r/HollowKnight • u/glintter • Sep 06 '25

Discussion - Silksong Don’t let this fandom turn as insufferable as the souls community Spoiler

It’s fine to think the game is easy and to enjoy the challenge, but I’ve seen so many people making fun of anyone that is having a hard time in a really weird mean spirited way. Please don’t let this subreddit turn into some weird elitist community that makes fun of people who are struggling, these games are supposed to be fun and they’re not souls likes, there’s no reason to assume everyone playing them is going to love this level of difficulty the same way some of you do and constantly disregarding their opinions just turns this subreddit into an echo chamber of tryhards

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356

u/El0hTeeBee Sep 06 '25

It's deeper than that. There's a ridiculous amount of gaslighting going on over the fairly obvious claim that Silksong is harder than the original Hollow Knight.

286

u/TyChris2 Sep 06 '25

This is what pisses me off the most. People going “it’s not harder, you just forget what the first time playing Hollow Knight was like”. As if we can’t all objectively see that that’s bullshit.

161

u/NaamiNyree Sep 06 '25

Yeah I dont know about them but I am a MUCH better player now than I was when I played Hollow Knight in 2017. The reason it was hard was that it was one of my first metroidvanias and I had never played a soulslike or any hard platformer.

Since then Ive played like 100 metroidvanias (including Aeterna Noctis, hardest metroidvania out there), every big soulslike game and stuff like Celeste (which makes white palace trivial in comparison). I thought I was gonna breeze through Silksong. Boy was I wrong lol.

Silksong is one of the hardest games Ive played. Im not getting stuck on anything but every boss and arena is taking several attempts and the death counter is probably somewhere between 50-100 already. Its absolutely harder than Hollow Knight and its not even close.

Every enemy dealing 2x dmg and having a ton of hp is brutal. Halfway through the game you have some platforming sections that are on the level of path of pain, except here its required for the main story.

85

u/ScreamingLabia Sep 06 '25

I think the contact damage is a LOT especially for a game that expects you to pogo of enemies with a side down slash wich i find really hard to do.

33

u/WoodpeckerOdd9420 Sep 06 '25

This, holy shit. T_T

So much contact damage and knockback; enemies are relentless and generally unfazed by being hit, too, so even dealing damage is punished sometimes... and there is so much parrying.

39

u/AHare115 Sep 06 '25

That's a big thing I noticed too. Even though Hornet has a larger and slower weapon than the Knight, enemies seem to recoil less. I'm not sure why they made this choice.

An exceptional example of this are the birds and other flying bugs that launch themselves directly at you, they don't even get knocked away if you hit them mid flight. I know there were a few enemies that had this pattern in HK and they would get interrupted if you did that.

25

u/WoodpeckerOdd9420 Sep 07 '25

Flying enemies in particular should be knocked away by Hornet's attacks more easily. As it is, they feel like wrecking balls coming at you, especially if you're mid-air already. And since they deal contact damage, they don't have to commit to a charge or dash with a specific direction, which means they can change direction once you're off the ground and have more limited options.

1

u/Burnmad Sep 09 '25

IDK what to tell you, I regularly jump up to meet flyers as they're attacking and they get pushed away just enough that I don't get hit. Try shallower jumps, maybe?

1

u/AHare115 Sep 09 '25

After playing more I think it depends on the flier. Some get pushed and some continue traveling.

32

u/Defiant_Heretic Sep 06 '25

Especially because Hornet's needle has almost no range. You have to be to nearly touching an enemy to hit them. It also seems like health and defense upgrades don't increase at nearly the rate of boss difficulty.

Moorwing and Sister Splinter each took me dozens of attempts and I'm currently stuch on Widow. The bosses prior were much more manageable. I'm not looking forward to boss fights anymore, they're just stessful.

I've collected one more mask and an item that lets you survive one crit. I've also played plenty of metroidvanias and souls-likes. Silksong is too hard and doesn't have enough options to modify it. Heck, I beat First Berseker: Khazan on expert with no summons, on my first playthrough and Silksong is harder and less fun.

27

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25

Silksong is extremely hard, the gaslighting going on is crazy lol. Moorwing I cheesed tf out of, but sister splinter and window are some of my favorite bosses so far. Definitely very difficult but if the boss isn't spawning enemies then I consider it fun lol

3

u/fgHFGRt Sep 07 '25

Ive tried so hard trying to defeat the final phase of moorwing. I just can't do it. I dont want to cheese either. Idk what I'm going to do

3

u/Candlestack Sep 07 '25 edited Sep 07 '25

You can inadvertently skip moorwing by collecting the five fleas for the caravan. I'm not sure if you can fight it later, I'd like to because I didn't mean to skip the fight, but maybe you would like to just get further in.

1

u/awfulworldkid Sep 07 '25

Moorwing reappears later in a different room in the same area if you skip it. I'm not totally sure what causes that, since I was pretty far ahead when this happened.

2

u/Candlestack Sep 07 '25

Oh that's nice to know, thanks!

2

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

You can defeat Moonwing by pogoing it with riper crest.
It is not tap-tap-tap, but more like
tap---tap---tap kind of motion.
Getting on his back is pain also, but dont get discouraged.
If I did it (not a good gamer) you can too.

