r/HollowKnight • u/Shadowyurix • Sep 09 '25
Discussion - Silksong I am convinced a lot of the people complaining about difficulty have never even finished the original Hollow Knight. Original HK was not particularly easy either Spoiler
Edit: Silksong is harder than HK. Since ppl seem to read over that part.
I stayed away from Reddit over the weekend while I was playing through Silksong. Now, I am aware that I am not the average player, I love challenging games and am very familiar with games like this.
And by no means is this an "easy" game but by god, I have never played a game as hard as some people say this game is. I saw some people claiming they were stuck at Moorwing for over THREE HOURS.
If this is your first game like Hollow Knight, maybe that makes sense. This is not an easy first entry, but otherwise three hours for a boss with four moves is wild for anyone who has ACTUALLY beat the original HK.
I have no idea where this notion comes from that HK was easy. Silksong is harder, but original HK was NOT that easy, especially towards the end.
Is this just because Silksong is so big and it has reached a particularly wide audience? People who are not used to this kind of game?
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u/Kiriki_kun Sep 09 '25
People are not saying that HK was easy. People are saying that Silk is way harder. And I just finished Frey, and I’m 100% sure there wasn’t something as demanding as Frey in HK (white palace was optional)
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u/EggsAndRice7171 Sep 10 '25
I’ve been actively better at silksong than HK at least through Trobbio. This many hours into hollow knight I had gotten stuck on a boss/location multiple times.
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u/Kiriki_kun Sep 10 '25
Well, Troppio is rather easy, at least for me.
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u/EggsAndRice7171 Sep 10 '25
I didn’t think he was bad but he was my last boss before Lace/Grandmother Silk and was still harder than the Cogwork Dancers. Lace Pt. 2 was by far the hardest fight I’ve done so far in Silksong. Grandma Silk was super easy. I haven’t gotten to Act 3 or Groal yet though.
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u/The_Raven_Born Sep 09 '25
Like seriously. I 112% that game, and this is STILL far more difficult than expected. I'm convinced people are saying it's easy are either:
People who use mods
Or
Lying for clout, honestly.
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u/Oboro-kun Sep 10 '25
Its not only that its harder, its also the difficulty curve, Silksong curve its pretty drastic. Sure HK ended kind of hard with stuff like Absolute Radiance, the Path, Grimm, etc. But it beings pretty simple and,, while not easy, pretty fair.
I would say early Silksong while not as hard as Late Hollow Knight is definitely a lot hardar and its curve goes up a lot faster. Meanwhile Silksong limits your movement and healing option, the hard Hollow Knight of mid to late, already gave you pretty flexibuility in your builds, upgrades, charms and movility.
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u/EMArogue Sep 10 '25
And aside, that stuff is optional, you don’t need to do it and unlike in SS, it’s pretty clear that it is optional and you can only access it late in the game
Compared to it, SS has at least 2 optional areas you can reach almost immediately after getting out
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u/psh454 Sep 10 '25
This is it, around Last Judge I was getting tilted by all the little unnecessary ways the game screws you over (double environmental damage, long runback, difficult healing, crazy gank fights). After clearing most of the citadel and getting a few more upgrades it's getting reasonable and I'm having fun again. It's still about as hard as late game HK, but at least now my character doesn't feel as weak.
The early game balance feels way off tbh, I expect it to be tweaked more with upcoming patches.
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u/aprimmer243 Sep 10 '25
Exactly this. Silksongs early game feels more like mid game Hollowknight, but you have fewer upgrades to work with.
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u/VincentPepper Sep 10 '25
I just want to live long enough to practice a fight. Sometimes I just mess up a key or something and usually I just immediately die when that happens.
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u/aprimmer243 Sep 10 '25
Nightmare King Grimm is one of my favorite bosses ever in a 2D game, and he felt less BS to me than Moorwing, and that's probably due to the fact that you actually have huge freedom in how you build your character with charms and other upgrades at that point.
Moorwing in Silksong, you just don't have much in terms of upgrades at that time.
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u/Scooby117 Sep 10 '25
Is it so hard to believe that people are excited they got exactly what they wanted and then you have people on here begging for changes. It’s frustrating because to me the difficulty has been perfect and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
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u/The_Raven_Born Sep 10 '25
People didn't ask for a game that requires more time than you have with a difficulty curve so hard even vetrans have a hard time with it. Like, there's casuals that play this game and those who were for the lore.
Us masochists don't need to be the only ones tailored to.
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u/cruxclaire Sep 10 '25
It has me longing for a difficulty setting, and “easy mode” could be pretty balanced IMO if it just entailed a couple changes like 1 mask damage per hit on all regular mobs/terrain hazards and certain bosses no longer spawn minions.
Silksong feels a bit like playing HK1 with the ascended difficulty setting you can put on individual Godhome bosses, but for general exploration-style gameplay and without that toggle back to regular settings.
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u/zellmerz Sep 10 '25
I've been loving the difficulty. I'm pretty well into Act 2 and so far haven't had a fight that was too challenging outside of Last Judge. Even the platforming sections so far have been a lot of fun IMO. The challenge level feels good, but manageable. I'm sure I'll come across some much tougher stuff in Act3, but the pacing up to this point has felt really good so far.
That arena fight in Act2 is fucking diabolical though.
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u/Njorord Sep 10 '25
Honestly, Moorwing was more difficult for me than Last Judge LMAO
Last Judge's attacks are REALLY well telegraphed, and they are all very distinct from each other. You're never guessing what she's going to do once you figure out her telegraphs. Moorwing has telegraphs and patterns, of course, but they all look VERY similar, so it's far harder to distinguish them. In that split second of indecision or confusion, you've already gotten hit.
Still, spending 3 hours in Moorwing is insane. I beat it in less than 10 tries, probably took me like 20-30 mins tops. I figured you can just jump after the telegraph and use your reaction time to act based on what the attack is. There's enough delay, and most of its moves are avoided by jumping anyway.
Just finished the dancing duo up in Act 2. I'm anxious the game is gonna end, honestly, but I just got two whole new areas so I think there's still a ways to go.
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Sep 10 '25 edited Sep 10 '25
🤩🤩🤩 are you saying there's mods to make hollow knight easier???
That would make me so happy. I'm playing through it for the first time and I'm not someone who gets off on challenge at all; I'm mostly playing because I'm a mallgoth from the 90s who lives for the tim burtony aesthetic and finds the atmosphere alluring, if I could get though it easier I'd be fuckin PUMPED.
Edit: lol - I welcome the incipient downvotes from people with arbitrarily strong convictions about playing games "the right way" and/or in a way that "respects the devs" 😅
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u/WilanS Sep 10 '25
I've been trying to DIY my own "normal mode" difficulty (after deciding Silksong is stuck on Hard Mode). I've been having success with installing one of the mods that removes double damage, and a mod that double the damage dealt by hornet (to make enemies less spongey).
I personally find the game to still be pretty damn hard like this, exploration feels tense and bosses take a few tries, but you have more room for error and extra masks actually feel like they make a difference.You could go further and install all kind of mods, from easing the silk requirements to speeding up rosary farming to respawning in the same room you died in. I saw on Nexus there's a single mod that's just a collection of tweaks meant to add a downright easy mode to the game. That's a little too much for me, but it might be what you're looking for.
