own rep.