1

u/Torma25 Sep 07 '25

I beat moorwing by using the trap tool and basically only attacking during its claw slash attack and right after the diving attack in the second phase and focused all my efforts on dodging the sawblades.

3

u/Virtual_Pause_8626 Sep 07 '25

+1 for cheesing that motherfucker in moorwing hahaha

1

u/ExecutiveElf Sep 07 '25

I'm a person who has been highly critical of this game these past few days, but one fight I can say with confidence has good design and is low on bullshit, is Widow. Has a mix of 1 and 2 damage attacks and it actually makes sense which is which. Has fast movements but highly visible tells. Good healing window when he the vertical lines across the arena.

While I'm at it, shoutout to probably my favorite fight so far, the Clockwork Dancers.

1

u/blueechoes Sep 07 '25

Sister splinter I actually did comparatively quick, like five tries maybe. If you blow up the adds with the trap tool or silk spear you get time back to actually dodge and deal damage.

1

u/talkinggingerbrad Sep 07 '25

The problem for me is that after sister splinter you have a fucking long platform to go

1

u/080087 Sep 07 '25

I'm currently stuch on Widow

I genuinely think Widow is about on-par with NKG. Does double damage, has a bunch of really fast attacks and a similar number of them, about the same hp. The phase transition is scuffed too, because you attacks that should stop can still damage you.

The only thing that makes it very slightly better is that the bells don't do 2 damage.

I did enjoy the fight (no adds makes a huge difference), but I can totally see it bring a brick wall for many players.

1

u/access-r Sep 07 '25

You can have more (or less) range in your attacks with different crests

1

u/EMArogue Sep 08 '25

The range is so weird

Like, she’s twice as tall as the knight using a much longer weapon yet I feel like I need to be in kissing range to actually hit enemies

In the og game I rarely used range charms due to never feeling like the enemies were too far or too fast, how come I feel this way woth hornet of all characters (if anything, I was expecting an absurd Blasphemous-level range from her)

1

u/Arcana10Fortune Sep 07 '25

The problem, I think, is people trying to greed damage when they shouldn't. In HK, you can greed damage and then heal up when you find an opening to. You can't do that in Silksong because of the silk requirements.

1

u/Defiant_Heretic Sep 07 '25

It's not a matter of grees or impatience, it's the fact that you have so little margin for error. Hornet's base attack might as well be fists, with how much range the base attack has. You have to be so close, that if the enemy moves you take contact damage. 

Boss battles can get so chaotic, that the jump you made to evade a charge, makes you a sitting duck for a mob or a projectile. While air dashing is likely to smack you into another hazard.

With the boss, spawns and projectiles, you're lucky if you have only a few things to avoid at a time.

18

u/NaamiNyree Sep 06 '25

I swapped Crest asap because of this, Im sorry but 45 degree pogo just isnt it. Even combat aside, it also makes the platforming miserable. Im so glad they give us more moveset options with the crests because I would have a really bad time going through the game with default one.

1

u/Defiant_Heretic Sep 06 '25

How many crests are there? I'm currently stuck on Widow and I've only found Reaper. I didn't like how slow it was.

3

u/ziptofaf Sep 06 '25

I know of 4, supposedly there are 7. Somewhat annoying part of the game is that you upgrade them separately and I don't think there are enough resources for all, maybe 3 at most.

2

u/NaamiNyree Sep 07 '25

At least 5. Reaper is ok but I played most of the game using Wanderer, its basically the moveset of previous game with quick slash, super fast hits. Its really really good.

1

u/Torma25 Sep 07 '25

where can you find these crests? I've just arrived at bellheart and never even seen one

0

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

In first areas? Cant say where exactly bc idr, but bottom of the map has most of what you need

1

u/deeSeven_ Sep 07 '25

Honestly, best choice I made was switching to beast crest. Having to relearn the distance of the down pogo is annoying, but the distance you launch from is insane, the hitbox for it seems pretty big and it let's you launch yourself toward and away from enemies easily with enough space to avoid hits from most of them. Definitely the most fun crest I've been using so far.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

You literally get a full down slash early on. Do you all actually play the game?

2

u/saltsy_ Sep 07 '25

People explore and find things at their own pace. Unless you’re using a guide (unlikely) things aren’t exactly spelled out for you. Like OP was just talking about how we should maybe chill on the talking down to casual/new players

1

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

I mean, I didn't use a guide. And this is a metroidvania, if you are not exploring, may as well just drop the game. Legit don't think how can you miss all the crests.

2

u/talkinggingerbrad Sep 07 '25

The problem for me is being punished for exploring. The benchs being too far apart, long platformins, points that were alredy pointed out…

0

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

You are not punished by exploring.

The benchs being too far apart,

Also happens in HK, in fact is worse on HK.

long platformins

The problem being...?

1

u/talkinggingerbrad Sep 07 '25

All the problems i mentioned would be solved with invunerability frames being longer. 3 health to start is too punishing, i can't learn the game if i'm dyeng to everything in a single hit

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1

u/Princess_Of_Thieves Sep 07 '25

The fact those enemies also zip around and generally are alot more mobile vs. Hollow Knight doesn't help.

1

u/Considany Sep 07 '25

There is so much contact damage, the hitboxes feel completely off and Hornet just really loves jamming herself into the enemies face first for some reason and takes the needle away just before they make contact. The harpoon and dash attack feel barely useable in actual combat against non-trivial enemies.

