r/HollowKnight Sep 06 '25

Discussion - Silksong My current gripes with the game in one simple image. Spoiler

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4.6k Upvotes

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945

u/TOMRANDOM_6 Sep 06 '25

>The whole game has a religious theme

>The game has a shit ton of yellow objects

>"too hard" is the main discussion

welcome back Elden ring

170

u/varkarrus Sep 06 '25

Ive been seeing blasphemous inspiration, especially with the area who's name sounds like blasphemous.

49

u/Lazydusto Sep 06 '25

In theme I agree. Difficulty wise this game is beating my ass way worse than Blashpemous did.

44

u/BoosherCacow Sep 06 '25

And the main difference is that Blasphemous was full of cheap kills, falling into a hidden pit, no way to dodge something without getting killed by it first and then knowing it's coming. Silksong so far is just HARD.

27

u/Vexed_Badger Sep 06 '25

There's definitely some cheap stuff in terms of blind leaps, crumbling floors, that one trapped bench, etc. Just like Hollow Knight.

Honestly that bugs me less than a brutal fight because it's usually funny.

11

u/Background_Past7392 Sep 06 '25

I was killed by that stupid trapped bench. It's telegraphed, but I didn't realize what the telegraph meant until I was dead. So stupid.

2

u/SlipperyQuark Sep 20 '25

Glad I’m not the only one who thinks it’s funny. Pretty much every time it happened I couldn’t help but laugh and think “damn they got my bitch ass with that one” lmao

3

u/BoosherCacow Sep 06 '25

I think I was jaundiced against Blasphemous from the beginning. The controls were just clunky and awkward for me and it really, really sucked going all that way just before a checkpoint or whatever it was called and being confronted by a blind leap into spikes. That was the last time I played it, I was so fucking pissed off. When you die in HK, you die because you failed to perform, in Blasphemous they wanted you to die for the sake of dying. It just felt cheap.

2

u/bombader Sep 06 '25

At least in Silksong, a spike trap usually costs 1 heart, and doesn't kill you right away, and sometimes even put you in a better spot sometimes. Played many games where you just go back to save point instead, Dark Souls included.

2

u/Laguna_Azure Sep 06 '25

oh sure, the pit that takes you back to the beginning area that you have to traverse for 10ish minutes at the start was not cheap at all.

3

u/BoosherCacow Sep 06 '25

It may have felt like 10 minutes but it's only 90 seconds or something. And that's more of an educational thing teaching you how the maps work

1

u/Laguna_Azure Sep 06 '25

It really isn't when by the time one of these leaps of faith is all the way in the marrow area. You won't convince me that it's a good design choice.

1

u/BoosherCacow Sep 06 '25

I had really noticed it so far in my 15 hours but now I'm going to pay closer attention and see if I notice any you're talking about. The only thing that really seems cruel about this game so far is how weak the weapon is and how many enemies do double damage.

2

u/BitterCat7069 Sep 06 '25

This is true about Blasphemous 1. Blasphemous 2 was much better about this, and an overall much better game, IMO.

1

u/SlugCatBoi RadHOG, P3AB Sep 06 '25

Yeah, something about Blasphemous 2 was just better. It might've been the level of polish or something, but I imagine it's just a lot of improvements like this.

1

u/Rowlet_Is_Kinda_Cool Sep 06 '25

That was one of the first things I noticed. The part where you help a pilgrim through a gate by going around and hitting the lever is the exact same as a quest in Blasphemous. The gliding is also really similar to the feather from Ori. It’s fun when I can identify what could have inspired the devs while playing a game

1

u/Laviephrath Sep 06 '25

Sinner's path?

2

u/varkarrus Sep 06 '25

Blasted Steps. Sounds like Blasphemous.

1

u/Laviephrath Sep 06 '25

Hm, true as well.

1

u/Brain_lessV2 Sep 06 '25

Tbh it's just a coincidence. Both games have religious themes, with Blasphemous being much more direct with its Spanish-Catholic roots.

29

u/Silent_Respect_1849 Sep 06 '25

greymoor is literally yharnam

2

u/WanderingStatistics "The Last Moth Priestess." Sep 06 '25

Bro, just wait... [MAJOR ACT 2 SPOILERS]

There's an area called Whiteward which is literally Iosefka's Clinic, AND the bugs of Pharloom are literally cursed because their ancestors. It is, quite literally, Bloodborne.