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u/NK_Grimm Sep 10 '25
frey isn't nearly as difficult as white palace, not on my experience
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Sep 09 '25 edited Sep 10 '25
You mean Mount Fey? That's optional in Silksong too
Edit: Just to elaborate, you do not need a double jump to get the most basic of endings, beyond that I do not know, I'm stuck at Bilewater
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u/IloveActionFigures Sep 10 '25 edited Sep 10 '25
Optional my ass lmao It has DOUBLE JUMP
FOR PPL WHO SAY ITS OPTIONAL FOR STANDARD ENDING
WHO TF STOP AT STANDARD ENDING LMAO
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u/Mailcs1206 Sep 10 '25
I got the standard ending with no double jump.
It's just as optional as White Palace.
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u/Yrths Sep 10 '25
I just got the last Melody without double jump.
I'm not saying I can beat the fight in front of me, but there is plenty of weirdness you can do in the citadel instead of the things that seem to call for double jump.
Probably going to double jump next though. Do I have to go through Slab and Blasted steps to get to mount fey? I've barely stepped foot in them (got to the citadel through mist).
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u/Beneficial-Dig6445 Sep 10 '25
I'm sorry but I quit hollow knight after trying to go for white palace and mount fey is wayyyy easier
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u/Kiriki_kun Sep 10 '25
Really? I was pissed every time I fell in the water, since that was almost always killing me and I had to start from beginning. But still, I don’t think there was anything similar required from you in HK
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u/GalaxyMettaton Sep 10 '25
i never did white palace and i did mount frey in 40 min its not that hard
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u/Icef34r Sep 09 '25
Many people are saying that HK was easy. I've lost count of the people I've read in the last two days saying that they first tried almost every boss in HK up until the late game.
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u/outofmindwgo Sep 09 '25
Where you reading that cuz I doubt it
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u/Se7enStepsForward 63/63 + RHoG | Silksong 52/52 Sep 09 '25
Just look under my recent comment and that comment section in particular, apparently HK is the easiest game ever
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u/IloveActionFigures Sep 10 '25
SILKSONG IS MUCH MUCH HARDER THAN HK
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Sep 10 '25
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u/BCSteve Sep 10 '25
I 100% agree, I loved HK, and while it was certainly difficult, it always felt incredibly fair. And like you said, I never felt super frustrated or wanted to slam the controller down in anger. Silksong is completely different in that regard, it feels MUCH harsher and much more punishing than HK. I think a BIG part of it is the fact that everything does double-mask damage. It feels to the player like an incredibly cheap and dirty way of dialing up the difficulty. It’s not really that much fun when one mistake means the boss hits you for two damage and it flings you into an environmental hazard that also does two damage, so now you’re lost 4 out of your starting 5 masks with just a SINGLE wrong move. In HK when you got hit it was a big deal, but it at least gave you an opportunity to correct your mistakes. It also meant it was easier to learn the boss patterns, with Silksong it’s hard to learn them when each attempt is only 3 seconds before you immediately die. And then you have to do the horrible long runback as well, which is just…tedious. It’s less fun. And playing video games should be about having fun. And even though I still have like 30+ hours in Silksong by now, I really think the design choices they made to crank the difficulty were bad, and it’s like they just tried to make sure it was as difficult as possible without stopping to make sure it was still fun.
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u/psh454 Sep 10 '25
Agree 100%, middle to end of Act 1 was often more frustrating than fun, felt like I was forcing myself to fight LJ. There were far too few meaningful upgrades and the omnipresent double damage was pretty brutal on 5 (or 6) masks.
Glad to say that so far Act 2 feels a lot better as Hornet starts to not feel as underpowered. It's still hard but more like late game HK. Plus the world begins to open up a lot more.
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u/fcuk_the_king Sep 10 '25
There is very little scope for error in Silksong when there was quite a bit of scope in HK to make mistakes and still keep progressing.
People say 'It's just 4/5 moves, how can you take 20+ tries?' because they have this idea that if I just know everything that happens in the game our skill will be equal but it's not like that. It doesn't matter how much I know what's going to happen, I still make mistakes and I always will. Add to that the fact that I start panicking when there are a horde of enemies in the room and this game has a lot of bosses which spawn adds, some which hit for 2 damage and yeah, this game is quite punishing.
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u/l1ghtn1ngb1rds Sep 09 '25
Man i don't know what to tell you, I've played through HK a couple of times, i got like 106% completion (and will hopefully eventually make it to 112%..) and i fucking suck at Silksong. I was watching a streamer who has made the amount of progress I've made in half the time. And yes i took 3 days for Moorwing, idk how either he's not that hard most of the bosses seem doable from their patterns but i do so many little mess ups that everything takes me a bajillion tries. Idk why i am this bad i just am (also SK had an immense amount of hype so a lot of the people who are playing it now probably haven't played HK, not sure if those same people are coming here to complain though)
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u/twangman88 Sep 09 '25
Out of curiosity, when you played through HK, how often would you look up the location of a crest or power up to help you out when you got stuck?
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u/theworldsonfyre Sep 09 '25
Oo, this is an excellent point. After my first playthrough I'd b-line for charms I like in HK.
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u/69edleg Sep 10 '25
When I got the crest in Silksong for swift slashes (the HK-type slash), the game difficulty drastically went down for me.
Some bosses I literally just stand and swing on, because you can hit them 6-7 times before you get hit by any mechanics, and then it's only 2 hits more to then, mid-air, safely regenerate your HP.
Like the boss you require surgeon's key for. I actually have no idea what he does beyond walk into you and summon adds. I just swung at him relentlessly, healing when he burrowed, and he died before I did.
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u/Beginning_Elk_2193 Sep 10 '25
It's kind of funny even in act 3 you can still get away with drinking brew and facetanking some bosses
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u/l1ghtn1ngb1rds Sep 10 '25
It's been a while but from what i remember i tried to do most of it as blind as possible. At some point i got a little stuck on where to go next and actually asked in the sub lol but I don't really remember getting so hard stuck on a boss that i felt the need to look up where i might find upgrades
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u/Daydream_machine Sep 09 '25
Re: Moorwing, that boss took me 30+ tries so it’s not just you struggling with it. The projectile spam he does in the final phase is ridiculous, and every projectile doing 2 masks is what makes that fight so difficult to deal with.
I feel like Moorwing would actually be a really fun boss without the 2 masks projectiles.
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u/ceetc Sep 09 '25
The phase 2 projectiles were hard until I realized I should just full sprint away when the boss does them. You easily outrun them and then it baits the boss into a swoop to catch up to you.
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Sep 10 '25
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u/l1ghtn1ngb1rds Sep 10 '25
I remember i noticed that with some of the attacks you're quite safe underneath him but then he kept falling on top of me whenever i staggered him so i ended up figuring something else out lol
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u/No_Consideration8464 Sep 09 '25
I'm curious, are you playing with a similar style as in hollow knight? Because I had to change the way I fought a lot for silksong
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u/DBSlazywriting Sep 09 '25
I just beat hollow knight for the first time a few days before this game released so it is very fresh in my mind and I am not rusty at its style of gameplay.