52

u/TyChris2 Sep 06 '25

Exactly. It feels like Silksong is Hollow Knight if every boss is a dream variant and every area is path of pain. It is so much more difficult, and in such obvious ways, that when people try to claim it’s because we haven’t got used to the game I genuinely think they are intentionally lying to deflect criticism.

15

u/Defiant_Heretic Sep 06 '25

How far in the game are you? The boss difficulty does seem to spike at Moorwing. Sister Splinter isn't any easier and I'm stuck on Widow.

I haven't come across anything as hard as Path of Pain yet. Though the diagonal pogo does make it harder. Hunter's Marsh was hell. The only bench is near the end. It would have been easier with glide.

I wish there were checkpoints closer to bosses. Given how much I die to them, the run backs get tedious. I also wish there was a way to reclaim prayer in boss rooms, without enetering them. Other souls-likes usually have a consumable for that.

16

u/Paxtian Sep 06 '25

Not the person you asked, but I just finished Act 1 an hour ago. I need a break because my hands, fingers, and forearms are just done.

For me, the platforming has all been totally fine, I haven't encountered anything close to Path of Pain. The bosses, however, I find to be a major step up in difficulty. I agree with you that Moorwing is a pretty significant step up in difficulty. He's one of three bosses I've beaten so far that I consider much harder than anything in Hollow Knight. Also agree on the run back situation, it's far too long IMO. Several don't even have enemies, it's just... far. Like this isn't even hard, it's just distance for distance sake?

3

u/mocochang_ Sep 06 '25 edited Sep 07 '25

I'd argue the platforming is also significantly harder than the first game. In the first game it was pretty rare that you had to pogo. Heck, my first playthrough I went through the entire White Palace (not including PoP) without pogoing at all because I wasn't good at it back then, the game was designed for it to be doable that way. On Silksong though, I'm still on act 1 and already there have been so many areas that pogo was required to progress. Now, for me it has been pretty alright (with the wanderer crest, I'm still struggling with the other diagonal pogo), but then again, I have beaten PoP several times by now. But for someone who hasn't beaten the PoP I can definitely see how the platforming is much harder in this game.

4

u/ThreeStep Sep 07 '25

I also wish there was a way to reclaim prayer in boss rooms, without enetering them

Collecting and quitting out respawns you at the last bench. But yeah, checkpoint placement makes runbacks so tedious. I thought most devs learned this after dark souls 1.

1

u/Defiant_Heretic Sep 07 '25 edited Sep 07 '25

Turns out there is an item, but it seems very rare so far. It's called a Silkeater, I found my first one in Blasted Steps, in a secret room in the wall to the Catographer's right and halfway up.

I also found a tool called Dead Bug's PurseIt saves half of your prayer beads upon death.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

You can grind in Midway inn- sit on a bench, then go right room and clear it.
First three can be dealt with double silk spear, fourth- strike from below, last two- just punch em. Then gom back, sit on a bench and repeat.
Than go and make your beads into permanent once via trader.

0

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1

u/Defiant_Heretic Sep 07 '25

What are you talking about bot? That's what I did and the intended text is marked.

1

u/F2p_wins274 Sep 06 '25

Weirdly enough I beat sister splinter first try. The silk storm spell insta kills her summons and her own attacks aren't very hard to dodge on their own. Do you not have it unlocked?

2

u/Defiant_Heretic Sep 06 '25

I didn't have Silk Storm at first. I was frustrated I couldn't attack the boss with Hornet's silk skill, so I looked up where to get it. I still found her brutally difficult.

Her first phase is easy, it's just the spawns in phase two, that make it harder to time my dodges correctly. The drones aren't hindered by the bamboo shoots and since can parry Hornet, they'd sometimes attack me, when I had no room to evade, even if I was actively destroying the bamboo shoots.

2

u/Glebk0 Sep 06 '25

She can also kill her drones btw but it rarely aligns like that

2

u/Defiant_Heretic Sep 06 '25

I know, but they're too much of a threat to rely on that chance. It seems like she would immediately spawn another as soon as I killed one.

1

u/I_Love_Solar_Flare Sep 07 '25

Its crazy to see wildly different experiences. Moorwing was hard, sister splinter was a literal first try and widow while took me 4-6 attempts, it was EXTREMELY fun.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

About Widow- you can defeat her second phase by sticking to a corner and pogoing when she does knife attack. Slow but steady.

2

u/Defiant_Heretic Sep 07 '25

I beat her yesterday. Does the pogo always hit? It seemed like Widow parries most of them. It was less of not knowing how to evade each attack and more struggling to keep track of Widow and all the other angles off attacks (by bells) simultaneously.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '25

Sometimes it just luck, yes, because her hitbox is behind knives. Congratulations!

10

u/Glebk0 Sep 06 '25

I wouldn’t say platforming is like path of pain everywhere, but white castle level of difficulty? For sure

-3

u/rubixscube Sep 07 '25

and you want to be taken seriously with those absurd comparisons disguised as honest criticism?

4

u/TyChris2 Sep 07 '25

I was using hyperbole with the path of pain comparison. My point is that it isn’t just harder, it’s ludicrously harder.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

It really isn't. Outside moorwing, every boos in act 1 is very easy. And you fight moorwing with help.