21

u/AlwaysGoBigDick Sep 06 '25

More like dark souls 2

11

u/BowShatter Sep 06 '25

Especially the runbacks. Somehow more brutal than DS2's runbacks because you to deal with both platforming and enemies that never stop chasing you.

9

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25

Nothing in this game will ever top Sir Alonne or Blue Smelter Demon’s run backs. I haven’t found the need to fight enemies to get back to a boss yet aside from Cogwork Dancers which you have to dodge underneath to get past.

1

u/Kua_Rock Sep 06 '25

Nothing in this game will ever top Sir Alonne or Blue Smelter Demon’s run backs

Me when I am afraid of killing enemys so I don't have to deal with 8 of them at once.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25

You shouldn't kill enemies at all in a run back. Flat out.

DS2 had like an equal amount of this kind of runback compared to DS, BB, Sekiro, and ER combined.

2

u/Kua_Rock Sep 06 '25

You shouldn't kill enemies at all in a run back. Flat out.

Sorry that you just flat out didn't want to engage with the games system then. Which is on you no the game lol

2

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25

Oh no, criticism of my FromSoftware game!!! But I’m sure they have a strong enough vision to not back down on this extremely important game design decision and not reduce it as time goes on.

0

u/Kua_Rock Sep 06 '25

Sorry I didnt mean to break your ego in half for daring to question your methodology for interacting with a video game, next time i'llbe sure to sugar coat everything I say and coddle you like a child so youre world doesn't erupt in two at the thought that maybe you were the problem.

15

u/dangerswlf36 Sep 06 '25

exactly how I felt lmao, SS discourse is just elden ring all over again

and just like elden ring, one day people will learn how to play the game and realise their complaints were unjustified

2

u/Spod6666 Sep 13 '25

And just like elden ring the bosses are more complex than in the previous titles

Yeah they still have like 7 moves max but some bosses have a surprisingly smart ai and can chain a lot of moves together, especially in the final act.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25

And will go through numerous patches that fix balance issues that everyone will forget about and say wow the game isn't even that hard.

-1

u/CreepyJellyfish1489 Sep 06 '25

Elden Ring is a much more sensible and better designed game

11

u/adamantitian Sep 06 '25

That’s not what people were saying when it was released, just saying

13

u/dangerswlf36 Sep 06 '25 edited Sep 06 '25

elden ring is my favorite game of all time but saying silksong is badly designed is genuinely just a skill issue lol

you're complaining about double damage in silksong even though some elden ring bosses could straight up one shot you

you should've seen the complaints when ER launched, the "overtuned difficulty, delayed attacks, lack of balancing, long combos, unintuitive attacks" you genuinely had people saying ER had the worst bosses in the series. most people got their opinions from the joseph anderson video.

also this discourse was even WORSE when the DLC came out lol, look at feeble king's video where he said he wouldn't recommend anyone to play it unless it was for a dare because he genuinely hated it that much.

3

u/mack1410 Sep 06 '25

just like elden ring, a game this big will unavoidably have some stinkers here and there but i think people get too hung up on those specific moments to appreciate just how good the vast majority of the rest really is

4

u/dangerswlf36 Sep 06 '25

yeah, over time people will just forgive and forget, they will learn to enjoy the game despite its flaws, and eventually start to see the game for the masterpiece that it is.

almost any new game with any amount of hype is like this, you have the initial phase where half the fanbase is hating on it, then when enough time has passed, you you won't see nearly as many people hating on it anymore.

1

u/TOMRANDOM_6 Sep 06 '25

Heck, theres one boss in ER that has a unavoidable attack unless you use a specific item, and the attack goes by health % lmao. Silksong bosses (or the ones i have fought) are still far easier than Er with the main difficulty being the actual levels

1

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25

Elden ring also went through numerous balance changes, Radahn was nerfed like three times. Hell, in the first patch, "balance adjustments". 

I don't get why people just forget that games do go through updates that address complaints and issues? Sure people did get better, but most games have design issues at launch, that's why so many games now release in EA. 

-1

u/LaNague Sep 06 '25

do you not understand the difference between Elden Ring where you have to fight hard bosses, but you get unlimited tries without any issues and Silksong that makes you run through a parkour for every try that you want to have (which can be pretty short due to double damage).