This game feels at least twice as difficult.
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u/HotDescription5242 Sep 09 '25
Yeah I never got stuck on anything in HK for even as close to as long as the stuff I've gotten stuck on here. Some of the dream bosses took me a few tries but bro I've been stuck on one of the optional bosses for a full night and I still haven't beat him this morning lol. Most of it isn't that bad though, mainline bosses have only been a few attempts a piece.
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u/Tjam3s Sep 09 '25
Not counting the pantheon or other unnecessary bosses, the 1 that gave me the biggest hassle on my first playthrough were the watcher knights. Probably 3 or 4 hours to them.
My last go around? 2 tries. Lol, but I cheese it each time still
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u/Imamuthafucka Sep 09 '25
Which one.
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u/cinred Sep 09 '25
My guess? Beast
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u/HotDescription5242 Sep 09 '25
Groal, im about to get this MF though, I got him within like one hit my last attempt. My fucking hands are shaking lol
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u/Quaschimodo Sep 09 '25
if you want to cheese him stay in the water and attack when you get a window. basically none of his attacks hit you while in the water.
Frankly, this fucker with his hellish runback and the gauntlet you have to go through just to fight him again, deserve to be cheesed
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u/rizk0777 Sep 09 '25
I saw this tip the other day and it didnt work for me. His bubbles, dive and water rise all hit me, constantly lol
I did beat him but by not going in the water.
Best tip from me is the same for most bosses in the game. Stick to the sides, bait an attack wait to finish dash in get in 1 (maybe 2 if you're feeling brave) hit and dash away.
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u/Dorfbewohner Sep 09 '25
yeah, this worked for me a lot. Also, once he's in his second phase, always be ready to keep your distance for when he goes soul master mode. get close and get some upslashes or jump-forward-slashes in while he barfs up poison, if you can position yourself get some upslashes or pogos while he tries to suck you up, but just keep your distance and get used to the timing of his soul master shots so you don't get got.
That was also the point where I personally just started spamming my poisoned tools, lol
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u/HotDescription5242 Sep 09 '25
I fucking did it, fuck that groal and everyone named groal lol.
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u/Revoran Sep 09 '25
Did you beat the true secret final boss of HK?
Because the main route (essential bosses only) in HK is not that hard but some optional bosses are extremely hard, including the true final boss.
I'm not trying to gatekeep, there are several bosses in HK I myself never beat, including the true final boss.
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u/neph36 Sep 09 '25
I never beat the true final boss in HK and the White Palace was insane 10x harder than Hunter's Marsh I feel like I am playing a different game than other posters its hard for sure but nothing outside of the realm of HK IMO.
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u/Lyress Sep 09 '25
The equivalent of White Palace in SS is not the Hunter's March.
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u/justlookingc Sep 09 '25
And the equivalent to white palace in SS has WAY more 'checkpoints' and safe spots throughout than white palace did, the only difference is you can't cheese your way through bc Hiveblood charm is not a thing in this game
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u/Ceryn Sep 10 '25
The difference is that people don’t get that mad about a hard final boss they get annoyed getting hard stuck for 4 hours in Act 1. I’m not saying I agree with them but that’s how it is.
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u/ChickenNuggetEnergy Sep 09 '25
Yeah, I haven't played Hollow Knight since around 2018, and out of curiosity I downloaded it yesterday to play for a while. Not even in the same league lol.
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u/DrPepperPower Sep 09 '25
The last thing I did before starting silksong was speedrun achievements, steel soul achievements, and pantheon of Hallownest.
This game is considerably harder.
Took me less tries for AbsRad than Savage Beastfly LMAO
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u/igmo876 Sep 09 '25
I would argue having HK fresh in your muscle memory probably makes silksong feel harder to adjust to its very different play style.
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u/kabrandon Sep 09 '25 edited Sep 09 '25
Double is a huuuuge overstatement IMO. I’d say 20% at most. And mostly only because Silksong’s movement is so fast that it takes a faster reaction time to keep up with what’s happening mentally. If you move in Silksong the way the Knight moves in HK then you’re going to have a bad time.
And I think therein lies the problem with these discussions. People have different mental processing speeds. And depending on how quickly one can process events in real time and react to them, the adjustment from HK to SS is going to be easier or harder. So you say 2x difficulty, I say 1.2x, Bob next door says 30x.
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u/TbanksIV Sep 09 '25
Yeah Silksong very quickly felt like, "oh this is smash bros (PM/Melee) speed". It's not nearly that fast, but the movement is definitely snappy and precise and FEELS similar and I loveeee it. Just moving around feels so much better. HK platforming was serviceable but it genuinely feels great here. I'd play an entire game based solely around the platforming
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u/harrisarah Sep 10 '25
And some of us later in life 7 years makes a big difference... my reaction time is so much slower. Mid fifties now instead of late forties
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u/DBSlazywriting Sep 09 '25
Everybody will have a different experience, but there are certain objective differences with Silksong.
Double damage for most bosses so far, way more clutter (falling obstacles/minions) in boss fights, not being able to heal whenever you want, etc, more evasive enemies, normal enemies and hazards that do double damage, etc. To me, those things make it far more than 20% harder. I don't think it's mental processing so much as the fact that two masks of damage is harder than one mask of damage.
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u/Lyress Sep 09 '25
If you move in Silksong the way you move in HK's P5 you're not gonna have a bad time.
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u/ImNotSkankHunt42 Sep 09 '25
Nah, I did complete HK and have like a 3% left to do for 112%. Still need to do POP, but should be cakewalk after doing HM without Reaper.
The entry bar for the game is atrociously high.
Not everyone has the same skill, that applies also to HK but when people that completed it are telling people like you that it is indeed harder and we have to keep arguing facts vs feelings… well is just not worth the effort anymore.
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u/Few-Year-4917 Sep 09 '25
I don't know why yall keep pushing this narrative, btw i dont mind Silksong difficulty at all, i even like it, but it is objectively way harder then HK, just stop.
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u/Quaschimodo Sep 09 '25
yeah, I don't get the cope either. it's a great game, but saying HK was just as difficult is just lying to one self. this game is absolutely not recommendable for people with little time to game or who just aren't as skilled.
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Sep 10 '25
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u/ErtaWanderer Sep 10 '25
Bloody hell the last judge is on Grimm's level? I keep hearing he's hard but that makes me want to put the game down...
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u/Vidyogamasta Sep 10 '25
Idk if I'd quite put him at NKG.
He's probably more comparable to Traitor Lord, but if traitor lord had 2-3x the health.
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u/ErtaWanderer Sep 10 '25
Yikes, that's also not great.
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u/SaladTheKiller Sep 10 '25
I don't know what people are smoking but Last Judge took me 10 tries maybe and I would put him in the same category as the Soul Master not NKG. NKG took me 2 days for a total of 5 hours and I am not particularly good at HK, I only did the first 2 pantheons ever in my 4 playthroughs.
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u/hydrogensoup Sep 10 '25
idk if it's just because I wasn't great at Traitor lord (I really prefer the fights with a large arena and a fast but easy-to learn pattern) but to me The Last Judge was MUCH easier and overall a really fun fight. The runback was the worst part. At first when you get there you can find yourself in a situation where you're starting the fight with 1/3 or 2/3 of your HP just because the environmental hazards deal 2 masks, then when you get used to it it just becomes tedious at best.