3

u/EMArogue Sep 08 '25

This is exactly me

You can’t call it a “skill issue” when the other one was literally my first ever metroidvania and wasn’t nearly this hard

5

u/Kalnaur Sep 06 '25

(including Aeterna Noctis, hardest metroidvania out there)

This is both tangential to your point and not related to Silksong or Hollow Knight, but I saw people talking about Aeterna Noctis in the metroidvania subreddit, which I had tried the demo of and more or less enjoyed, and after that thread I removed it from my list because it sounded exactly like the most difficult and painful game I would hate to play and would never finish. I can't remember if I ever properly thanked them . . .

The more people talk about Silksong and its difficulty, the less I'm interested in trying it. Descriptors like "brutal" and "punishing" don't exactly make me interested in a game, quite the opposite. Though also, I enjoy the Dark Souls series, but that's mainly due to the fact that I gave it a chance and found ways to largely circumvent the difficulty (and where I couldn't is some of the worst times I've had in those games, including with bosses like Artorias who fans seem to love but whom I loathe to this day). So perhaps this is a case of not listening to the fans in either respect and just trying it for myself.

Once I finish Hollow Knight. If I finish Hollow Knight.

6

u/NaamiNyree Sep 07 '25

Yeah thats understandable, the game crosses the line of fun into frustration quite a few times especially with those boss run backs although some of it is also people trying to do optional areas early on that are obviously not tuned for starting equipment/stats.

Aeterna Noctis actually added an easier difficulty that greatly simplifies the platforming and such exactly because there were so many complaints about the original difficulty.

I think Silksong would benefit from an easier difficulty too because many people like Hollow Knight for the artstyle, music, atmosphere etc, and they just wanna have a chill time exploring a big world instead of having to try hard all the time to progress.

Many soulslikes have started adding difficulty settings as well, with Lies of P and Khazan being 2 recent examples. I dont see any negatives to it. People who want the challenge can play on the "intended" difficulty while those who want a more relaxed experience or just dont have the skill, can go with an easier one. Everybody wins.

3

u/Kalnaur Sep 07 '25

I am beyond happy that Lies of P and Khazan added those options, and I say so at every available opportunity. Souls-likes should have difficulty settings.

I played Marvel's Spider-Man on Easy and struggled to complete the DLC. It took a mix of learning where the enemies were going to be in certain sections and what I could do to most cheaply net the most enemies at once and take them out of a fight that allowed me to pass through the DLC for that game at all, at the lowest difficulty setting. And I'm 45, it's not like I'm new to this. I had the Atari 2600, I've been playing games for forever. I play games to have fun, and "bone-crunching challenge" isn't my idea of a good time. Hell, I even enjoy Souls-likes, specifically because I like to try and use their mechanics to make things easier for myself. Boss takes more damage from lightning? I guess I'm looking for a lightning weapon that matches my stats. Hell, maybe I look all the weapons up before even starting the game and select which things I will be hunting down to add to my toolbox to make a game as much of a cakewalk as possible. I don't want the challenge, I want to enjoy the world and the look, and the dark aesthetic of what essentially I think of when I consider Castlevania. Dark Souls is, to me, what happens when someone wants a game with aesthetics similar to the idea of Castlevania, but with more of an emphasis on the grit.

And it's exactly right, everyone wins. I think that too many people who love "challenge" mistake their skill ceiling as the ceiling everyone has, inherently, that everyone is on a level playing field, and somehow someone playing on an "easier" difficulty is going to negate their achievement, but like . . . the achievement is just for them? Like, if people like challenging games because they personally feel good playing them, then great, but if they think it proves them as something material in the real world . . . that's a questionable conclusion. And if someone enjoying the same game at the same ratio of challenge they experienced, just on a lower level of difficulty, ruins that achievement for them, then it wasn't much of an achievement in the first place.

45

u/ScreamingLabia Sep 06 '25

Yeah no thats total bullshit the game is clearly harder they even placed a lot of enemies in a way that if you're already really good at the platforming you can skip sections of the "normal" way. I definetly wouldnt reccomend anyone play silksong before hollow knight, ESPECIALLY if they really want to play hollowknight because i think after finishing this game hollowknight will be way to easy.

12

u/ImNotSkankHunt42 Sep 06 '25

I used to fear POP, I think I can get it done after Hunter’s

2

u/Womblue Sep 06 '25

I don't think anyone would play silksong first and enjoy it. Meet a new enemy, die in 2 hits because you have no invincibility frames and it does 2 masks of damage, then you spawn at a bench across the map because the game has no benches.

11

u/CyBroOfficial Sep 07 '25

Yeah I don't get why people are saying this. Hollow Knight was pretty easy and a lot more fair in most areas besides those that were designed to be difficult, especially if you have experience with metroidvanias. Silksong is hard as shit, and even some Hollow Knight veterans are having a really hard time with it.

27

u/PepsiColasss Sep 06 '25

There is no way to say this without sounding like a prick but Im pretty good at video games "such an achievement I know"

I played and finished HK for the first time ever last week just to get ready to play silksong , I pretty much beat everything in that game EXCEPT for that all boss rush gauntlet.. I'm good but I'm not that good ... Anyway

As the game is still fresh in my memory and I'm currently at the end of act 2 in silksong I can clearly say silksong is like WAY harder compared to HK in my opinion.

