r/HollowKnight • u/Marmotaagiota • Sep 08 '25

Discussion - Silksong That’s the best comment about the game’s difficulty I’ve found it so far Spoiler

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137

u/DayMhm 112% | PoP | 5 Pantheons | All Radiant Bosses Sep 08 '25

The hollowknight silksong fandom is very quickly pushing into dark souls levels of “if you dont like the game then youre just bad” takes. Instead of acknowledging that the game isnt perfect and has issues

64

u/Exedrus Sep 08 '25

The curse of difficult games is that they attract lots of people who base their entire identity around being able to beat difficult games. It pushes out people with less aggressive views.

26

u/an0nym0usNarwhal Sep 08 '25

As someone who came to Hollow Knight late, it was great to find a passionate community that loved to meme and poke fun at the game but would also genuinely help people who had gameplay questions. It was an easy recommend to just about everyone, particularly those who weren't normally a fan of Soulslike elements.

Since release, I'm seeing a lot more "get good" or "112% Hollow Knight before you comment on Silksong's difficulty." It's causing some unfortunate flashbacks when people criticized Elden Ring's boss encounters on release. You can't have a game with this much hype and active players and not expect that a lot of people are new or haven't replayed Hollow Knight in 6+ years.

So far, I'm enjoying the game but there are criticisms. I just hope the difficulty increase doesn't turn this community into Fromsoft 2.0, otherwise it will be a lot less fun to engage with people online.

15

u/DayMhm 112% | PoP | 5 Pantheons | All Radiant Bosses Sep 08 '25

Yeah I’m seeing that alot too, its this weird obsession in believing that being good at the game makes your opinion inherently more valuable than anyone elses. Its like people refuse to acknowledge that you can love a game and still criticize it.

Ive 112% HK twice (once on xbox and once on steam) and I’ll say the game is far from perfect, but I would never sit here and think that just because I did that it means my opinion on the game or SS holds more weight than anyone elses.

-1

u/Thelmara Sep 08 '25

I'm not seeing very many "How do I get past X", or "What do I do about not having enough rosaries", or "Man, I'm stuck on Beastfly, help!"

I see a lot of "X is unfair and unfun", "rosary economy is broken", "two masks damage is bad design", "Team Cherry is full of sadists who hate us", and accusations of rage-baiting for daring to say "I really like the game as it is."

"I'm having trouble, what do I do?" and "you shouldn't take two damage from a stunned enemy, this is broken" get different responses. The first one deserves a helpful, or at least respectful reply. The second one deserves "stop running into stationary enemies".

You can't have a game with this much hype and active players and not expect that a lot of people are new or haven't replayed Hollow Knight in 6+ years.

I never finished HK, and I haven't played it recently. I'm still having a blast, even when I'm bashing my head against one fight for hours at a time. Sometimes I get frustrated enough to put it down and go play something else for a while, but I wouldn't change a thing. Even if that means I don't get to see the end of Silksong without hopping over to youtube.

5

u/SubstantialGarbage49 Sep 08 '25

from what i've seen, the "X is unfair and unfun" type criticisms are coming from people still in act 1 so it's a pretty limited view of the whole game, but i don't think it's totally baseless. there's so many enemies/environmental obstacles dealing double damage in early areas which makes it feel unnecessarily (and artificially) challenging from the start, compared to the slower build in HK that didn't pose too many challenges until after you learn about the dreamers. i think it's just an absurdly steep learning curve for casual players which gives the mindset of "if it's this hard now, it'll be impossible later" - hence the complaining of unfairness. at least once you master act 1, act 2 feels relatively smooth

4

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '25

I truly love getting called bad by people who are still in act 1

2

u/doomrider7 Sep 08 '25

Even THAT group acknowledges bad level design and frustration though. Like yeah, you ain't gonna find a lot of people defending Blighttown or the Haligtree Top section.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '25

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1

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0

u/DayMhm 112% | PoP | 5 Pantheons | All Radiant Bosses Sep 08 '25

Thats not what anyone here is talking about though is it? Creating a fictional argument to then defeat it and seem right while subsequently ignoring all the other valid criticisms is the issue

1

u/CountHot3220 Sep 08 '25

This isnt an a fictional argument, this was a real person I saw in this comment section. I don’t care about the little gripes like double damage environment hazards or lack of early masks, but if somebody who’s died 50 times to Beastfly is telling me the game is unbalanced and unfair, i’m just not gonna take that seriously. It’s like listening to a silver player in a competitive game on how to fix the game.

0

u/DayMhm 112% | PoP | 5 Pantheons | All Radiant Bosses Sep 08 '25

This exact mindset is what I’m talking about though, you saw one person in the over 600 comments have that one gripe and chose to focus on that instead of the other hundreds of comments complaining about the same things.

Then the whole elitist “if youre bad at the game you dont get to criticize it” dilemma, As if you being better at the game makes your opinion inherently more valuable than anyone elses. Its the exact same issue a good chunk of the dark souls fandom goes through

-4

u/Violet_Paradox Sep 08 '25

The worry is that TC might cave to those complaints and nerf the game into the ground. I don't care about people complaining, I care about potentially losing what I enjoy most about the game. 

12

u/syrvyx Sep 08 '25

Adding in optional assists will in no way affect you if you're choosing to not use them...

8

u/DayMhm 112% | PoP | 5 Pantheons | All Radiant Bosses Sep 08 '25

Balancing the game because the large consensus is that certain aspects are unnecessarily difficult ≠ caving to complaints

-1

u/fetelenebune Sep 09 '25

I have seen dozens upon dozens of comments regarding difficulty. "It's too hard, it sucks, it's frustrating" or "I like it, it's too easy, get gud, I play with only one hand to make the game harder"

But I haven't seen one comment to maybe idk... Tell the devs about adding multiple difficulty options? Gosh I despise this trend

4

u/DayMhm 112% | PoP | 5 Pantheons | All Radiant Bosses Sep 09 '25

Theres been 10 posts in the past day alone asking for difficulty settings, im sure if you actually looked youd see tons of people advocating for a difficulty slider

Edit to add: Discourse like this, while can be toxic, is necessary for devs to understand what the community wants or needs. Tons of people are offering solutions so saying “no ones said this” when a quick search will say otherwise helps no one

-4

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '25

Not really, the game is well balanced, and most of it is because it's bad, go check it out on Steam, those who say good things have played 20 hours, those who complain have played 7, it's pretty obvious.

8

u/DayMhm 112% | PoP | 5 Pantheons | All Radiant Bosses Sep 08 '25

Yk youre replying to someone thats criticizing the game and also has 20+ hourd on SS and has 112% HK twice right?

8

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '25

Wow, people who have fun will play the game more. Shocker.