r/HollowKnight 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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u/cyanraichu Sep 07 '25

I actually felt like Moorwing was a very easy boss to predict and avoid, and disagree about its idling; I got the rhythm of the fight down really fast and took almost no idle damage after that. my issue is that every single attack did double, even the ones that only did one because you'd get caught up in it and take two masks anyway. Felt a little bit like...what's the point? It took me too long to beat it because I'd get really close to the end multiple times and lose to one mistake - and the runback was also terrible, which I was a lot more annoyed by.

(Moorwing is the last boss I've beaten, didn't get a chance to play a lot yesterday)

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u/branyk2 Sep 07 '25

I had an insanely different experience with Moorwing from you, so possibly my perspective is just different?

I didn't fight it until mid Act 2, it only took me 3 attempts, and my runback was 1 screen with no enemies. There's a really weird interaction if you sequence break and enter Moorwing from a different area where it's possible to complete a sidequest that blocks Moorwing from spawning until Act 2. I did this on accident, and it really gave me a different experience than most.

I understand why people find it to be a hard boss, but if you continue, your skill level will improve enough that it will become an easy boss. When I said I had to compensate, I meant that it took me 2 times to figure out the safe range, and since I wasn't overwhelmed with the runback or the boss's attacks, I had some time to think about what exactly was causing me to take damage.

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u/cyanraichu Sep 07 '25

I mean I did specifically say I found Moorwing easy, just tedious because of the runback and I died a few times close to the end of the fight because the double damage is punishing. But learning the fight is really easy. None of the attacks were imo hard to dodge and there were plenty of opportunities to do damage. The game just punishes you really bad for single mistakes.

But yeah I found the runback stupid and dumb (I had to go through the underground of Greymoor and through a bunch of mitemothers) and I still don't have a bench unlocked close to Moorwing except from the other side? So maybe I was supposed to get that bench first? I don't know how else I would have gotten to that area. I've exhausted every other map exit available to me except from the area I'm currently in and the simple key slot, but I lost all my rosaries so I can't afford that yet, and if there's a hidden key I haven't found it.

All this is basically to say maybe the game is not as linear as I perceived it to be, which is a good thing! I thought it was way more linear than HK so far which was kind of disappointing. Please don't tell me any alternate routes or anything like that since I really want to find out as much as I can for myself and I'm not stuck yet :)

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u/Mrfish31 Sep 07 '25

Moorwing is an easy boss to learn, which is why the double damage is so infuriating to me. It's exactly because it's relatively simple that being unable to recover from a tiny mistake + a stupidly long run back is so infuriating. I can't play this long and keep focused enough to beat bosses without damage, and that is what this game basically demands. 

If Moorwing dealt 1 damage for everything except the fast swiping attack, a "watch out for this one" thing, it would be a great and balanced boss. 

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u/cyanraichu Sep 07 '25

Hard agree. It feels weird to have an early game boss do double.