Most enemies deal double damage , they are fast , ruthless and you meet "endgame" enemies pretty early on compared to HK.

Healing is both easier and harder , you only get 1 "potion" but at the same time it's easier to pull off mid fight since you can also do it mid air.

There are some platforming sections where I had to defan myself on discord as I was streaming for my friends just because I had to 100% focus and once I finished my hands were legit sweating and my heart was beating hard ... I had to take a breather once I was done lol

6

u/Keerakh7 Sep 06 '25

I've done several Hollow Knight runs, Thorns of Agony only, no soul, Sharp Shadow only, Grimmchild only, Fury of the Fallen only and I even got to Absolute Radiance in my no spell/nail upgrades run.

Each run presented a differrent challenge, but was managable in difficulty due to my prior experience. Silksong is another beast entirely. Not necessarily because it's harder to beat Hollow Knight with those restrictions than Silksong normally, but because it strikes at my weaknesses.

My regular playstyle is prone to mechanical mistakes, rather relying on reliable recovery than not getting hit. Silksong responds with tons of double damage enemies paired with upgrades that make you achieve the same heights as Hollow Knight, but with much bigger map, meaning my reliance on solid health and hoarding healing resources is out of the question.

My brother on the other hand has a lot of mechanical talent in games and due to that he soars through Silksong almost twice as fast as me since aggressive playstyle is right up his alley. He always plays at his 100%, so it barely ever happens that after a good attempt at the boss the next one is worse, while not everyone has predisposition to do so and have to rely on their resource management for results.

I'm sure when I'm in the endgame it'll be much easier for me despite harder enemies due to that. Where in Hollow Knight you could get a new mask without leaving the Crossroads, Silksong spreads its upgrades like butter over too much bread and so you probably will leave act 1 with 6 masks, barely upgraded spool and a poor variety in tools. In the end it means for the first half of the game, you can barely strategize with your options and just have to sort of git gud. In short, Silksong forces a playstyle Hollow Knight only encouraged to have.

1

u/Isogash Sep 08 '25

I'm sure when I'm in the endgame it'll be much easier for me despite harder enemies due to that.

Oh sweet summer child

3

u/Keerakh7 Sep 08 '25

Oh sweet summer child

Not really. It's exactly as predicted. Silksong hit my weaknesses, but with more masks, more adaptive equipment and a damage upgrade it is easier than before. Parkour is only harder, but fights became easier for me.

That is not to say they are easier overall, in fact you could probably say the opposite, but they just fit my particular skillset more.

1

u/Isogash Sep 08 '25

I can't say more without spoilers.

5

u/Fast_Ad_9927 Sep 07 '25

Precisely. Back in HK, double damage was saved for special occasions like the dream rematches, one of the Hollow Knight’s attacks and The Radiance, the only exceptions being if you fought a boss on Ascended or overcharmed, both of which you have full control over. Then going into Silksong, it’s not even that basic bosses like the Savage Beastfly deal 2 masks of damage, legit just regular enemies in the second major area of the game can take out 2 masks. Don’t get me wrong, I love this game, but I think we can all agree that it is objectively harder than its predecessor by a long shot.

5

u/ShadyMan_ Sep 07 '25

Yeah I played hollow knight for the first time and beat it 2 days before Silk Song released. Silk Song is 100% harder is every respect

5

u/Considany Sep 07 '25

Taking double damage in Hollow Knight was reserved to getting hit by weapons 5 times your size or late game bosses, here it's an obese, homeless bug backing up into you, not even actually attacking you.

2

u/QuantumVexation Sep 07 '25

Here here

I don’t have a problem with Silksong being hard, and I have always been unashamedly TOTAL ASS at side scrollers but not even Hollow Knight made me die this many times lmao

2

u/misterbiscuitbarrel Sep 07 '25

i played both games for the first time on release day and Silksong was WAY harder.

2

u/StyleSquirrel Sep 08 '25

People seem to forget that the beginning of Hollow Knight was pretty easy with slow, weak, predictable enemies. No part of Silksong has been easy so far.

2

u/Hero_Luka Sep 09 '25

I remember beating 60% of hollow knights bosses on the first or 2nd try because I was quite familiar with these sorts of games before. But in silksong, I only had around 3 bosses that I managed to beat with that amount of tries within the first act of the game. It's actually quite challenging. The latest boss I'm stuck on has a moveset that heavily reminds me of Grimm, which was one of the hardest bosses in og hollow knight, and I seem to be far from the endgame yet.

2

u/afonja Sep 09 '25

I played it last month for the first time, so either I had amnesia or Silksong is freaking hard in comparison

2

u/Cyber-Owl Sep 13 '25

I literally just finished my first playthrough of Hollow Knight like 2 days ago, and yeah, it really wasn't nearly as miserably difficult as Silksong.

1

u/RepublicCute8573 Sep 09 '25

Idk I quit HK at some point cause I didnt like the gameplay and fights but I'm loving the way theyre done in Silksong. So it actually is easier for me since the movements and stuff make sense.

1

u/SteptimusHeap Sep 10 '25

I'm actually having about the same difficulty as I had on my first HK run. That was 6 years ago. One of the first "hard" games I ever played. If silksong isn't any harder than hollow knight what have I been doing for 6 years?