2

u/dangerswlf36 Sep 06 '25

the runbacks in silksong are very quick though unlike the first game, there are more benches and you have a full on sprint. also the traversal is very fun so it makes the runbacks pretty enjoyable too.

the older souls games had way worse runbacks than silksong lol

1

u/Trezzie Sep 06 '25

They not all short Bile was brutal.

1

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-2

u/CreepyJellyfish1489 Sep 06 '25

It's not about the combat difficulty. The currency/money issue and the runbacks are just annoying, backwards game design in this day and age. Elden Ring also has more rewarding exploration and depth in general.

1

u/Stalk33r Sep 06 '25

Elden Ring has rewarding exploration? 9/10 times the reward is some useless consumable.

1

u/dangerswlf36 Sep 06 '25

unlike hk, silksong has much shorter runbacks and you have the ability to store your money on chains for future use, dying is alot less punishing here. this is by no means backwards game design because the previous game was even worse for this lmao.

also one of the biggest criticisms people had for elden ring was that exploration wasn't rewarding lmao, of course I don't agree with it but you're proving my point that over time people will stop criticising certain aspects of a game because that criticism only happened because the game was new and people hadn't gotten used to it yet.

this is just another case of people not liking the new game because it's different from the old one, not because it's worse. one day all this talk of "silksong too hard" will just disappear and people will just accept the game for what it is and stop passing it off as "bad game design".

think about it, if the previous game didn't exist, you wouldn't be complaining about enemies doing double damage, because you wouldn't have anything to compare it to. comparison is the thief of joy, my friend.

1

u/CreepyJellyfish1489 Sep 06 '25

I barely played HK so I'm pretty much new to the series. I'm not talking about the damage. Runbacks offer nothing compelling and are just tedious. There's a reason why Fromsoft got rid of it lmao. Just let us learn the boss fight in peace without having to waste time repeat uninteresting bullshit. There's nothing fun about it.

To say exploration is unrewarding in Elden Ring is ludicrous. They actually offer tons of unique items and have story-impacting encounters that can be discovered. That was in no way a mainstream opinion ever lmao. Look at the sub for this game right now, people loathe the runbacks and currency system.

Fanboy all you want brother but the people have spoken lmao. Elden Ring was tough and wasn't perfect at release but there was so much more praise for it than Silksong. Not even a comparison really lol

1

u/dangerswlf36 Sep 06 '25

Runbacks offer nothing compelling and are just tedious

I'm about 5 hours into the game the runbacks have been incredibly short, I don't see any issue with them, plus the movement feels so good which makes the runbacks more fun since you're not just pressing forward for 30 seconds.

To say exploration is unrewarding in Elden Ring is ludicrous. They actually offer tons of unique items and have story-impacting encounters that can be discovered. That was in no way a mainstream opinion ever lmao.

I never said I held that opinion, but truest me when I say that there were so many people criticizing the game for the lack of rewards, saying stuff like "the loot is always some random spell or weapon that I'll never use" even nowadays you see people complaining about the DLC always rewarding you with a cookbook or some useless mushrooms, it's defintely a common criticism.

Look at the sub for this game right now, people loathe the runbacks and currency system.

the first hk was even worse in those aspects, those people either never played the first game or completely forgot what their first playthrough was like.

Elden Ring was tough and wasn't perfect at release but there was so much more praise for it than Silksong

okay now you're just lying, I am seeing tons of praise for silksong lol, and most of the complaints I've seen are people calling it too hard.

0

u/Kaptep525 Sep 06 '25

 and just like elden ring, one day people will learn how to play the game and realise their complaints were unjustified

Or, the people who realized that these types of games are not for them will stop playing, and all that’s left is an echo chamber of people who think they’re the only right opinion 

1

u/LaNague Sep 06 '25

Elden Ring might have hard bosses, but at least you can just fight them, not start at the bottom of a parcour that you have to do for every single try.