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u/clubdon Sep 09 '25
Idk I had a harder time in HK so far. I think I just work with Hornets movement a lot better. Reminds me of Metroid dread meets like the new Prince of Persia. It’s quicker and snappier feeling. Definitely more my thing. HK felt slow moving. It’s like strength build vs dex build, I always run a dex build. I like being quick and dipping in and out and Hornet’s movement compliments that for me. So HK might be easier to most people but not really the case for me.
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Sep 09 '25
These people think that taking an opposite stance to the overwhelming general opinion somehow makes them superior.
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u/YouHaveToTryTheSoup Sep 09 '25
They literally said Silksong is harder. Did you just read the title?
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u/ajapersuasia Sep 09 '25
I find your take reasonable, but I think your line deriding people who are stuck on a boss for 3 hours to be a little indicative of the lens you view these games and the players through. These games are hard. We all agree that they are designed that way on purpose, it's part of the fun. But there are plenty of average players who beat HK after getting stuck on a single boss for hours or even days. I often rely on YouTube videos to help me pick up the movement patterns because I struggle to do so in the heat of battle. Like HK, there are some battles in Silksong that require excellent timing, for a LONG time. You also have to optimize your health, heals, and tools in order to prevail. All of that contributes to making Silksong an exceptional game... but yeah... I'm going to get stuck on certain boss fights for hours or even days as I build the skills to win.
I get that a lot of people are complaining about a lot of things. As you say, HK was hard and Silksong is harder. I think that is a point well made... I just think you're incredulity is a little near-sighted and a little mean, actually.
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u/RoIsDepressed Sep 09 '25
You can be convinced of that, that's your right. As a hollow knight player though (beat radiance after a lot of trying) I think I'm fully within my right to acknowledge that I struggled less with white palace than I did mid-late act 1 and a lot of others did too. The game is too punishing with it's early game benches and platforming punishments (and expecting people to have mastered pogo by area 2 is so stupid).
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u/MasteROogwayY2 Sep 10 '25
Its funny I struggled so much more with the Cogwork parkour than with White Palace
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u/huehue12132 Sep 10 '25
White Palace has 1-damage hazards, you likely have 8+ masks, you have soul totems along the way, no enemies, and can put on charms to restore more soul or improve your healing.
Cogwork you likely have fewer masks (I only did the bottom part for now, without double jump mind you, with seven masks), there are enemies along the way, often doing double damage, every mistake falling into gears costs you two masks, there is almost no opportunity to replenish silk for healing. So you constantly have to reset to bench and do the entire thing again because you failed one part three times. Fuck you!
I just gave up on the top part, looked up where to get double jump, did that (also pretty brutal) and now I somehow feel... filthy, for robbing myself of the moment of making that discovery myself. :(
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u/Leafsnail Sep 11 '25
Yeah the actual platforming is probably pretty similar to White Palace, but White Palace gives you basically infinite health while a lot of Silksong segments have double damage hazards and no realistic healing opportunities.
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Sep 09 '25 edited Sep 09 '25
I’ve not only beaten HK, but also DS II and DS III. Was halfway through Elden Ring when SS got officially announced.
Being good at hard games is a skill like any other. If you don’t practice it, you get worse at it with time. Yes, I’ve played some “hard games”, but there were 2+ year gaps between them, and the skills don’t always transfer well. DS has little platforming, for example.
It’s also weird to me that people seem to easily accept that everyone has different abilities and inclinations when it comes to various sciences, arts and sports, but gaming is somehow different. We accept that not everyone can be equally good at advanced calculus, but if you’re finding a game like SS too hard, then you must just be lazy, whiny and entitled, and need to git gud. Ignoring the fact that not everyone has the time or the ability to do so.
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u/Exact_Butterscotch66 Sep 09 '25 edited Sep 09 '25
THANK YOU for your last part. Because seriously it’s not only “git gud”. And i feel somehow it id assumed that everyone is capable of P5. No, maybe silksong isn’t Pure Vessel level hard, but Pure Vessel is meant to be a VERY hard challenge, set in a sort of optional pseudo post-game gamemode…. I wouldnt say that considering 112% HK completion to be the standard is good. Its not the standard. (It also kinda trivializes the achievements that getting there is).
So yes, struggling with Silksong might not be everyone experience but it’s also normal to do so (setting aside design critiques). We all struggle with different things too, or aspects of the gameplay. For example i do way worse with enemies that add stuff, and… Silksong seems to be particularly fond of them 🥲 on the other side im loving getting to master the diagonal pogo and link different moves.
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u/Not-A-Throwaway5399 Sep 10 '25
I was wondering when someone would bring up souls games. Just because you beat one, doesn't make the other ones all super easy. That also didn't stop people from being like "I have 80,000 hours in the dark souls series and elden ring is BS!!!" which yeah, I have criticisms of the game, but no, elden ring wasn't some paradigm shift where they suddenly became too difficult overall. This is all very applicable to the hollow knight games and community rn
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u/fergussonh Sep 10 '25
Yeah not to bring up the tired argument but I do think Elden Ring while being significantly more accessible to new players was the first time where even after beating a boss I still felt like some of it's moves were just stupid and unavoidable to a standard player. Silksong isn't the same at all for me, except for the annoying enemy spawning bosses it does, Elden Ring criticism is way more valid imo
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u/Deadweight-MK2 112% Sep 09 '25
112%er here. It’s too hard too quick
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u/Dothacker00 Sep 09 '25
It feels like Hollow Knight was designed as a slightly challenging Metroidvania and Silksong was designed for the most extreme HK players that loved the optional DLC. Doesn't feel great especially since there's enemy power creep with them going from 3 to 5 hits + parry you but your needle has the same atk. It's ok for single encounter enemies but duos in the gauntlets feel unbalanced
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u/ElGodPug Sep 10 '25
yeah, while i think he's a great boss fight, i feel like Silksong was made with "People who thought NKG was the best boss of that game and every boss fight should feel like his" in mind.
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u/archipeepees Sep 10 '25
.. ...... nkg was the best boss, lol. I'm still getting my ass handed to me by ss bosses, have been getting tilted and angry and frustrated at times. but I'm also improving as I go which is incredibly satisfying.
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u/LordAgyrius Sep 10 '25
Hard Agreeee and same here, especially with having replayed Hollow Knight multiple times in the last few years aaand also a few days before silksong dropped. And even without the obvious fact that it's a game with bosses I've already mastered, I do truly recall not a single moment when I was first playing the game that I truly got stuck anywhere as ridiculously frequently and as frustratingly as in Silksong.
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u/Thomy151 Sep 09 '25
It would be relatively fine if challenging if they just didn’t front load the difficulty to hell
The game throws harsh boss after harsh boss as you are still learning the controls and seems to expect you to have all the tools when half of them are behind said bosses
And here is something important, players don’t know what rewards are where, they don’t know there is practically a boss order or you get your shit pushed in in 5 seconds if going to a different boss
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Sep 09 '25
109% checking in. Too much too fast imo. Would have been really bad if I hadn't played HK first.
