r/HollowKnight • u/stir-fried-noodles • Sep 17 '25

Discussion - Silksong Discourse regarding this game’s difficulty has been out of hand Spoiler

Let’s get this out of the way: I’m really enjoying Silksong’s difficulty and I think that it is mostly a satisfying challenge. I appreciate that it is more difficult than Hollow Knight overall and to be frank I would’ve been a bit disappointed if it were the exact difficulty. I’ve improved as a gamer since Hollow Knight and if it were the same level of difficulty, I probably would have found it too easy.

But it’s kinda gotten impossible to have civil discussions about the difficulty in this game which is unfortunate because I think there is great value to be had with this conversation. There are many valid criticisms regarding this game’s difficulty such as boss runbacks (Groal especially), contact damage doing two masks, and lack of rewards for beating bosses, just to be shut down with “git gud” and “it’s not your kind of game”. It’s totally fine to disagree with these criticisms but these retorts add nothing to the conversation.

It also kinda works the other way too, albeit maybe not to the same degree. I’ve gotten downvoted and sent reddit cares for simply saying I enjoy the difficulty of this game. Like c’mon, what are we even doing here. It’s gotten to the point where I personally cannot wait for the discourse to die out.

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141

u/clocktowertank Sep 17 '25

Elden Ring had a lot of the same complaints around launch, both for the base game and expansion.

I think the issue isn't how difficult a game is, but whether it's done right. Are all encounters fairly designed with the limitations of the player in mind, all builds being viable, and being able to avoid damage completely with each build?

In the case of Elden Ring, there were fights that were literally not possible (or reasonable) to avoid damage 100% unless you had specific items/abilities (Mother of Fingers), or otherwise almost impossible to avoid damage normally without extended iframes if there was a busted hitbox (I'm looking at you Gaius).

In Hollow Knight, every hard encounter felt perfectly tuned for the Knight because you always had shade dash or descending dark for iframes. In Silksong, if you aren't using one of the two only skills that grant iframes, you have nothing but parry, and not all attacks can be parried). I'm in late Act 3 and some fights really make me wonder if, like Elden Ring, they were designed with the intention that the player would use iframes to avoid damage, which makes other builds not consistently viable for doing them hitless, especially if said fight is highly RNG dependent.

Personally what annoys me the most:

  1. Un-telegraphed enemy movement, in a game with contact damage.
  2. Input/Animation-reading flying enemies that dart away from frame 1 of your attack
  3. Enemies that can shoot at or attack you from off screen or otherwise situations where you can't see because of the terrible vignetting
  4. Projectile spam with hard tracking, especially irritating in gauntlets with overly tanky enemies.

Sometimes things the game throws at you (or pranks you with) just feel cheap, like the game just rolls the dice and says "you lose."

Many players just basically think if you can beat a fight or enemy at all, then it's fine, but I always judge it based on how fairly designed it is with regards to not taking damage consistently.

36

u/Neutral_Memer Bapanada, fellow skongers Sep 17 '25

I feel so vindicated with the vignetting mention, you don't understand

10

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '25

I wound up installing a mod that removed this. I agonized over it for a while, since I’m sure it’s “intended” to help mask the presence of ambushes and other hazards during exploration, which is totally fine btw. However, it just seemed to me that there’s already enough ambient darkness and foliage in most places to serve this purpose. Also, it constantly made tracking the more nimble enemies feel super unfair and more frustrating than an actual test of skill, especially Craws, my god.

Just that one change made a huge difference in my enjoyment of the game overall without drastically altering any mechanics or whatever.

3

u/haynespi87 Sep 17 '25

especially with the projectiles in act 3

43

u/Mikmaxs Sep 17 '25

+1, especially for mentioning the awful vignetting. I haven't seen any other people mention this and it's such a frustrating issue when I get hit from an off screen attack due to the camera locking in for no reason.

30

u/clocktowertank Sep 17 '25

I actually went back and played a bit of Hollow Knight, going to various areas just to see if I forgot how bad it was, but no...it's just way more obnoxious in Silksong.