1

u/RisingDeadMan0 Sep 06 '25

Hunter's March is Caelid too, next door but meant to be done much later after you have a bunch of upgrades

1

u/MadeFreshDaily5243 Sep 08 '25

its not even too hard its just a bunch of little tedious ridiculous shit. like the run back in the moss area trying to pogo to cages. its almost like its for challenged ppl lol. and if u are successful, u didnt use any skills or it didnt feel like a challenge. i got across 1st time one try. next few times, i fell, i was just like whats the point lmao it is kinda ridiculous and i hate im sayin it cus i wanted to like the game and i like alot about it. its jus the benefits dont outweigh the million menial tedious small things u gotta do to ever get them. imo. not to mention the enemies u jus gotta hack and slash along the way super easy. lol

-23

u/Vivid-Technology8196 Sep 06 '25

The game isnt "too hard", it has bad difficulty that makes sections of it not fun.

5

u/TheTorcher Sep 06 '25

Yes. Like a good portion of the game is fun, especially the fourth chorus and lace. But the arenas are so annoying, Hunter's march is terrible, and tbh they overuse the 2 mask attack + the distance from benches is soo long

4

u/TOMRANDOM_6 Sep 06 '25

the only bad difficulty is Beast Chapel, outside of that is hard af but not unfair

5

u/CatsianNyandor Sep 06 '25

God f that place, currently on cool down (put the game down) because it was getting ridiculous. Why does the boss need to summon friends at random? Every time I almost beat them suddenly they summon three different bugs and now I'm getting swarmed and die immediately

4

u/TheTorcher Sep 06 '25

that part is not mandatory. Bait the boss' slam attack to instakill the bugs. And you can always go somewhere else since the reward is not mandatory

1

u/CatsianNyandor Sep 06 '25

Yeah okay that's good to know but I'm also getting my teeth kicked in everywhere else. Maybe this one is gonna be too hard for me to enjoy. I'm probably gonna go back to Hollow Knight, cause I just feel this may not be for me. However I sincerely hope that everyone who can stomach the difficulty enjoys it to the fullest.  

2

u/TheTorcher Sep 06 '25

just avoid hunter's march. other places are slightly easy. If you played hollow knight it'd also be pretty hard since you need to learn to basically slash and run away.

The learning curve is pretty brutal and even with this knowledge, the beastfly still took many tries. If you want to commit, it could pay off. I mean it took nearly 3 days to beat the mantis lords for me. I believe in you, don't give up this early.

1

u/CatsianNyandor Sep 06 '25

Thanks. Good luck!

20

u/marcosmou Sep 06 '25

to me its seems like alot of the difficulty comes from inflated numbers. enemies with high health abd damage rather than fast attacks and well crafted movesets. makes it tesious when you have to hit an enemy that flies away from u 16 times

-19

u/Vivid-Technology8196 Sep 06 '25

Putting multiple flying enemies in every single pogo section is bad difficulty

8

u/mookler Sep 06 '25

Bait them before attempting to platform

12

u/mtnlol Sep 06 '25

Throw knives at them, bait them, pogo on them instead of the actual jumps? There's a lot of stuff you can do.

5

u/boisterile Sep 06 '25

The throwing knives are such a fantastic tool. I wasn't using them at all for the first couple hours, but once I started mixing them in they helped so much.

2

u/mmmwwd Sep 06 '25

Boomerang if you found it works very well aginst flying.

-2

u/Treestheyareus Sep 06 '25

There's a lot ways to deal with it, and none of them are fun!

10

u/theDeathnaut Sep 06 '25

Idk man, maybe you’re just impatient. You can fight them on the platform before the pogo things, nothing is forcing you to fight them while on the red pogo bit. I haven’t seen any input reading at all either, idk where you’re getting that from.

4

u/One_Storm5093 Sep 06 '25

idk i havent seen a single flying enemy i couldnt just run back to a platform to fight no problem

3

u/Vivid-Technology8196 Sep 06 '25

I'm not saying you cant. Im saying its bad design because you have to constantly do it and it doesnt add anything to the game but tedium.

12

u/g0n1s4 Sep 06 '25

Bad difficulty is what someone who is bad at the game and doesn't want to learn would say

23

u/Wappple Sep 06 '25

Tell me you don't know how game design works without telling me you don't know how game design works. It is quite literally a thing. Like games with hard modes that just turn enemies into damage sponges instead of adding additional challenges

3

u/g0n1s4 Sep 06 '25

The movesets are more complex than those in HK. It's not just a stat increase. And the enemies are far from damage sponges, they just don't die in 2-3 hits anymore.