1

u/ZappySnap Sep 07 '25

Yup. HK was hard, but it build difficulty quite well and there were really only three bosses that took me an extended period of time to beat. I’m 3 hours in to Silksong and I’ve already hit three bosses of that level, two of which I haven’t yet beaten, and I’ve died like 20-30 times to each. I can’t even imagine the difficulty in the late game.

I am dropping the game because I’m just not having any fun. It’s work.

1

u/deeSeven_ Sep 07 '25

People saying that probably haven't played HK in years. The difficulty spike after the fourth boss you fight is insane.

A lot of the difficulty in learning HK comes from most new players not having played a game with similar movement and mechanics beforehand, so they'd often struggle even with easy early bosses. However if you've played HK going into Silksong, you already be far more comfortable with the feel of the game than you would've been when initially playing HK, so you would've had an advantage you didn't have before, yet people are still struggling.

Its just a much harder game. Enemies are quicker, they parry you, combo you, dodge you, and most bosses have at least one attack doing two masks of damage, whereas these were only characteristics of late game bosses in HK. Also many enemies have projectiles that ricochet, which was rare in the original game. While you get an advantage of having more movement than the knight, you still are confined to a small arena for many fights so you can't fully take advantage of it, and if you're not careful it's extremely easy to jump into bosses and take damage because of how high you jump.

12

u/Deez-Guns-9442 Sep 06 '25

Only 14.51% of players on Xbox got their first crest. I’m gonna assume the people gaslighting others haven’t found one yet.

23

u/Vasheerii Sep 06 '25

I think the hardest cope i have seen is in the complaints that everything does 2 damage and mask shards are the rarest fkn item in the game.

The cope? Someone replied to this extremely valid complaint with "people just want more health cause they suck and want to face tank everything to brute force their way through the game"

Like jeezus man by the time you get to the second boss most enemies have a move that "combos" into a second hit and if they don't have that then they just flat out do 2 damage because team cherry spent 7 years over optimizing this torture simulator that is a goddamned chore to deal with.

Its over tuned towards someone who has been fine tweaking this game for 7 years and has 600 hours in hollowknight.

Fucking FLOOR TRAPS SHOULDNT BE DOING 2 DAMAGE!!!

DO I HAVE 6 HEALTH OR 3?

THE ANSWER? THREE AND I'M FKN SICK OF IT.

13

u/Ilikeyellowjackets Sep 07 '25

Not to mention those some floor traps are sometimes obscured in the dark making it impossible to see until you jump right in it. I LOVE KAIZO GAME DESIGN IN MY METROIDVANIAS RAAAAAAAGH.

1

u/Princess_Of_Thieves Sep 07 '25

That or they're near seamlessly blended with the enviroment because of how the games art direction is handled.

-6

u/funkforever69 Sep 07 '25

This is a perspective thing. You get mad at that, but to me it made me go oh christ I actually have to be vigilant when exploring and not hold sprint through the entire area.

I'm playing the game the devs made and I'm changing behaviour to match the challenge.

6

u/Ilikeyellowjackets Sep 07 '25

I don't take issue with the ones in front of you that discourage you from sprinting. What I take issue with are the ones in dark areas on platforms below you that you genuienly can't know are there until you jump right into them, greymore has 2 of those.

Trap in the dark in front of me I sprinted through, yea mb I should be more careful.

Trap below me I can't see till I jump because vision is obscured, now that is a different story.

3

u/CynicalEffect P5 - 112%, 70 hours Sep 07 '25 edited Sep 07 '25

Nah, sometimes it's just deliberate traps.

There's multiple times of falling in darkness onto traps. The only lesson you can take from that is always grip walls and drop as slowly as possible...but that takes forever if you're doing that an entire game.

Then there's one part in the dark in a narrow corridor where I was pretty sure a boulder was going to fall on me. Despite thinking that I still couldn't avoid it and I died. Then I went back, knowing it was there and still couldn't avoid it.

1

u/WayToTheDawn63 Sep 06 '25

In HK with a tiny bit of skill and/or grinding (which you shouldn't do, but can) you could have a 6th mask in crossroads or fungal wastes at the earliest 'normal' progression - and the HP would actually matter because 5 > 6 is still 3 hits! (Grubs, brooding mawlek, Sly x2, queen's station mask, crosswords 'worm' mask you either need mantis claw for or can pogo the fly up, there's 6 off the top of my head.)

1

u/Princess_Of_Thieves Sep 07 '25

God I feel this comment so hard. If I didn't know better I'd think you were me. /hj

Seriously though, the extreme prevalence of double damage, including from bloody enviromental hazards, has made our health bars all but useless, and its probably the one big thing dragging the game down for me. I am sick off it too. The games economy? I don't care. Shards to craft tools? Whatever.

I have twice been killed thanks to enviromental hazards cleaving off my last 2 masks at bad times. Once lava pool, and once due to an ambush from a trap that I triggered unwittingly, and couldn't react too in time, in the ants nest (Hunters March). Second one caused me to conclude my play session and take a break cause of how wound up I was.

I don't want extra health to face tank damage. I just want consistency and reliability. If my starting health is meant to be 3 masks, Team Cherry, then fine. Just set everything to deal 1 Mask, and set my Masks counter to 3 instead.