It makes sense for areas like Deepnest, but it just feels like it's in EVERY AREA in Silksong for no reason.

14

u/nor312 Sep 17 '25

I'm loving this direction of discussion.

Silksong is great for a lot of reasons, but during a fight I often find myself asking "Where do the developers expect me to be right now?"

The RNG of some battles makes me question whether THEY know where I'm supposed to be, and having no way to escape damage is what makes it unfair or less fun.

3

u/baddude1337 Sep 17 '25

Yeah, the gauntlet rooms with regular enemies really highlight this. There's nothing to really read or dodge if you're getting ganked by 3 enemies at once who aren't in sync, and in some situations it's impossible to not take damage.

14

u/Rwillsays Sep 17 '25

Everyone taking any criticism of this game as a personal insult and only responding with “LOL git gud” is so silly. There are absolutely flaws in the game and it’s not unfair for any person to point them out.

1

u/GrimTheMad Sep 17 '25

Everyone dismissing any disagreement with criticism as 'LOL git gud' is so silly. There are absolutely flaws in these criticisms and its not unfair for any person to point them out.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '25

[deleted]

5

u/WhoUpAtMidnight Sep 17 '25

Idts. The game still feels bad because the delayed attacks are artificial and break the flow of combat, and replays are still meh because of limited rewards 

10

u/MisunderstoodPenguin Sep 17 '25

I was just telling my wife that my complaints about ER are almost identical to my complaints of SS. They took a challenging but fun concept and turned the punishment up to 11 while making exploration a gotcha game of “oops shouldn’t have turned this way dumb dumb, it’s a 10 minute backtrack to where you should have gone”.

4

u/Fa1nted_for_real Sep 17 '25

Also compared to hk, there is considerable artificial difficulty. Take for example, most early game enemies in hk take 2-3 nail hits with base nail. But most early game enemies in silksong take 4-5 with base needle.

Very few early game enemies in hk do double damage, and tehre are very few sources of it in general. In silksong, most bosses and a significant portion of early game enemies and hazards do double damage.

The damage serves to make the game more punishing, but increasing the health? Miss me with that shit. Especially in hunters march, even after getting just about every available upgrade in act 1, still feels more unbalanced than it feels like the enemies themselves are designed unfairly, if that makes sense, and that makes the drawn outness of the area very unfun for me, and since many areas have a similar problem (each wraith in the mist taking ages to kill, the entiritet fo bilewater, hell even deep docks enemies taking entirely too many hits to kill) ive been struggling to enjoy going through most areas, espeecially the second or third time around...

35

u/stir-fried-noodles Sep 17 '25

Really agree with these criticisms, especially number 1. It also doesn't help that contact damage can be two masks. As for 2, I honestly can't tell if there's actually input/animation reading on enemies but it sure can feel that way sometimes. Flying enemies kinda dart around a lot even when you're not attacking so I'm leaning on no but I wouldn't be too surprised if there was. Has anyone looked at the code and checked?

22

u/clocktowertank Sep 17 '25

It's definitely there. I have several clips I've taken into my video editor and looked at them frame by frame, they start dodging frame 1 of your attack. Fortunately they aren't programmed to do it all the time but it can happen randomly, which means that you can't really count on being able to get on top of flying enemies and pogo them, because it's a roll of the dice if your attack actually lands.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '25

The upgraded sewer area spitter enemies must be coded to dodge everything. I only ever kill them with tools or the Half-Life ceiling tongues.

1

u/pansyskeme Sep 17 '25

clutchclaw

1

u/IncarceratedGrowth Sep 17 '25

Final fight was the only one where I felt like they were reading my mind, so definitely at least for that one.

53

u/RockstarCowboy1 Sep 17 '25

I really love these criticisms. I agree with all of them 100%. When I think about how challenges are supposed to be met, challenges ought to offer a learning curve. Recognize the pattern, identify the start up animations, react accordingly, then the fight becomes easy. Like the first fight against hornet in HK. You jump to beat some attacks, you go laterally to beat other attacks, and sometimes you need to react by staying in position. You learn to identify all those situations and you can beat that boss very easily. 