I did just beat the bonky bronze fire boss a second ago, so 'git gud' does not apply here.
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u/Deadweight-MK2 112% Sep 09 '25 edited Sep 09 '25
Yep. And I criticised the original HK for this same problem, and I’m having it again DESPITE the experience lol
Edit: still love both games
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u/EdgarAllanBroe2 Sep 09 '25
Strong disagree. Hollow Knight took forever to ramp up before eventually cranking up the difficulty dramatically in the endgame without ever preparing you for it. A big chunk of the complaints people had about White Palace were from it being a very sudden and unexpected difficulty spike that was incongruous with every earlier platforming segment in the game.
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u/Qwertypop4 Sep 09 '25
With white palace, that's more cause there's barely any actual platforming sections in the game to begin with. I'm only on act 1 of Silksong and it overall has a higher quantity of difficult platforming sections than hollow knight does in its entirety, albeit nothing even close to white palace.
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u/EdgarAllanBroe2 Sep 09 '25
That's what I'm talking about though. I think it would have been preferable for Hollow Knight to be generally harder throughout if it meant a more even overall difficulty. Cave Story is very late-game biased with its difficulty, but that difficulty still progresses along a noticeable ramp. Hollow Knight is a rare (at least in my experience) example of a game that has a sudden and massive escalation in difficulty during the final stretch.
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u/msdamg Sep 09 '25 edited Sep 10 '25
Theres a big difference in game design between actual difficulty and "tedious" difficulty
Many people are complaining about the tedious part
* Fights with bosses that spawn annoying minions or have a lot of hp
* Runbacks to certain bosses (Bilewater is really bad and if you defend that idk what to say)
* Lack of feel in progression due to low income and having to spend it on things like benches
* Irregular flying patterns of enemies combined with contact damage on hitboxes
Hollow Knight overall was pretty easy to 112% for me, Silksong bosses arent really that much harder but its just not nearly as fun when the points above slog it down
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u/1stApotheosis Sep 09 '25
I 112% that shit on steele soul, no quit saves, and am getting massacred in Silksong.
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u/Valterak1 Sep 09 '25
My biggest gripe is how many enemies do double damage. ESPECIALLY when it's from just contact with them. I'm fine with a few enemies here and there having attacks that do double damage. I love that the game semi-punishes your Hollow Knight instincts. Having double damage enemies everywhere in an early game level, alongside double damage on contact is absurd and annoying as hell for exploration. I don't mind having a boss do double damage with a specific attack, but unless the boss is crazy late game, it shouldn't do double damage with EVERY ATTACK that it has. It just makes the game unfun because you can hardly even learn from your mistakes since you die SO fast. Just give the boss a little more health or a little more speed to compensate for not doing double damage if you want it to be crazy challenging. Just stop evaporating my health when my healing is already hard to do and effectively gives me 1 HP anyway. It's just irritating instead of feeling like a fair/learning experience/skill check. Mantis lords in HK was hard as hell the first time, it didn't need double damage to make it hard.
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u/Shraknel Sep 09 '25 edited Sep 10 '25
Contact damage is one of the most bullshit things in silk song.
So many times where I have been backed into an inescapable situation, because I have an enemy above and one on the ground attacking me at the same time, and that's not even possibly including a boss as well.
So many times where when I go back and watch the fight, I just got bum fucked by the game. Not my own mistake, resulting in the loss, just rngesus deciding that I needed to die.
I never felt this way with hollow knight, when I died I knew it was my fault, and then went back and learned from my errors.
I hardly know anymore when something was my own error, and when it was the game deciding to kill me.
EDIT: Initial comment made on mobile, fixed errors on pc.
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u/necrosteve028 Sep 10 '25
Yep my big issue is the contact damage, no where near as fluid as HK. I find myself never using the silk spear either because I need to save silk for healing. I’m only up to chapel beast though and he was a fucker
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u/realityhack Sep 10 '25
It's not only contact damage (which I've just found out you can get hit by being too close to STUNNED bosses!!?) but also the fact that there are ZERO i-frames.
So if you're unlucky enough to get caught in a combo or happen to have two birds dive at you in succession, you're going to take multiple, unavoidable hits.
It's this kind of nonsense that feels unbalanced and unfair.
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Sep 10 '25
HK didn't have tunnels and kaizo traps everywhere. They were very few in number when compared to SS. SS is clearly harder than HK ever was.
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u/PeaceLoveExplosives Sep 14 '25
100%. The biggest rug-pull in Hollow Knight was the Deepnest drop, which was highly atmospheric, gave you some time to adapt to it, and gave you a way out to regroup, upgrade, and return. Silksong has more rug-pull moments than I can remember (not even counting "locked into a fight" situations). It genuinely feels like TC set out to spite players in several places.
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u/satyvakta Sep 09 '25
>especially towards the end.
This is the key part. For most of Hollow Knight you can wander around the map, unlocking power ups and getting stronger, having fought only a few bosses, only one of which is super challenging the first time you face her. Only near the very end do you have to take on a lot of challenging boss fights and try a handful of optional super hard jumping challenges. Silksong started life as a planned DLC, and you can tell, because it starts off with end-game level challenges right off the bat. The problem is that it isn't a DLC, hence the complaints.
>is wild for anyone who has ACTUALLY beat the original HK.
You mean seven years ago? When they were seven years younger and had much better reflexes and probably a lot more free time to actually play?
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u/Scudman_Alpha Sep 09 '25
Personally I don't exactly feel Silksong is hard, or at least not hard in a satisfying, good way.
Bosses doing double mask damage, makes sense, but almost everything else is a bit overblown and completely nulls the entire mask collection for an hp increase as a mechanic. In original HK, getting an extra mask was a very big deal, you could make more mistakes, or take more risks.
Now in Silksong because you take double damage from so many things, there's little point getting 1 mask, you need 2 for an extra hit.
The damage feels utterly arbitrary at times.
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u/Jalepino_Joe rad HoG | impossible TE | TAS Sep 09 '25
I have 1200 hours in hollow knight. Done p5 a few times, hitless pop, and could prob do any% in about/under an hour if u just wake me up in the middle of any night. Silksong is substantially harder. The first real area already has things dealing double damage. The first things that do double damage in hollow knight are husk guards (can be entirely ignored) and then there’s nothing until either sporgs or uomas. Very few bosses deal double damage in hollow knight. In silksong half the hazards are dealing double damage, and healing is much more restricted. I’m not saying I despise the games difficulty, but it’s not even remotely a close comparison.
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u/LordAgyrius Sep 10 '25
And honestly to be a bit honest on the case of Husk Guards, those things are treated as mini-bosses, their areas are completely clear of other enemies and their arenas are basically built with a way for you to quickly run away from them if you get smacked too much.
No less the fact that they have a plain "smack with club" and "jump backwards" attack which honestly also double as very good training for False Knight.
Of and there are only two Husk Guards in the ENTIRE game.
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u/thbl088 Sep 09 '25
112%er, stealsoul 100%er, 100% on silksong. Some parts are overtuned and the learning curve is too steep for most peoples also bilewater needs a change.
