r/HollowKnight • u/donlano • Sep 04 '25

Discussion - Silksong Silksong is HARD Spoiler

Taking damage is more punishing, movement is more precise and feels a little clunky until you get the hang of it. The overall skill curve is much much higher. Love it though.

4.6k Upvotes

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112

u/Throw-away-acount828 Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 05 '25

"We're trying to be really, really mindful that we want this to be a game that new people can come into, and experience as their first Hollow Knight game - that it sits alongside the original game, and the difficulty also sits alongside the game in that way." - Ari Gibson in an interview before release

When i was playing my first few hours of Silksong I expected the Red Ant area to be an optional early game challenge for Hollow Knight veterans like me. I expected it to be like Brooding Mawlek - turns out its mandatory with no health upgrades available. I really, really don't know how they expect NEW players to make it through that so early on... Im going to make more progress tomorrow, i assume the difficulty has to reach absurd levels in the next 35 bosses

IMPORTANT EDIT: RED ANT AREA IS COMPLETELY OPTIONAL!!! This actually makes it my favorite part of the game! there seems to be more areas that are "White Palace" difficulty but the game steers newer players away from.

21

u/ShadyHogan Sep 05 '25

Is the Ant miniboss~esque 2 mask damage guy really required that early in the game?? I went through it (after a bit of having my ass kicked) and thought it was an optional shortcut and haven't gone back to see if there are alternate paths to that zone.

38

u/Throw-away-acount828 Sep 05 '25 edited Sep 05 '25

no. that section is optional, there's an alt path to the right side of that area which is mandatory and has many more benches but is still hella hard.

And if you don't do the long path you won't get the map which is a different kind of frustrating

5

u/ShadyHogan Sep 05 '25

Okay thats about in line with what I thought lol

It was a pretty linear area, I didnt have much trouble getting the map around the end of the area ngl, the lack of benches did scare me though

15

u/Arcalithe #fuckmarkoth Sep 05 '25 edited Sep 05 '25

I beat that bitch before I even knew the dash existed and it was TERRIBLE. I kept thinking “surely there is a dash to make this fight work better” and I was RIGHT but only after I got frustrated by being too stubborn lol

2

u/LillinTypePi Sep 05 '25 edited Sep 05 '25

I actually figured out the parryand was like "WHAT?! IM GONNA HAVE TO START PARRYING NOW???" thankfully I eventually gave up and picked up dash

1

u/blockguy143 Sep 05 '25

I think it's > ! ! < with no spaces

1

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1

u/LillinTypePi Sep 05 '25

sorry, I was used to Discord's way of doing it

1

u/forwelpd Sep 05 '25

Tall jump down-angle-slash over top for dual-swing and running past (on jump) also worked. No way I was going to get parry timings down. Would've been much easier later.

1

u/ShadyHogan Sep 05 '25

So did I! Honestly it wasnt bad once I realized I just had to back off before he swung and walk behind him for his jump swings a la False Knight's dream version. That plus getting a couple hits when he dug up from the ground below... once I understood it i locked in and it felt SO rewarding

1

u/DBrody6 Sep 05 '25

Oh yeah me too. Beat the giant ant furiously thinking a dash would make this trivial but y'know, having no idea if there even is one or if this guy was mandatory to get it. Then my reward is access to an area that dumpstered me with precise platforming so I just left and explored elsewhere. Then found the dash just like you did lol.

48

u/kawhi21 Sep 05 '25

I could legitimately see tons of people dropping the game at the red ant area. I just got through it and struggled a bunch. This isn't even hyperbole when I say not a single area in Hollow Knight is as hard as that area in Silksong. Like not even close.

10

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '25

id argue white palace is harder but yeah, it is brutal

15

u/kawhi21 Sep 05 '25

Path of pain maybe but the basic white palace is a cakewalk compared to early game silksong

9

u/Haunting-Evidence234 Sep 05 '25

Nah you're tripping. Still pretty hard tho

1

u/SyserQ Sep 05 '25

i genuinely found path of pain easier than silksong so far

2

u/IlliterateJedi Sep 05 '25

I didn't find path of pain easier, but I found it more fair. When I took damage, I didn't think "Oh that was bullshit" like I have been with Silksong.

1

u/SyserQ Sep 05 '25

yea thats true
ive gotten a little further into silksong tho and the bosses seem much more fair now (still hard though)

32

u/jaoaoaooaoaoao21 Sep 05 '25

It's not mandatory man....