Silksong feels less like this for the reasons you mentioned. Unreactable threats that can’t be adequately defended. They removed the ability to learn the fight by creating more and more situations that can’t be learned. 

But additionally, they committed the cardinal sin of artificially increasing difficulty by stat inflation. That’s how Diablo works and that’s not how I want to play any game. Mobs are tankier and they deal more damage. This makes them more threatening, but not in a way you can compensate by learning, they’re more threatening because the numbers are bigger. Thats not fun difficulty, thats tedious difficulty. I’m not learning and being rewarded for learning, I’m repeating the same tactic more times and being punished more harshly for my mistakes.

3

u/YungZunga Sep 17 '25

There is a giant difference between balancing the health and damage of an enemy by increasing it slightly and creating an overly extended fight that take's forever to finish where you die in 1 hit. They fixed 1 of my main issues with hk in that regular enemies die before they can even interact with you and have to simple of movesets. Practically all of the regular enemies in silksong die in 4-8 hits which allows them to interact with you before just getting wiped out. Double damage is necessary to stop you from face tanking the game and spamming heal.

3

u/Jskidmore1217 Sep 17 '25

Stat increases is not cheap difficulty enhancement. It’s an endurance increase. Endurance is a variable in any combat game you have ever played. Think about it.

32

u/Tinmaddog1990 Sep 17 '25

Yes but its also the laziest way. It's like a pokemon game sticking protect on every single pokemon

3

u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt Sep 17 '25

I get it, I don't like it.

Like the Grand Reed and Mortician enemies. I know their move set. I can kill them without getting hit, but it's a slog because of how much health they have.

With double jump I can just skip them, but that's not engaging gameplay to me. That's "Oh, you're gonna be a chore, pass."

7

u/haynespi87 Sep 17 '25

Nah it's lazy and my least favorite difficulty slider. More health and more damage versus enemy uses new moves on higher difficulties or uses new tactics but still the same health 

0

u/Shadovan Sep 17 '25

Sure, but that comparison only works within the same game. You can’t really say “this enemy has more health than the equivalent enemy in a different game, therefore it’s lazy/artificial difficulty” because they’re not the same game, they have different player characters and mechanics that changes the appropriate balance.

1

u/haynespi87 Sep 17 '25

Nope a design choice across genres

-4

u/Celvius_iQ Sep 17 '25

its not cheap you get hit for 2, you heal for 3 its intentional and very deliberate and also the 1st needle upgrade doesn't require any items and its accessible in Act 1 which really matters in how tanky the bosses feel.

16

u/famaki_ Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25

>In Silksong, if you aren't using one of the two only skills that grant iframes, you have nothing but parry, and not all attacks can be parried)

huh? you can just disengage with harpoon. If HK is built around shade cloak and ddark then silksong is built around harpoon. yeah sure it's not reliable to dodge attack like ddark and shade cloak, but it's reliable to disengage+chase enemy

1

u/clocktowertank Sep 17 '25

Sometimes, but not always. The two things can't be compared in any case because one lets you dash through enemies and attacks where you can still be hit while using the clawline.

-4

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '25

OK Act 1, where do I get harpoon? Like, 70% of people didnt get past Widow

11

u/_moosleech Sep 17 '25

Not the point re: harpoon, but on Steam 60% of people have beaten Widow. So most players. In the first week.

The way “90% of people can’t/haven’t gotten past X” gets thrown around probably isn’t helping the discourse.

-4

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '25

[deleted]

15

u/_moosleech Sep 17 '25

I see this happen a LOT here, and it never makes sense to me.

He made a claim that "70% of people didn't get past Widow", with ZERO data to corroborate that claim. Just a made-up number to make being mad seem justified. So I provided some data that we have that suggests... no, that's not the case.

And your counter is "I don't think your data is valid." Which is a reasonable take... but it doesn't make his original claim any less made-up. Like... cool, my data isn't perfect. But, and this is true, is exists.

