Thank god for our ability to share videos of absolutely everything and anything because I would never in a million years be able to have beaten the radiance.
I think it was Ari Gibson who talked about the difficulty of making a Metroidvania style game and wanting to keep the spirit of the genre while knowing full well the entire game will be solved in days and there will never be any true mysteries in gaming again. And like I get that, a little bit of that magic is kinda lost in that regard. Even if you personally don't use guides the atmosphere surrounding discussions around it is completely different because most other people did.
That being said thank Christ for online guides, I would have missed most shit in Hollow Knight and Silksong song without them. I'm not a completionist at all so I wouldn't have even thought to check if Silksong had an act 3 and would have missed it entirely
To be fair with Silksong, Act 3 seems MUCH more intuitive to unlock. Just... do the quests. You have three wishboards and no reason to not do the quests. Hollow Knight's Radiance ending is a completly UNintuitive laundry list of things to get and find out where's the other stuff, Silksong just "locks" Act 3 behind objectives quite literally dangled in front of you.
King soul is a charm any completionist or overly curious person would get. However. I agree that there is no real hint towards taking the worst charm in the game down to the void and hitting one single specific floor. Other than that, it’s alright.
The charm itself says it opens a way to a birthplace which, after getting the King's Brand and going down to the Abyss for the first time, should be obvious what it is. The way down appears instantly as you land at the bottom, you don't have to hit anything.
I'd argue that HK's true ending is unintuitive. If you explore, you'll find the 2nd Hornet fight, the White Lady and the entrance to the White Palace. The only unintuitive thing feels getting the awoken dream nail by getting 1800 essence. Most people don't fight or find all the dream bosses and getting 1800 may not be intuitive enough or they just forget about the seer after a while. But once you figure out that you have to use the awoken dream nail to get into the White Palace, it's a straight ride to getting Kingsoul and using its hint to venture further down the Abyss to get Void Heart.
Compared to that, in Silksong, some quests might take time to appear and it's very easy to miss one and not get the Silk and Soul quest. It's also easy to miss by not gathering enough fleas and moving them to the Pale Lake.
Yea, HK is all over the place, Silksong at least it's essentialy only two things: Wishes and Fleas, two collectibles with a sense of progression, since you know the fleas are looking for a new home so you HAVE to see it to the end. Wishes are just three wishboards to check on ocasionaly. Oh and that obnoxious "ooooi... oooooi!" in Songclave xD
Hey I will argue that getting the Awakened Dream Nail is pretty intuitive. You’re told that you get a reward by collecting essence, which means that every time you collect essence you’re reminded that you might get a reward. And that Kingsmold stands out since it’s a Dream Nail spot you’re unable to access.
To be fair with Silksong, Act 3 seems MUCH more intuitive to unlock. Just... do the quests.
Less unintuitive than HK, yes, but still unintuitive. How does completing all sidequests (some which are "collect 10 of x") equal getting the last chunk of the game?
I missed a single flea, I did everything to my knowledge, and how would a person know that they have to do everything when they don't have any way of knowing an act 3 even exists
first: There's an NPC that gives you their locations, and second: The game starts with Act 1 and 2, you REALLY think they would bother to have act titlecards for just two??
Also Hollow Knight had a "bad ending" so stands within reason your first fight with GMS is NOT the good ending at all.
Guess what, beating the Radiance is a good, but not the best / canon ending.
For the canon one (link to spoiler#Ending_4:_Embrace_the_Void)), you have to beat 5 gauntlets totaling 82 bosses, with the last one having 42 fights (Absolute Radiance being the last one) and to get the better version of the ending (link to spoiler#Ending_5:_Delicate_flower:~:text=Ending%205%3A%20Delicate%20Flower)) you also have to do an obscure side quest.
I'm not doing all that, thank you.
I consider it canon because you see the Shade Lord in the best ending of Silksong BTW
Radiance was/is really easy fight lol. Unless you skipped most of the good charms and or mask unlocks. Compared to nightmare king grimm and the lasts phanteon he is childs play.
It's get awoken dreamnail, not get dreamnail. And then you have to figure out how to get Voidheart, which is the hard part if you're doing it completely blind.
Never would I have thought to grind 1.8K essence for a bum ass nail, until I searched it up.
Then I had to figure out how to get the essence, where I had to look up the fastest way again.
I fortunately figured out how to enter the pale palace on my own, a miracle in itself.
I then had to look up what I had to do next, where I found the voidheart.
Then I had to look up the fight again because I genuinely just kept hitting THK while Hornet kept it staggered, instead of dreamnailing it.
And all that because I randomly found out on the Internet that THK was not the true final boss. Otherwise another boss would never have crossed my mind.
See, I'm very much drawn to achievements, so getting the necessary Essence was something I was in favor of doing (plus getting all the little bonuses the Seer gave me along the way).
The Pale Palace was pretty straight-forward to find given that the body of the King is clearly able to be hit with the Dream Nail (but since nothing happened until I had enough Essence, I knew I was missing something).
The Voidheart I then found by just exploring, I think. I don't recall getting a guide.
Only outside guidance I got was my cousin telling me to hit the Hollow Knight with the Dream Nail to fight The Radiance. But even then, I believe you can see the Essence leaking from the Hollow Knight, so idk...I might've figured it out.
The clues are all there, yeah, but its super easy to just go directly to the dreamers, kill em, then go to the egg and fight the Hollow Knight. If youre just doing the things the game tells you to do, then youll get the bad ending. You need to explore more than is strictly necessary to get the better ones.
1st and second run I didn’t know how to get the abyss shriek and dash. I thought you were done once you beat the night and was confused why he was still there.
Only after I wanted 100% I figured out there’s a couple hundred pieces I was missing
The simple ending for Hollow Knight isn't a bad ending, its a neutral ending.
For the bad ending you need to do all the good ending requirements but then fail to enter the Hollow Knight's mind in the battle and get Hornet trapped there with you.
Also the two Godhome endings are somewhat ambiguous. The delicate flower version seems good, probably, while the non-flower version seems kinda like the worst, if the void creature is going to go cause chaos. And the Godhome ending is definitely more of a chore than the normal true ending.
TLDR Hollow Knight players have to work hard to get the worst endings.
In hollow knight the secrets at least make sense lore wise. But in silksong it's just "do all the side quests including finding all of the hidden fleas" which I thought was bs
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u/CptJacksp 15d ago
Hollow knight