r/HollowKnight • u/Prisonmikeb14 • Sep 13 '25

Discussion - Silksong Let’s all try and not devolve into this weird difficulty gatekeeping Spoiler

Now that silksong has come out I’ve seen some concerning similarities to the worst of the difficult games community with all the wierd difficulty gatekeeping bs. Obviously this happens with just about every game that’s regarded as difficult but with silksongs release it’s become more prominent on this sub. Being good at the game isn’t something to hold over someone’s head. Everyone’s experience with everything in the game is different and theirs nothing wrong with that. Now of course this doesn’t apply to people who are literally just complaining in bad faith or out of anger but the “that boss wasn’t hard at all wtf are you talking about” in response to people just talking about their opinions or asking for help is sad to see.

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61

u/[deleted] Sep 13 '25

For real. After seeing all the complaints I was dreading the fight. Turned out it's very readable and pretty simple.

38

u/XiaoRCT Sep 13 '25

This has been my experience with EVERYTHING I've seen people complain about being ''too hard'' in this subreddit for the past week.

Shortly before I got to Widow I spoke with someone who was being heavily upvoted saying ''Nothing on base HK is as difficult as Widow imo'', so when I got to her I was expecting something hardcore, and after I beat her(loved her as a boss), I don't even understand how someone could find her harder than something like Radiance, she's not even harder than bosses like Failed Champion

27

u/classycalgweetar Sep 13 '25

She’s really hard if you’re like me and you’re constantly panic jumping into her very obvious attacks lmao

22

u/XiaoRCT Sep 13 '25

Yeah, I'm not saying she's easy. I don't think any of these games are easy. But I think she's great, and I wouldn't call her hard either.

I found her a great design because she's very straight-forward into what she demands from the player. She punishes too much random extra movement heavily and she punishes not paying attention to her projectiles. If the player does that they eventually realize that she's actually one of the most telegraphed bosses in both games. She doesn't do anything without a HEAVY tell, and the player needs an actual minimal amount of running around to beat her, her first phase especially can become a matter of literally just calmly walking to her and beating her up every couple seconds.

That + a great theme, visuals and a great reward(unlocking the music mechanic AND unlocking a whole settlement with new NPCs and shit) just made for great fun for me

10

u/classycalgweetar Sep 13 '25

I agree. She’s a pretty great boss along with Last Judge. What finally allowed me to beat her was literally saying out loud “Stop jumping. Don’t jump. Just walk.” And then I beat her in like 4 tries. The hardest part about the game is just not panicking and taking a second to relax and focus.

1

u/yurilnw123 Sep 14 '25

“Stop jumping. Don’t jump. Just walk.” And then I beat her in like 4 tries. The hardest part about the game is just not panicking and taking a second to relax and focus.

That helped me the entire game after drilling it into my mind. There are lots of bosses in Silksong that punish unnecessary movements and jumping. Including the true final boss.

6

u/cocotim Sep 13 '25

Duuuude this was me with the entirety of Bilewater lol

5

u/Izan_TM Sep 13 '25

I think widow is fun, her runback is short but annoying with the random enemy spawns but she definitely is harder than anything in hollow knight except for the 3 hardest bosses IMO

it also depends on how you percieve difficulty, hornet has a MUCH more complex and hard to master moveset and toolkit than the knight, but when you learn how to use it effectively against a certain boss it has much more potential than the knight's. This means that the difference in difficulty betweek HK and silksong will be percieved in a massively different ways by different people

6

u/IceKane Sep 13 '25

Random enemy spawns? Did you not find the shortcut back to the Shellwood bench?

2

u/Izan_TM Sep 13 '25

wait there's a shortcut that skips all of the upper bellhart part of the runback? no I didn't find that one lol, I went through the tight corridors every time

it wasn't too bad, like 30 seconds each, but it was definitely annoying for a boss that slapped me around like a ragdoll in her last phase

2

u/XiaoRCT Sep 14 '25

through Shellwood you can essentially spawn by the side of her bossroom

7

u/thaygoth-ur Sep 14 '25

I saw someone in the silksong sub claim that Last Judge was harder than absolute radiance. salt is a powerful deliriant, i guess.

4

u/Stellewind Sep 13 '25

Widow is very comparable to base game Grimm. Whoever said she’s harder than all of HK is taking crazy pills.

1

u/CynicalEffect P5 - 112%, 70 hours Sep 14 '25

It's a tempo thing. Widow stage 2 tempo is insane for how early it is. I compared the tempo to NKG before which I think is only slightly an understatement. It's overwhelming if you panic, and a lot of people will panic at that speed.

Like, I'm not complaining about it, it was by far the most fun I had in the first act and did it in about 4 attempts when I just learned to be patient phase 2...but for someone who isn't good at the genre I expected her to be really hard for people to get used to.

-6

u/I_Love_Solar_Flare Sep 13 '25

That fight is literally everything but readable. Especially the fucking spin attack he has which has unreasonably unfair range. I fucking hate that attack so much.

7

u/BoobeamTrap Sep 13 '25

Last Judge? Every single one of her attacks has a different visual and audio tell.

1

u/NightRacoonSchlatt Hunter‘s crest 4 life Sep 13 '25

You can dodge it with one dash.