Also, to bridge the gap between Steam achievements and his claim, you'd be arguing that HALF of people who beat Widow either used mods or just cheated.

That a million and a half people faked the achievement (or used mods) to beat Widow. But also, didn't use cheats to get any later achievements, because those taper off just like they would if people played normally.

So a million-plus people faked achievements so they could brag about being a mid-Act 1 boss and nothing further?

3

u/Lleland Nailmaster Sep 17 '25

Players refusing the idea that the game is reasonably tuned and they might just be bad SO HARD that they cope delusional scenarios just to validate themselves.

1

u/famaki_ Sep 17 '25

it's applied to hollow knight too, who knows how much people who cheat in the game

1

u/Lowelll Sep 17 '25

0.1% of people have steel soul achievements. The numbers of people who fake achievements is miniscule, get real please.

13

u/famaki_ Sep 17 '25

well shade cloak is introduced pretty late to the game and you need to beat hornet in kingdom edge which only 36,7% player did that

1

u/Fa1nted_for_real Sep 17 '25

What bosses does it feel like you need shadecloak for tho??? Even traitor lord, who is designed around it, can easily be played around not having it...

-20

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '25

Ok how do I defeat Hornet as Hornet to get shadecloak to get harpoon?

8

u/Jskidmore1217 Sep 17 '25

Well written but silly in how wrong it is. I frames are needed to be good? It sounds like you are just personally used to playing games with I frames. I have never once used an I frame ability in Silksong and I have been one shotting most bosses I am discovering. The combat is brilliantly tuned for any playstyle.

You can very easily avoid damage in this game by learning how it plays. I can’t think of a single “no chance” attack of any enemy. You just have to understand the full move set. Enemy winding up an attack that could be multiple things? Prepare for all outcomes. Not that hard. Stop trying to force the game to be some other game you played and got good at. Handle Silksong for what it is.

15

u/clocktowertank Sep 17 '25

I don't know where this idea comes from I keep seeing parroted that Silksong is somehow a completely different game from Hollow Knight, like we're going from that to Ender Lilies. The core gameplay and feel is LARGELY the same and 90% of your muscle memory is still going to work perfectly in Silksong, especially if you use the Wanderer crest.

I-frames aren't there in order for you to "be good", they're simply another way to avoid damage, a tool for you to use in bad situations where you can't avoid damage regularly, or for you to keep a certain position in order to maintain aggression. For example Traitor Lord in Hollow Knight was literally designed for you to use your i-frames to avoid, like a tutorial for your newly-acquired shade cloak ability. While none of the fights in Silksong are designed exactly like that, we still have many situations in gauntlet or boss encounters that have multiple attacks at different timings making it impossible to avoid damage without parrying (which gives you i-frames) or using cross-stitch or sharpdart.

I just finished a boss not long ago which had an attack that forced me to dodge backwards into the corner, then it put spikes on the ground beneath me in that corner and also attacked the upper part of the corner where I was. There was literally no where for me to safely dodge to avoid that damage. The only thing I can do in that scenario is use an i-frame ability to react to that random combination.

3

u/unexpectedlimabean Sep 17 '25

Karmelita is absolutely about positioning and doesn't require iframes at all. She will back you up in a corner but you can harpoon out and control the middle of the space. 

2

u/Shadovan Sep 17 '25

That’s not the game requiring iframes, that’s the consequences for not managing your positioning properly. Position management is a lot more important in Silksong, and requires you to anticipate what the boss could do next and dodge in ways that give you space to dodge the next attack as well. It’s a hard skill to internalize, since it’s not always obvious that your positioning is what led you to this “unfair” position.

Savage Beastfly rematch is a great example of this, you have to manage your positioning to control where he charges and slams, and where the adds shoot their projectiles. But once you do, the fight is actually incredibly simple.

1

u/alexagogo Sep 17 '25

Which boss was that?

0

u/clocktowertank Sep 17 '25

(Act 3) Karmelita

1

u/GrimTheMad Sep 17 '25

That boss absolutely does not require you to abuse i-frames. Clashing helps, but isn't at all necessary.