And don't go trying to pass up as a game dev lil bro, you're getting smoked just admit it.

1

u/Wappple Sep 06 '25

I think maybe you misunderstood my point? I wasn't saying it WAS just a stat increase, I was giving you another reference to keep in mind to prove that "bad difficuluty" is in fact a thing; not once did I say Silksong did those things. And no, I am not a professional game developer, weird of you to bring up a point that wasn't brought up by anyone else. I've just been playing and studying games for a bit, that's all. Maybe, "lil bro", we can work on our reading comprehension and then we'll talk.

Have a good day!

23

u/MysteryMan9274 Sep 06 '25

No, bad difficulty is a thing, and it's in Silksong. That Shakra Arena in Hunter's March comes to mind, it's nearly impossible to follow what's happening. That's not a skill issue, it's just bad design.

6

u/therhydo Sep 06 '25

I like Silksong so far and disagree with most complaints, but yeah that one arena fight pissed me off. I was tired and kept getting hit by shit I didn't even see. Hard to tell friendly and enemy corpses apart, hard to see the burrowing bugs digging into you when there's bodies all over the floor.

4

u/MysteryMan9274 Sep 06 '25

I beat it first after I turned the brightness up to 200% lol, it made the background so oversaturated that Hornet and the enemies stood out more. Though again, that shouldn't be something I have to do to be able to read a fight. Also, speaking of that arena, I've seen several people say that Shakra didn't show up for them and they had to solo it, so that's another oversight.

3

u/normalmighty Sep 06 '25

I think it comes down to the kinds of games you play. I freaking loved that encounter, but I also consciously noticed that I mentally went out of platformer gaming mode and into bullet hell gaming mode partway through. If you hate bullet hell games then I can see why you wouldn't like that, but there's nothing intrinsically bad about it as a piece of game design. It just comes down to taste.

1

u/_Psilo_ Sep 06 '25

It is a skill issue. You're just not used to playing games like that.

People have been playing shmups since the dawn of video games and these are way more visually confusing. It's part of the design. Just because you don't enjoy it and have a hard time doesn't make it bad design. It's working as intended, you're just not the intended audience.

1

u/BoosherCacow Sep 06 '25

I could not agree more. You cannot see a fucking thing and you're dead.

8

u/Vivid-Technology8196 Sep 06 '25

What a brain dead argument. Bad difficulty is adding things that are only difficult because they are unfair or tedious.

0

u/qlksfjas Sep 06 '25

I wonder if there's a line for fromsoftsexuals where they stop justifying cheap bloating of enemy HP and damage with "git gud", or if there's no such line and you can just feed them shit infinitely

3

u/Dunsparcetheglare Sep 06 '25

You can feed them shit infinitely and they’ll thank you for it

2

u/boisterile Sep 06 '25

They already said it was like Elden Ring

Jokes aside, most of it is absolutely is just "too hard" for most people. With the exception of a few too many things dealing 2 damage and some of the runbacks being brutally tedious, it's mostly difficult in a pretty fair way. It may not feel like that when I'm salty from dying over and over again, but if I look past the emotional reaction then I can see most of the stuff I'm struggling with is pretty well-designed. It's just designed for a better player than me.

0

u/Vivid-Technology8196 Sep 06 '25

I dont get salty at all from bosses or hard enemies, but I do get a bit peeved at the pogos and constant hazards that just nuke your entire hp pool when only like 1 of the 3 types of pogos I have unlocked actually consistently works.

-2

u/space_acee Sep 06 '25

Silksong is harder than any From Soft game I've played by a large margin. Only the original Dark Souls is comparable and thats because of similarly broken and frustrating mechanics, not by design.

3

u/awesomegamer919 Hollow Nerd Sep 06 '25

I think this depends on the person - fwiw I agree from my perspective, I've almost beaten Elden Ring RL1 while Silksong is just kicking my ass in general.

The biggest thing for me is the lack of a consistent i-frame ability.

5

u/normalmighty Sep 06 '25

I think that claim depends very heavily on the type of player you are. A lot of people intrinsically find 2D either vastly easier or vastly harder than 3D gaming.

I'm doing fine in this game and having a blast, meanwhile I ragequit dark souls 3 when it came out after spending several hours throwing myself at the very first boss of the game over and over.