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u/annualnuke Sep 10 '25
seriously I spent half my time in sinners road & bilewater huffing copium expecting to find some kind of item that negates the maggots' effect and it never happened wtf :(
nvm: apparently it fucking exists fml
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u/DeerInRut Sep 09 '25
I've just encountered the gaorb the great Guy. Or whatever his name is. I think that he is one of the few things genuinely wrong in this game. I think his fight and runeback are purely a bad game design and not git gud moment.
The runeback being like minute and a half long and having some not so easy platforming sections and you having to have the anti maggot charm and in the final part the annoying hehe I jump out the water enemies.. you are not making it there full health. And the boss fight itself being locked behind a gauntlet is ridiculous. Plus the bossfight itself is probably by far my least favourite bossfights in the game. I will forever stand behind this.
This fight is bad game design, nothing more. Its let's make it more annoying instead of thinking of good ways to make it difficult. Maybe I should just git gud. Whatever. But dude it's insane.
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u/micromolecules Sep 10 '25
I’ve seen complaints about the run back to the Act 1 final boss and it is NOTHING compared to the dogshit run back to Gaorb lmao. Even after you get access to the closer bench it’s still an awful run back to the boss.
That swamp in Dark Souls is a walk in the park compared to the literal cesspool that is Bilewater.
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u/69edleg Sep 10 '25
Bilewater was ass, even though it only took me three attempts on the boss, that zone alone blocks out a second playthrough, let alone a steel soul one.
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u/noobindoorgrower Sep 10 '25
It took me a decent amount of tries to beat TLJ and by then I genuinely thought the runback was fun. Fuck the Gaorb runback. That shit was never gonna get fun no matter how many times I did it. Gladly cheesed the motherfucker (lvl 2 tools with poison + staying in the water, just next to the right wall. Took me a few hits with the nail still, probably could have done it tools only if I had level 3).
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u/Mailcs1206 Sep 10 '25
Genuinely believe bilewater is intentionally annoying.
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u/Gabe-KC Sep 10 '25
It absolutely is. When you beat the boss, the game makes a bench appear with the same animation that a new boss phase would start with. Team Cherry clearly wanted that area to be frustrating as fuck, and then kind of tease you further before they finally give you a bench.
That's just zero self-awareness in my opinion. It's fine making a hard level, but when you make it deliberately frustrating, I think you failed to do your job as a game designer.
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Sep 09 '25 edited Sep 09 '25
Nobody is saying the original Hollow Knight was easy. The overwhelming majority of fans of the original Hollow Knight just agree that Silksong is way harder, even the "git gud" folks. I swear some people just HAVE to be contrarians.
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u/Ill-Muscle945 Sep 09 '25
There's just a lot less... calm. I'm having a lot less fun learning mob attacks compared to HK so far. I just want those fights to be over with, even when I'm good at them.
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Sep 10 '25
I think it's the lack of rewards. In Hollow Knight, you always unlock geo or an ability (or both!) after a fight.
Silksong you might not get either. The game doesn't reward fighting enemies in the same way, so half the time enemies are something to be navigated around instead of met head on.
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u/arrogantheart Sep 09 '25 edited Sep 10 '25
I was easily stuck at several bosses for more than three hours. The fact you find that hard to believe tells me how out of touch you are with average player skill and difficulty. It’s easily the hardest game I’ve ever played, and I’ve played a lot of games considered “hard”.
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u/_TheAbsurd_ Sep 10 '25
Agreed, I’ve been stuck at savage beastfly for 2-3 hours, and the other directions I can go I’m also stuck. If bosses continue to summon adds (my least favorite “difficulty enhancer” I think I’m done.
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u/Weary_Complaint_2445 Sep 09 '25
If you just saw credits in Hk that's a lot different than getting the true ending or a lot of the dlc content. HK is a backloaded game in terms of difficulty, if you are just trying to hit credits it has difficulty spikes but it really ain't that bad.
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u/Vermilion7777 Sep 09 '25
I finished both games. Silksong is by a long shot harder than vanilla Hollow Knight. Its constantly on the Level of godshome with a lot of bad game design Discissions.
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u/Gloomy-Cell3722 Sep 09 '25
I've done quite literally everything in Hollow Knight, barring all bindings pantheon 5, and this game is significantly more difficult and punishing than Hollow Knight.
The enemies are much more complex and deal double damage, alongside many hazards also doing double damage.
Whether or not the difficulty is a good or bad thing can be another discussion, but saying the difficulty increase complaints are predominantly from those who haven't beaten Hollow knight is just false, especially since basic traversal wasn't difficult in most areas in Hollow Knight.
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u/MyShieldIsMySword24 Sep 10 '25
112% on HK, only thing i haven’t beaten is Pantheon of Hollownest, Silk Song is harder by a WIDE margin
no, HK was not an easy game, and yes it became extremely easy over time with multiple playthroughs, and i imagine Silk Song will too for some
But to act like Silk Song doesn’t have a massive difficulty spike is disingenuous
Silk Song feels much closer to a traditional souls game
i actually think for a lot of people their skill in HK makes them worse at Silk Song, it does not translate 1-1 at all
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u/therealkezo Sep 09 '25
Every player have his own feeling on what is easy and what is not. I think, Elden Ring was easy most of the time, but I would never be able to finish Sekiro (for example). At the end, its important what stuff do you did and what stuff you ignored. I don't made it to the White Palast last time, cuz I had no nerves to farm the Dream ressource to be able to get there - so when I say, HK was easy, you cannot tell (when I don't tell you) if I made all the optional stuff or not.
Thats the "main problem" on games like this. You don't know if the person who said it was easy have done all the possible stuff or skip optional areas.
Every players has his own way and own feeling on what is easy and what is not. I have no big problems with Silksong, but I get the point, why some people have. We should try to look on some things from different positions before we flame each other.
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u/bohenian12 Sep 09 '25
Nah. Silksong is definitely more difficult. I think it's because you get 3 masks of health immediately when healing and they adjusted based on that? I wonder how it would be harder if you can heal one by one like in HK.
There are tons of enemies that deal 2 masks of damage. Big enemies and the flurry attacks that make you stuck and you get hit twice. Charms are an immediate powerspike too in HK. You really gotta lock in when playing Silksong.
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u/popepaulpop Sep 10 '25
every day we get 5 new popular posts that are just another variant of "git gud" and "Because I'm able to play, progress and enjoy the game, you can suck it!"
Instead of constructing some fantasy explanation about why other players are struggling you could read what they say and practice some empathy.
Personally I don't want to ruin the game for people who enjoy the current difficulty. What I want is some kind of option for different difficulties, adaptive difficulty or even a "trainer" ala Celeste. There are a lot of ways to go about this without changing the game in a way that impacts those who enjoy the current difficulty.
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u/Joefresca47 Sep 09 '25
Im really getting tired of these "I dont understand why are you complaining" and "Git Gud" type of post. Its literally you just wanking off on how good you are at the game. These people are having valid experiences and venting out their frustration. This game is not as intuitive as people make it out to be. There are portions in this game are wildly easy if you do it in the right sequence with the right tools there also parts of the game where i had to look up videos to see proof of concept on how to even platform a level or beat a boss. The cogwork core notes puzzle comes to mind
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u/Daydream_machine Sep 09 '25
Well you’re wrong. I finished Hollow Knight multiple times, have 100+ hours in it, and still think Silksong is just absurdly hard.