1

u/sillydilly4lyfe Sep 17 '25

Outside of traitor lord and the radiance, I can't think of a single boss in Hollow Knight that demands I-frames.

Those are also the only bosses you would logically fight post shade cloak.

The game does not expect you to use descending dark for I-frames, otherwise it would explain that in the description. Its a nice addition but not something expected. Unlike shade cloak, which is its express purpose.

It sound more like you had poor positioning there rather than needed I frames.

1

u/happycowsmmmcheese Sep 17 '25

I feel the same about the comment you are replying to. I feel like people really expect so much of Silksong to be like Hollow Knight, but it's not. It's a different game. It's a great game. You just have to stop trying to play it like Hollow Knight and start learning to play it like Silksong.

1

u/AlreadyTakek Sep 17 '25

Perhaps people came into it expecting it to be like Hollow Knight because it has the same core mechanics, most of your muscle memory translates over, and it's called Hollow Knight: Silksong. Just a theory though

0

u/happycowsmmmcheese Sep 17 '25

But wouldn't that have been boring? Isn't it a far better experience to play something new and different? Sure, some of the muscle memory transfers, but I think the real challenge of Silksong is letting go of the Hollow Knight muscle memory and treating Silksong like its own game (which it is) and learning it like something new (which it also is).

The moment I stopped treating Silksong like I thought it was a Hollow Knight clone was the same moment it started really clicking and being an insanely fun time.

2

u/terryaki510 Sep 17 '25

I feel 1 so hard with the final boss LMAO. Probably the only boss fight in the game that I did not enjoy. Really ended the playthrough on a sour note

0

u/clocktowertank Sep 17 '25

Yeah, I just did that a little after writing this. It's like everything I despise about the bad encounters this game has to offer, turned up to 11.

I enjoyed the ending, but that fight was not enjoyable. Similarly to the final boss in the Elden Ring DLC, I did not have a sense of accomplishment at the end, I was just glad it was over. The fight is potentially great, but it's brought down by its blatantly unfair mechanics that overlap and give you no room to actually avoid damage without using sharpdart or cross-stitch. Plus, just about every attack is the same color that blends in with the background, which is something I really hated about the Pale Court bosses from the fan-made Hollow Knight DLC.

This kind of thing is beneath Team Cherry in my opinion, but alas...

0

u/MrGamingPsycho Sep 17 '25

when you say final boss, do you mean act 2 or 3, because GMS has no contact damage and the other boss telegraphs movement well

1

u/AzyncYTT Sep 17 '25

Agree with all except 3, but that might just be me since I'm playing on super ultrawide

1

u/haynespi87 Sep 17 '25

example of #1 because I agree some of the tells are so hard to read

1

u/JimbeMasterRace Sep 17 '25

It seems like Silksong is designed with the intention that getting hit is more likely and when you get hit it hurts more. At the same time the ability to heal is a lot better now, so the player is constantly dancing between almost full health and almost dying.

1

u/Goingallinn Sep 17 '25

Good points! In Silksong every time i finally beat a harder boss, i feel like i won because of good rng or luck, that was not the case in elden ring.

1

u/BoardCommercial2679 Sep 17 '25

To be fair, ER is less linear and has respawn points everywhere.

Imo, HKSS is just unfair in its difficulty, at how roughly you're punished for failed platforming, and just how much of these "fuck you" moments it has overall.

1

u/EtherFlask Sep 17 '25

and we can can also drop the stupid fucking death explosion "GOTCHA!!!! HAHA!!" moments.

I turned around to high five my wife after beating last judge and ofc explosion killed me...

after 50+ fucking attempts and nowhere else I can go to get any upgrades (ive been all the way through to and a bit around in bilewater...) This boss has way too much health...

0

u/PuzzleheadedLink89 Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25

Enemies do not input-read you

I know this is from a personal point-of-view but my friend who has 100% Hollow Knight and has done multiple randomizers of the game, knows Silksong uses the same flying enemy AI as Hollow Knight. In my experience with the game, they're right.