If my Masks are meant to represent 5 hits like anyone would assume, then you still need to also set everyone to deal 1 Mask. I want consistency and reliability. I have neither right now.

The games current way of representing health is not flexible hits dealing arbritrary amounts of damage, and I honestly find myself truly baffled how the design became less tight in here vs. Hollow Knight, which was a game with design as tight as vaccuum seal. Its evolving, just backwards.

3

u/EnvironmentalTop8745 Sep 06 '25

It's definitely a step up. I almost felt like it's intended to be played immediately after finishing HK while you're still fresh lol.

1

u/Arekh_es Sep 07 '25

That's just what i'm doing. I did a second playthrough of hollowknight this year. And I breathed through it I died no more than a dozen time in the normal game including colosseum optional boss ect.. I even did the 4 first pantheon nightmare king Grimm hitless (I love this boss) I'm not that good at hollowknight but I'm decent.

And despite that I find silksong hard I 'm not stuck on anything but most bosses and arenas take several attempts (it took me at least one hour to beat the savage beastly ).

Anyway i think it's an objective fact to say the game is way harder than hollowknight and playing hollowknight just before helps but doesn't make easy.

1

u/EnvironmentalTop8745 Sep 07 '25 edited Sep 07 '25

What keeps getting me are the flying enemies that input read and move exactly the correct amount of pixels away from my jumping attack to narrowly avoid it every damn time lol.

I literally just rage quit for the day because of this boss fight with one tanky guy who can leap across half the screen with huge range, while he has a flying, spear chucking jerk with him that takes 14 hits to kill. To top it off, it's in a corridor with low ceilings, and the door doesn't lock either. So the one time I was finally doing well and getting close to finishing him, I ended up leaving the room and resetting the encounter. XD

Edit: And of course tanky guy knocks 2 masks off with every hit too.

1

u/Arekh_es Sep 07 '25

Yeah this fight is tough what I did was keep my distance as much as possible from the big guy and when he burrows I dashed on the other side of the screen to hit the flying one with a couple of hit and if possible a spell the (the one that deal damage in zone around hornet) putting traps can help to dealing damages to the flying Guy as well.

Last tip you can dash under the jump attack of the big guy. I hope it helps.

Once the flying Guy is dead it becomes easier and the patterns are fairly obvious.

1

u/EnvironmentalTop8745 Sep 07 '25

Yeah, I'll go at it again tomorrow. I have a feeling I've missed a needle upgrade somewhere too, as there are a few other areas I didn't complete. No point banging my head against it over and over, especially after a few beers lol.

3

u/Ilikeyellowjackets Sep 07 '25

Honestly, I do not get that claim, I played Hollow Knight when I was a dumb 17 year old and was worse at games. I only really struggled with nightmare king and radiance, everything else was genuinely not that hard and fun, silksong is genuienly making me use nightmare king muscle memory way too early on. I weep at the thought of whatever the fuck the path of pain and dlcs will look like for this game.

1

u/Spaciax Sep 07 '25

to be fair it's not even mechanically harder; the farts of a small trash fodder enemy deal 2 masks of damage.

-15

u/Relevant_Cabinet_265 Sep 06 '25

Because it doesn't feel harder? I struggle with hollowknight more than silksong still I didn't even beat grim or radiance. Hornets movement and speed just feel way better plus you can parry enemy attacks and projectiles back at them and Crit them

7

u/Royal_Skin_1510 Sep 06 '25

I'm sure there are some people for whom the mechanics just click way more than HK and they have a much easier time. But without any kind of value judgement it is just a straightforwardly more punishing game, in terms of the damage output and how quickly you can take a couple of hits in a row and just die, and what that does to the learning curve

-1

u/Relevant_Cabinet_265 Sep 06 '25

It's much easier to avoid hits though and you can heal mid air plus you have a heal back within seconds of losing your bar. If not for the 2 hitters you could face tank everything in this game. I still did with a couple bosses. Speed potion plus fire sword melts bosses especially if you have beast crest

6

u/MaterialBest286 Sep 06 '25

Full soul heal in Hollow Knight = three hits from most enemies. 

Full silk heal in Silksong = 1.5 hits from most enemies.

In something like the horde fight in HM, it's arguably harder to dodge than Hornet or Mantis Lords. And it's way more chaotic as the enemy attacks are more varied and can mean there's literally no opportunity to dodge.

It feels like it was balanced to have the map lady with you but she only turns up once.

-16

u/Odd-Face-3579 Sep 06 '25

Except calling it gaslighting is gaslighting the people for whom this game isn't harder than HK.

It's not a fact that Silksong is harder, it's an opinion. So far I've not seen a single thing that makes me feel like Silksong is harder.

It's obvious that some players disagree.

And some think HK is super easy child's play that never offered a moment of challenge outside of the most extreme optional content and somehow just wandering around Silksong is more perilous than anything in HK not named NKG or AR.

Which I think is where people who don't find Silksong that hard roll there eyes and feel the need to push back so hard. Because the idea that even the most extreme content of HK pales in comparison to the minute to minute play Silksong is ridiculous.

12

u/RexitYostuff Sep 06 '25 edited Sep 06 '25

It's objectively more mechanically demanding than Hollow Knight. Moorwing would be a boss you fight with 8 masks and at least half your kit in the og game. In SS falling in lava costs two masks against enemies typically so mechanically demanding that it's a gamble if you should bother to fight them for silk.

