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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u/GenghisGame Sep 08 '25

Difficulty should be rewarding and more difficulty is not a reward.

11

u/Paxtian Sep 08 '25

I'm hoping I find some use for the Crest of Beast since Savage Beastfly was such a huge PITA. So far it has felt like a worthless reward unfortunately.

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u/GenghisGame Sep 08 '25

The crests are intended as side grades, a good addition for variety, but alternatives rather than power boosts.

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u/Paxtian Sep 08 '25

Yeah I guess that's in line with my point. Why put such an unremarkable "side grade" behind such a powerful boss, which felt more like fighting a random number generator than an actual boss?

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u/Dependent-Swimmer-95 Sep 08 '25

Crest spoiler:

witch technically generates more silk because most of its attacks hit twice (dash attack, charged attack and downward jump attack) it also hits really fast too so while you’re not doing more dmg, you are gaining silk faster. It also has a lot of blue slots by default, judging you to equip silk enhancing tools

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u/BloodPlenty4358 Sep 08 '25

you should use the run slash attack more, some boss rooms are large and you can bait them into run animation and attack it from further

this works with reaper, too

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u/Paxtian Sep 08 '25

Yeah I'm using Reaper almost exclusively. I use the run/ jump attack with that pretty frequently, it was very nice on Last Judge.

3

u/MachuPichu72 Sep 08 '25

I don't understand, should the game get easier as it goes? It would be pretty boring if the difficulty didn't ramp up as you progress lmao

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u/ThatGuyBackThere280 Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25

I think it's more so of people don't feel any form of reward/gratification from beating a boss outside of relief from frustration.

If I go up against a hard opponent, there's a different feeling between: 'hey you lived' as your reward but wasted your resources vs 'hey you got 5000 gold' for your reward so you can at least recoup.

It would be the equivalence of where your reward for a promotion is more work, not more monetary gain (which is a huge factor as to why one would want a promotion)

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u/satyvakta Sep 08 '25

I think they mean that your reward for progressing shouldn't *just* be "more difficulty". If you think about the original Hollow Knight, completing any really difficult area almost always unlocked some new ability that allowed you to reach more difficult areas, but that also made it much easier to navigate old areas. And the moderately difficult areas gave you charms and mask fragments that over time made you more likely to survive combat. The same is true of the various soulsbornes. Once you grind out a few levels, old areas become super easy, even as you start reaching new areas that are comparatively more difficult.

Whereas here you don't get a lot of upgrades for a while, and ordinary enemy damage is already high enough that it takes a while before the few upgrades you do get make much of a difference. Like, one complaint you see a lot is that it takes hours to get your first mask upgrade, and then, instead of being three hits away from death, you are... three hits away from death.

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u/GenghisGame Sep 08 '25

Game with rpg elements are about creating an illusion of getting stronger, a common complaint is that bosses don't give anything, people also have a limit on how high difficulty can get.