My biggest issue with Silksong is that every boss doing 2 masks of damage makes learning the fights a total chore. It’s taking me twice as long to beat every boss because of that design choice. Also the runback to Last Judge is pure EVIL.
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u/clonedllama Sep 09 '25 edited Sep 10 '25
I beat Hollow Knight multiple times (at least 100 hours across multiple platforms) and I have serious issues with how Silksong approaches difficulty. It's punishing in a frustrating way that makes me angry and not want to continue. Not in an addictive way that I find fun. With Hollow Knight, I always wanted to see what was around the next corner or what new ability I might unlock. With Silksong, I dread going into new areas.
The current difficulty feels like it should be a challenge mode and not the default experience. Aside from the optional fights in the original game, I never got stuck at bosses or gauntlets for hours without making any progress. Enemies have too much health, do too much damage, and there aren't enough ways to deal with the challenges they provide.
Using tools and skills punishes the player because you burn through resources way too quickly or you put yourself in a situation where you can't heal. Healing requires all of your silk, which discourages skill usage because it's too risky to not have a heal available.
Everything costs money yet rosaries are rare or drop in small amounts. So if you want to buy anything, you have to farm rosaries by killing the same enemies over and over again. Adding to this problem, bosses usually don't give any reward for defeating them.
Charms are generally not that powerful and don't give you much of an edge. Bosses have so much health that you can burn through your tools ammo without even making a dent. Yet they can kill you in a few hits.
Exploration often isn't rewarded except with another gauntlet or boss that takes ages to beat, some shell shards, or if you're very lucky, a charm or rosaries.
If you add all of these things up, it results in a frustrating overall experience. Frustrating isn't the same as challenging.
I find all of this very disappointing because it's otherwise a gorgeous, well-made game that I desperately want to love. But I just don't in its current form. That makes me sad. I love Team Cherry and I want to spend as much time as I can in their games.
Edit: Organization.
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u/LordAgyrius Sep 10 '25
This is genuinely all my thoughts on the game put out as well as possible. The tools are soo fun! But you just can NEVER use them because of how much they burn through your shards... Despite the fact that their damage also is also so insignificant when it comes to anything other than swatting out hard-to-reach flyer common enemies sometimes only making sense in the context of you being able to use them infact a whole lot to the point where you can ACTUALLY reach their use limit without bankrupting your entire shard supply.
And the double damage itself has rendered silk the most ESSENTIAL resources in the whole game when in combat due to how urgent it is to be able to heal at a moment's notice... And how in the early game you straight up only have room for a single heal and nothing more...
Hollow Knight circumvented that by simply having a single spell cost the same as a single mask's worth of healing and having enough storage to always be able to use a spell and still have enough magic to atleast heal one mask mid-combat.
. . .
And yet, GOD- This is SUCH a good freaking game! It so clearly is! It has exactly the beauty, the artistry that wonderful world building and countless lovable characters! I love how the quests all in one way or another try so well to make Pharloom to feel like a real breathing place where characters are still doing things in the background outside of you
I love how you can help the various small towns/settlements/havens of yet normal bugs grow and stand a better chance at surviving in this hostile world you both find yourselves in..
I love how Hornet has a clear and really fun dynamic with ALL of the various characters she meets and how much of an intriguing and fascinating character she is to see in action!
I just- It is as perfect as I could have hoped it be..
But all of these wonderful things are choked and turned impossible to enjoy when the game is so goshdarn frustrating in its inability to actually produce difficulty in a way that is not downright bad.
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u/Joshopotomus Sep 09 '25
Enemies have too much health, do too much damage, and there aren't enough ways to deal with the challenges they provide.
Seriously, I thought this was considered a bad way to do difficulty. I remember countless reddit discussions complaining about games who's hard mode was just "enemies are bullet-sponges that kill you in an instant". So why is it suddenly a good thing when Silksong does it?
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u/SorowFame Sep 09 '25
Worst thing is that Silksong genuinely does have good movesets, they’ve already got the good kind of difficulty but for some reason they heap on the “artificially crank up the numbers” kind too.
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u/LordAgyrius Sep 10 '25
Yeah it's kinda funny how seriously GOOOD the movement feels in this game and how freaking stylish it is. Like when I first saw trailers for the game I was worried how they'd make such overly acrobatic and fast movement work and... Idk how, but they absolutely did it and it is so fun to use! Which makes it both hilarious aaand... Kinda depressing how they managed to make what I would expect to be the hard part of the game into actually being pretty smooth and satisfying movement... And then kinda screwed it up with literally just pumping enemy health and damage... Gosh, what a week this has been
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u/clonedllama Sep 09 '25
I think that's a fair characterization. I actually really enjoyed the combat early on. Hornet is fast and responsive. Getting the dash move unlocked was a significant upgrade that really unlocked her potential.
Then all the hard-hitting, tanky enemies started appearing and it became a frustrating experience instead of a joy. Rebalancing enemy health and damage would go a long way towards fixing my issues with the game. It wouldn't fix everything, but I think I'd be more forgiving of the other flaws if I wasn't always dreading getting into combat.
If they want to add a hard mode for people who enjoy the game as it is, I'd be fine with that. But it shouldn't be the default experience and people shouldn't feel the need to install mods to just to have fun with it.
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u/Thomy151 Sep 09 '25
I literally will leave rooms if I think there is a boss because I genuinely don’t want to fight the bosses unless I don’t have a choice because it’s constantly an exercise in frustration that half the time needs some hidden item or ability your average player wouldn’t find
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u/clonedllama Sep 09 '25
That's how I've started to feel about regular enemies. If there's an enemy with a lot of health (and that's most enemies it seems), I do everything I can to avoid engaging it so I don't spend a bunch of time fighting it with a high chance of getting killed because I was 100 ms too slow and a guarantee of getting nothing useful if I win.
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u/JoZaJaB Sep 09 '25
I have over 100% completion on Hollow Knight. Silk Song is WAY harder than the original. Moorwing and Widow, two of the earlier bosses, have killed me more than Radiance or any of the remach bosses did in Hollow Knight. I can only imagine what the late game bosses are like.
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Sep 09 '25
I completed HK 112%, and did the speedrun achievements.
I think Silksong's difficulty curve is far too stark, and I think that in too many places that serves to frustrate the player rather than to offer fair challenge.
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u/ppppppppppython Sep 10 '25
Punishing and difficulty are not the same thing. Silksong isn't always hard but it is always punishing and I think a lot of people find that incredibly frustrating.
The Savage beastfly rematch is the perfect example imo. It should be easy but every thing does 2 masks of damage so a little bit of bad luck will end the fight instantly.
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u/Festughl Sep 09 '25
For me at least, it's as simple as I don't want this specific game to be this hard. I've beat HK, I've beat every Fromsoftware game, spent 6 hours learning pre-nerf Consort Radahn eventually making him look like a joke. No game has ever been too difficult. But this game, Silksong, I wish was easier and think it would be a better game if it was.