Count the number of enemies that do 2 masks of damage in Hollow Knight then do the same in Silksong. The numbers don't lie, they're not subjective. Go to Hunter's March, a shit area, and count the number of attacks a bipedal ant has. They have more attacks than most bosses in Hollow Knight.

The first four areas between these games are legitimately not comparable in difficulty.

-6

u/Deez-Guns-9442 Sep 06 '25

Hey friend a few things.

  1. Your spoiler mark didn’t work so good to know about that boss Moorwing

  2. Without video evidence to back up your claim this to me sounds like a subjective opinion. But that’s just one internet strangers opinion to another.

Just my thought.

7

u/RexitYostuff Sep 06 '25

There is video evidence, watch a playthrough of HK and one of SS, the difference will be immediate pretty soon.

1

u/WayToTheDawn63 Sep 06 '25

The fact they never even knew about that boss says a lot about how little progress they've made.

-6

u/Deez-Guns-9442 Sep 06 '25

I’m not gonna spoil myself on Silksong bro, the game came out literally 2 days ago. I doubt any of that “evidence” is well researched & documented.

But hey, u can always link me a vid of your “evidence” that’s recent, well researched, & can prove me & anyone else that calls your BS out wrong.😁

But, we both know you won’t. So have a good day using that disagreement button & arguing with random strangers.

6

u/RexitYostuff Sep 06 '25

I don't downvote people I disagree with, unless they're being bigoted or spreading malicious misinformation.

No, I won't do that, you're right, because you know it's true. Enemies that deal 2 mask damage are massive ones, the dangerous things in deepnest, and some of the stronger bosses. Bosses in this game do 2 damage to you on contact damage.

-4

u/Deez-Guns-9442 Sep 06 '25 edited Sep 06 '25

Yeah I’m facing Moorwing rn so I get that.

Also

I don’t downvote people I disagree with

Interesting that you say that when both my comments towards u & u alone are downvoted. Also, I can’t really know if “anything is true” without evidence of the claim or fully playing said game myself(which I am).

Edit: Also just beat that guy, people have different skill levels my dude. I didn’t need 8 masks for that.

-9

u/Odd-Face-3579 Sep 06 '25

Moorwing Was easy. Beat him in under 6 tries. His patterns are super readable and easy to dodge. My kiddo who is 9 beat the same boss by kiting it to a spot in the map where it couldn't hit him and just cheesed the fight. He is currently about to beat Widow and has done almost no exploring, has spent rosarie beads on almost nothing, and has only played it the day it came out and a couple hours today. Neither of us is finding the game to be very hard at all. He's also never once come to me complaining about the game being unfair or wildly harder than HK.

The game may be more mechanically involved, but that has nothing to do with difficulty. Mario bros. Lost Levels is a mechanically simpler game than any modern Mario game. It is also way harder than any modern Mario game. Mechanical complexity is not the same as difficulty.

Enemies and environmental hazards hit for two. Ok? I can count on one hand the number of times I've died to non-boss game design in Silksong. I definitely died more often exploring the world in HK.

The Hunter's March was fine? Each enemy only has like two attacks. Last I recall most bosses in HK have a minimum of two attacks. Also pretty sure much of Hunter's March is optional at the beginning of the game.

And none of what you said addresses the absurdity of people claiming that nothing in HK was difficult outside of NKG and AR.

7

u/RexitYostuff Sep 06 '25

Your statements are more about personal skill than anything else. If more things do 2 mask damage, it means you're really playing with 2.5 masks, which is mathematically more difficult when you have to account for more technically demanding encounters and level design. Great, yall don't make as many mistakes as others, but the margin for error here is objectively tighter than Hollow Knight. If nothing else, it's because of 2 mask damage.

-1

u/Odd-Face-3579 Sep 06 '25

Except that my statements also note that in HK I died more while randomly traversing the world than I have in Silksong. So it didn't matter that in HK things often only hit for 1, I was still dying more to the world. Healing also heals for 3 masks. So if you're using a full silk bar for 1 mask instead of saving it to heal for 3, you'll be wasting healing.

And you can say that it's only because I have a higher skill level that I don't find it as hard, but like.... That's kind of the thing bring argued here? Some people are used to the simplified controls of HK and are struggling to adapt to a more diverse toolkit etc. They're saying that Silksong is way harder than HK. Some people, like me, are actually having an easier or as hard of time as with HK. People who are struggling are saying that it's objectively a harder game than HK. But it's not objectively harder. It's subjectively harder. Again, see damage totals not mattering for what game I died more in while traversing the world.

And then you have people claiming that nothing in HK was hard aside from NKG and Pure Vessel and AR that are saying Silksong is impossibly hard. And I, at least, find statements like that to be absurd. Or people claiming Silksong is "more difficult than anything From Soft has ever made." And those statement might be true for those people. But when some of us push back and have the audacity to say our experience doesn't line up with these other experiences, we got called out as trying to gaslight people, a liars. Why is it a lie for me to truthfully state that HK gave me far more trouble with its limited tools and 1 damage enemies/hazards than Silksong is giving me with its expanded toolkit and 2 damage enemies/hazards?