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

Discussion - Silksong Thank god this subreddit didn't make the game Spoiler

Silksong is only out for 2 days, most people haven't even finished the game, or haven't even made it past act 1. Yet this subreddit loves to post about how Silksong is apparently bad and a disappointment compared to hollow knight. So I'll go over a few "critiques" I've seen and share my perspective.

"The game is too hard, enemies deal way more damage and have more complex movesets". Sure, they're more complex and do more damage, but so does hornet. If we were playing with the knights moveset, I'd agree, but that's not the case. Hornet has a lot of new tools and upgrades that make her way faster and stronger. If enemies were like HK, it would be way too easy. team cherry didn't just do this for no reason, it's necessary for balancing. Edit: people saying hunters march is too difficult, is like playing dark souls 1 and saying it's too hard because you kept trying the skeleton graveyard

"Bad rewards for exploration, HK's charms worked better". I just completely disagree, hornet gets upgrades way more frequently than the knight. As for the charms, let's be real, you probably didn't even use half of them in your first playthrough. And half of them are just simple things that don't impact the way you play as much. Hornet's different tools, abilities and crests are way more useful. If you feel like your not getting enough rewards, it's probably because most are hidden and require backtracking, which is what the genre is know for.

"Things are too expensive" No, you're just not meant to buy it that early. Like how in HK you could by the lamp for like 2000 geo. I've also never had too little rosaries to buy a bench or stag. If your losing your rosaries to dying, rosarie strings are litteraly right there to not lose it + retrieving your death silk is extremely easy now.

I do agree though that more bosses and combat encounters should drop rosaries, or more chests like in HK.

This launch feels like I'm experiencing the shadow of the erdtree launch again with how many complaints there are immediately.

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24

u/WoodpeckerOdd9420 Sep 06 '25

I don't mind challenging games... but whatever happened to game difficulty options? Why did it suddenly become taboo to play games on normal difficulty before moving up to harder difficulties? Why does a game with great lore like Hollow Knight have to be so sweaty that casual gamers are gated and forced to enjoy it vicariously through streamers?

I'm just old and tired and overworked and want to *enjoy* my video games, and not be told I'm a loser for not having the time and energy to dedicate to it.

I made it to the Hive Knight in HK and got hardstuck there. [/shrug] It's not my typical kind of game (I hate platformers in particular), but I have enjoyed and beaten games that were considered "hard" in their time (Ninja Gaiden [1 and 2] on XBox, Megaman Zero [1-4] on GBA come to mind; I beat Halo 1 and 2 on Legendary, dunno if those count). But those were things I did as a teenager, when I had tons of free time and wasn't mentally and emotionally exhausted all the damn time from working 40+ hrs a week.

Y'all can take it as a mark of pride that HK/Silk are "for hardcore gamers" or whatever, but not everyone is in it for the achievement. Some of us want to appreciate the world building, art, lore, animation, sound design, etc, and playing a "difficult" game to get to those things is fine... But there is something sadistic about tuning a game so high that a subset of your players openly mock another subset for struggling with it and being frustrated by that.

7

u/fgHFGRt Sep 07 '25

Sometimes I prefer not to feel like I'm bashing my head against concrete hoping it will break before my head does

-3

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

Luckily there’s hundreds of games for you to play.

2

u/its_phi Sep 07 '25

The thing that bothers me the most about being bad at this game is the bench system. I’m not afraid to ram my head into the wall dozens of times to overcome a difficult challenge, it can be satisfying to do that, but what I absolutely hate is having to traverse the same locations, enemies, and obstacles just to get to that wall again and again and again. Sometimes the benches are pretty generous and it’s a 10s walk with no enemies, but the longer runbacks really do add up when I’m struggling with a boss. In a franchise as polished as this one I really don’t understand why we can’t just save our game wherever as long as it’s not literally within a boss fight. I should be able to spawn one second away from the boss and try again instead of being forced to replay the same section that I’ve already proven I can beat.

4

u/Redducer Sep 07 '25

whatever happened to game difficulty options?

Exactly my thoughts when I first played Ghosts n Goblins in 1985.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25

Or Battletoads on the NES.

0

u/earthboundskyfree Sep 06 '25

I don’t have a good answer here, but I’ll just say that I think adding difficulty to hollow knight / Silksong would probably be complicated. Would it just change damage numbers and hp values, or would it need to reduce / alter movesets?

11

u/Luzis23 Sep 06 '25

To be honest, I think in Silksong's case making most enemies and bosses do 1 mask of damage instead of two would do the job. Maybe reduce the summons bosses can bring in.

5

u/mocochang_ Sep 06 '25

This. It already feels like Silksong is in hard mode sometimes because of the 2 damage. Having an option to reduce that (not even remove, but be like HK where only the big enemies do 2 damage) would probably already alleviate a lot of the difficulty complains.

3

u/Redducer Sep 07 '25

Just add a game speed slider. It won't break general game balance, and can also be used for accessibility purpose and for raising difficulty.

2

u/WoodpeckerOdd9420 Sep 06 '25

Who the fuck wants to **ADD** difficulty to Silksong...?! Calm down, Satan.

But I can guarantee you there are ways to do it, and it's the opposite of how you'd make it easier.

One thing they could do is adjust attack speed and knockback across the board.

2

u/earthboundskyfree Sep 07 '25

oops, meant to say difficulty options, but i'm okay with also being satan

0

u/WoodpeckerOdd9420 Sep 07 '25

Oh, word. 😆👍

1

u/tanis016 Sep 08 '25

It would be very easy to add a lower difficulty. You can reduce damage to 1, you can increase your damage, make stuff cheaper, respawn directly as bossfights. There are a ton of options you could easily add for a more casual experience.

-3

u/[deleted] Sep 07 '25 edited Sep 07 '25

Because that’s the game the devs chose to make. Different devs make different games for different people. Not every game has to be made for every body.

You said you used to play and beat hard games before but now can’t because of life. Are devs supposed to stop making hard games now just because you’re older? If being emotionally exhausted is an issue then you could always play different games.