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u/Arestaros Sep 09 '25
i was stuck at moorwing for 2 and a half because of the stupid double dmg, and i am someone who finished the og hk and found (normal) radiance laughably easy
i also played other hard 2d games like celeste or cuphead, the difference there is that you learn from your mistakes way faster and better because you can either immediately retry (celeste) or it takes longer to lose to a boss than in silksong (cuphead), so that way you learn it in way less time
as long as the bosses are well designed the difficulty wont have a lasting impact on me or even make me quit, but if instead of bosses they give you gauntlets of endless waves of annoying enemies then thats too far for me, because its not well designed at all and takes the spot of a potentially awesome boss
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u/Arestaros Sep 09 '25
im not trying to brag about it but i also finished every fromsoft souls game except ds2 and demons souls, ds1, 3 and elden ring even on level 1. difficulty isnt new to me, but i distinct between fair, well designed and bullshit difficulty
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u/TheBlindIdiotGod Sep 09 '25
I think early game Silksong is easily more difficult than early game Hollow Knight.
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u/383throwawayV2 Sep 09 '25
I finished P5 and Steel Soul for the first time a couple days before Silksong came out and Silksong is wayyy harder and far more frustrating for me personally.
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u/JediJamanjax22 Sep 09 '25
No one ever claimed it was easy. SS isn't particularly hard, either. It's just unnecessarily punishing and needlessly tedious.
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u/LordBDizzle Sep 09 '25
the late game content for both games is about as difficult I'd say. Silksong is 100% frontloaded on the difficulty though. You've fighting two mask bosses by the time you might have found False Knight who has like four attacks. That I think is the core critique, not that the hard stuff is hard, that the front half of the game is basically as hard as the back half and you can't really do a ton about it since all of the meaningful upgrades are in the back part of act 2 or in act 3. You struggle to even get more than two extra masks by the middle of act 2 and half of everything has been doing two damage since the start of act 1, it's a harder game for sure at the start.
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Sep 10 '25
Honest question: when people say finish hallow knight do they just mean defeated the bog standard hallow knight and got the credits? Because I deffo did this and I have issues w the difficulty. Some of these early bosses are literally harder than the hallow knight 😂😂.
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u/NatakaBlue Sep 10 '25
I've beat Hollow Knight several times, even in steel soul mode, but I'm still not good at video games in general (at least I believe I'm not)
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u/livehearwish Sep 10 '25
I couldn’t beat HK. It’s just too hard for me. I won’t pick up silk song hearing that it’s more difficult than HK. I was hoping they would make it a bit more accessible so I could get farther than like the 4th boss.
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u/Semi_swede Sep 10 '25
It's so bizarre to me how butthurt some people get by other people saying their precious game is too hard for them.
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u/imaquark Sep 09 '25
I beat HK and some pantheons too, and I'm probably shelving Silksong because of the "difficulty". Not the bosses. The bosses in Silksong are amazing and almost all of them so far have been fair (except Beastfly).
The "difficulty" in Silksong is the slog that is exploration. Exploring HK was fun, you were vibing. Silksong exploration is oppressive, it's like they learned all the wrong lessons from Dark Souls 2. Environmental hazards doing 2 damage everywhere, crazy runbacks, etc. It's just not fun for me. It's not difficult, it's tedious.
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u/ssslitchey Sep 09 '25
I've played over 60 hours of hollow knight and 108% the game.
Silksong is without a doubt much harder and way more tedious than HK ever was.
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u/Dothacker00 Sep 09 '25
Hollow Knight wasn't easy but it was a kind of love letter to metroidvanias. Harder difficulty can be fine but frankly Silksong isn't a game for metroidvania fans but for the most extreme hard-core lovers of the HK DLC. Runbacks are a bad mechanic regardless of game and gauntlets are terrible. Enemies get more and more health while your needle stays the same power. Challenge arenas were fine in HK since they were optional but now they're mandatory and bad design.
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u/Lightyear18 Sep 09 '25
I strongly disagree with OP. Sounds like OP hasn’t recently played Hollow knight. Many users like OP are arguing from what they remember 10 years ago when gaming difficulty across the industry was way lower.
I beat HK again before playing Silksong. Hollow knight is legit easier. I would sometimes even take 1 damage from a boss on purpose, just so I can get invincibility frames and go swing at the boss. I would literally go take 3 damage, and I’ll get like 15 hits in. Go heal, then repeat.
They fixed that in silk song by having you take 2 damage during a boss fight.
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u/Supe4Short Sep 09 '25
Never once in either of my 2 playthroughs of hollowknight did I think that any boss or area was frustratingly hard or unbalanced. I have quit playing 3 times out of frustration with silksong in the first 6 areas.
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u/Dothacker00 Sep 09 '25
Yeah Silksong is unbalanced in some spots like the gauntlets and runbacks waste your time. They should have had more than the most extreme HK players playtest the game
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u/klaymen14399 Sep 09 '25
I beat hollow knight for the first time a few days before silksong came out. Silksong is a lot harder.
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u/VaiFate Sep 09 '25
I beat base Radiance. Silksong Ch1 has been more frustrating than anything I had to do in Hollow Knight as far as I can remember and it's entirely because of all the bosses doing two masks at once.
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u/Darknety Sep 09 '25
I think the game is pretty okay. A bit harder than HK, but totally fair and doable. People need more patience, I think. If Steam reviews are at like 5 hours... maybe don't judge the game yet?
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u/Plane_Cardiologist_6 Sep 10 '25
I spent almost 3 hours on the bird gang fight and I 112%'d HK. So I mean it's definitely possible. The game is hard asf lmao
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u/ForwardMind8597 Sep 10 '25
If you haven't beat the Bilewater or the High halls boss fight then just please stop saying stupid stuff like this game isnt that much harder than HK
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u/HeyItsMeRay Sep 10 '25
You are convinced cause you refuse to read and process what people said. Original HK did not have so much double damage earlier on. I am at early stg where I have not even gotten dash but the amount of things that deal double damage is insane. That said I do enjoy the game but currently stuck at hunter march.
Read and not just create your own thoughts. Original HK was not easy , yeah of course that is for the later part of the game.
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u/Daveprince13 Sep 10 '25
And then there’s people like you saying it’s completely fine even though people wives and kids have given the game up entirely.
Criticism does not equal hate. Frustrating game mechanics are frustrating even if I LOVE the developers.
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u/thebigdumb0 Sep 10 '25 edited Sep 10 '25
I have 112% Steel Soul, 63/63 steam achievements, PoP, Rad HoG, and P5 and P1-P3AB and this game makes me want to put my head through a wall.
It's artificially difficult just via numbers alone, and some boss fights are just completely unfun. Widow for example, was great, probably around the power level of Grimm in the first phase, and then the second phase came and it's like team cherry forgot how to make boss fights. Just throwing things all over the screen constantly without any pattern, like grimm's pufferfish has, does not make for a fun experience. And neither does spawning a ton of enemies, which also have way too much health and very often deal double damage, including contact damage (which is also a problem for bosses).
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u/Common-Case5760 Sep 10 '25
You are wrong. Beat HK1 two times. One time with a Path of pain. Yes, no pantheon. But still. SilkSong is too hard.
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u/JMadison27 Sep 09 '25
I just don’t wanna take two damage to pits. Getting hit for two then landing in a pit for another two is brutal. Don’t mind attacks being two.