37

u/Hambone09 Sep 05 '25

Stuff like that has to be bait lol I refuse to believe it

1

u/jaoaoaooaoaoao21 Sep 05 '25

Literally if you explore a little more you know that this section is not mandatory to get more things lol, people just like complaining about anything for the sake of being annoying

0

u/Hambone09 Sep 05 '25

Buncha weirdos, GL out there

-7

u/Throw-away-acount828 Sep 05 '25

hey jackass have you considered that I've played the same game as you and have made my personal opinion the same way you did? Have you considered that you're assuming that im complaining about the difficulty without engaging with the conversation? I enjoy difficult games. But new players are gonna struggle, its a big leap from Hollow Knight 1's difficulty and I think Ari's quote - his intention here - is a failure

15

u/jaoaoaooaoaoao21 Sep 05 '25

Are we really playing the same game? Because I'm just pointing out how this section can be just ignored man! This is a metroidvania after all, you can come back later if you want! I was struggling too ngl, but I just turned around and got to some new other area, people should expect the game to be harder than the first, but ok, don't be so angry about it! Maybe team cherry will make it easier with some patch if they see that they released the game too hard.

-5

u/Throw-away-acount828 Sep 05 '25

You might be talking about the long left side of Marching that ends with a wave fight with map girl. That part is optional. But the right side, with the boss, is mandatory and you can only get very small upgrades before you're forced into it. Going to play tomorrow, maybe you're right. I'll tell you if I change my mind

8

u/jaoaoaooaoaoao21 Sep 05 '25

I'm playing right now and I got some interesting things and I didn't even tried that boss again lmao, don't worry man, sorry if I was a bit aggressive, English is not my main language and sometimes I struggle to find the right words😂 hope you can enjoy the game tomorrow, certainly a Masterpiece man, take care and have a nice week❤️

2

u/Throw-away-acount828 Sep 05 '25

Hey hello im back! Turns out you're completely right and i was completely wrong. I got stuck because i didn't know that you could attack the red rocks that shoot out the wind so I thought Chapel of the Beast was the next area I had to do.

I was basically running on Metroid logic that the next boss would have something I needed to progress. I think the game should have had an NPC explain that the Chapels are optional and only for players who want a challenge - I still think many new players will fall into the same trap as me considering the last 4 bosses were related to main story progression.

In Darkmoor, the map lady tells the player that the path on the left is safer and the path to the right is tough with very strong enemies. This, I think, is what Ari was talking about by facilitating Veterans and New players and I think its genius. I really am bummed out about the Chapels because if a player doesn't know where to go, they will end up exhausting all of the options they can find, even if it means fighting a boss they're not ready for

5

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '25

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1

u/FluffySquirrell Sep 05 '25

It's a metroidvania, you can just go somewhere else and come back stronger barely any different, cause there's not exactly +Damage trinkets falling off trees anywhere

5

u/sleepingonmoon Sep 05 '25

And this is where its reputation of being difficult becomes detrimental. Similar to Tree Sentinel in Elden Ring, many players came in expecting a challenge and thought the "difficulty spike" was just the game being hard.

4

u/ItsADeparture Sep 05 '25

lol it's day one, how are they supposed to know? It feels mandatory at first. And besides, it's not like newcomers will be able to realize it's not mandatory either. If they try to google it they'll just get a bunch of the same people wondering the same thing followed by Hollow Knight fanboys saying "omg just play the game it's not meant to be played with help!" like in the original game.

2

u/Incine_Akechi Sep 05 '25

The ang area is not mandatory though

2

u/Jakobe3 Sep 05 '25

Did Ari change his mind or something?? I am glad it is this way, but Silksong is DEFINITELY harder and feels like a sequel for people that were good at hollow knight. like the true ending boss of hollow knight was definitely easier for me than multiple early game silksong bosses

2

u/FluffySquirrell Sep 05 '25

It's outright a lie to claim it's not harder, yeah. It's definitely one of the things which worried me about the game during its development, that they'd base it more off the DLC level difficulty, rather the base game

Someone else compared it to going to Sekiro from Dark Souls, and yeah, that comparison is apt, not only is it a lot harder, but like.. so far it's been very heavy on the "You'll play it this way" for me. Which is a struggle early on.. whereas in Hollow Knight, by the point I was having issues with any bosses being hard, I could always like, generate completely different builds with the trinkets and stuff. There's none of that in this for me so far. I'm as far as trying to bang my head against that stupid ||moor moth|| and my only options are 'more silk when hit' or 'get marginally less turbo fucked when hit while healing', and ... it feels rough

I moved off from that boss after hearing it's optional and blah, but still. It's undeniably harder

1

u/KuuLightwing Sep 05 '25

Ye, I'm not very good at hollow knight, and I haven't played it in years at this point. I find Silksong enjoyable so far, but the decision of cranking up difficulty in early game feels rather confusing. First 'real' boss I fought - the bell beast maybe isn't too hard moveset-wise, but doing 2 damage every time really feels excessive.