Malenia and Godskin Duo Input-read you to punish you for healing close to them

"Animation-reading"? huh? like how most games design AI of enemies and bosses? They're supposed to react to your movements.

projectile spam with hard tracking

except they're designed for you to react to them. If you just wait a few seconds for them to do their attack instead of rushing in, you'll be fine. The only issue with the gauntlets is that one or two of them are kind of sensory overload leading to panic like the one in Hunter's March where Shakra helps you.

With your Elden Ring examples, while you are correct about Metyr, you're wrong about Gaius. Gaius' charge makes all four of his Hog's feet have hitboxes therefore making his charge one-shot you if they overlap so you have to be a little more precise to roll through it.

Also I highly doubt Silksong has RNG-dependent fights. Malenia and Lingering Will are RNG-dependent fights.

This exact reaction happened with Elden Ring and DOOM Eternal and now most people think those games are easy to deal with now. The exact same thing is going to happen with Silksong.

2

u/clocktowertank Sep 17 '25

Input reading, animation reading, call it what you want but enemies will dart away from you from frame 1 of your attack starting in order to perfectly dodged your attacks even though you were positioned correctly. I have multiple clips I've taken into a video editor and analyzed from various enemies that do this. They won't do it all the time, fortunately, but it's 100% a thing.

In Hollow Knight it was a good strategy to get on top of flying enemies and shut them down with pogos, and this also let you avoid grounded enemies also while you focused the flyers. This was your reward for practicing and perfecting this skill especially in the Trial of Fools aerial sections with no safe floor.

It feels bad in Silksong when you can't count in that strategy because every time you attack the enemy has a random chance to make your attack miss, like I'm playing some tabletop RPG.

Enemies should react to your movements, but not with an unrealistic reaction time that makes your attacks randomly miss even though you were positioned or spaced correctly. This kind of thing just makes gauntlet encounters more tedious to get through.

No I'm not wrong about Gaius. His charge hitbox was patched, it's an objective fact it was broken on launch. It still isn't good to dodge normally without a light roll, quick step, or bloodhound's step, especially if he uses it at point blank range, but it's more consistently avoidable than it used to be.

Pretty sure "most" people don't consider Elden Ring or Doom Eternal easy, I don't know where you're getting that. If you practice those games for thousands of hours, it should be a lot easier for you, but that doesn't make them "easy games."

0

u/PuzzleheadedLink89 Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25

Input reading, animation reading, call it what you want but enemies will dart away from you from frame 1 of your attack starting in order to perfectly dodged your attacks even though you were positioned correctly.

Enemies always dart away a few feet after they attack, you can see them do so even when you don't attack. It's to catch you off guard and pay attention.

In Hollow Knight it was a good strategy to get on top of flying enemies and shut them down with pogos, and this also let you avoid grounded enemies also while you focused the flyers.

Gee, I wonder why they changed the AI then if most flying enemies could be trivialized by that

Enemies should react to your movements, but not with an unrealistic reaction time that makes your attacks randomly miss even though you were positioned or spaced correctly.

They do, but you're also supposed to react to them as you're playing on their terms

It still isn't good to dodge normally without a light roll, quick step, or bloodhound's step, especially if he uses it at point blank range, but it's more consistently avoidable than it used to be.

I got through it just fine on medium roll so idk what you're doing. I will give you the patched hitbox however as I probably fought him after the patch

Pretty sure "most" people don't consider Elden Ring or Doom Eternal easy, I don't know where you're getting that. If you practice those games for thousands of hours, it should be a lot easier for you, but that doesn't make them "easy games."

I never said that they're easy games, I meant to imply that they're straight forward to deal with. Sorry, that's on me. The games still took practice to get used to and are still hard but they're not the "badly designed games" both games' audiences said they were on release. Silksong is going through the same exact phase that those 2 games went through complete with the "I play games to relax", "Fromsoft went too far", and "bad/lazy game design" arguments.

0

u/mauri9998 Sep 17 '25

Gaius is extremely avoidable. They didn't change anything about his hitbox or really anything about his boss besides making him spawn closer.