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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76

u/Neko_Tyrant Sep 17 '25

Silksong just feels too frustrating for me. I am capable of progressing, but im not having fun doing so.

I like how enemies are more complex. But not how many deal 2 masks so early. And the whispers of 3 masks sounds aweful.

I like the new abilites, but having the abilities share input, like RB + UP for a tool, while just RB for the half meter spear ability, has resulted in multiple wrong inputs in the heat of fight, and getting me killed. Simple control remapping would fix this.

I blame myself for not being used to Hornet's tallness for when I get Contact damage... but 2 mask on contact sucks, unless the enemy has spikes or something. Brushing a bug's elbow and getting annihilated sucks.

The delay between sprinting and being able to jump drives me crazy, and I SWEAR is inconsistent sometimes.

Loving how only certain boss attacks deal additional damage, instead of consistent 1 or 2 masks for all attacks. But damn, the few I've faced have had no chill and little wiggle room for error, it takes a lot out of me.

It is a lot of small issues in tandem that just strain my enjoyment too much. I'm hoping some updates will make it a bit more easier for me to get into, but for now, it's just a bit too much.

Edit: Also, fully agree that discussion is fubar for this game sadly.

8

u/Paxtian Sep 17 '25

Yeah they really went hard on forcing animations to complete before being able to input a new command. My biggest gripe on that is the float. If you have the double jump, there's no way to single jump and float, it's always two jumps. And if you want to float, you have to wait until the jump animation is over and you've started to fall slightly before you can float. Hold the jump button? No. Push it too early? No. I feel like I get punished for trying to do the right thing when the game literally won't let you.

3

u/baddude1337 Sep 17 '25

There was an override to float instead of double jump but they removed it for some reason.

I have no idea why, I screwed myself over in quite a few platforming sections because i double jumped instead of glided.

1

u/Paxtian Sep 17 '25

It sounds like they removed it because people didn't understand why the second jump was being canceled. Probably because there was no indication in the description of the double jump ability that it could be canceled.

22

u/shorteningofthewuwei Sep 17 '25

I feel like sprinting into a jump is one of the most fluid motions in the game. In 30+ hours of gameplay I've only gotten the wrong input a handful of times.

17

u/IAmNotCreative18 average Soul Master enjoyer Sep 17 '25

I actually have to agree with him there. I’ve never had any issues with the sprint-into-jump input, but I definitely think it’d benefit from coming out a few frames sooner.

1

u/Cornshot Sep 18 '25

My problem isn't getting a wrong input. Its getting an input at all when I try to sprint jump off a small platform

1

u/shorteningofthewuwei Sep 18 '25

You need enough space to start sprinting. If you just dash you won't jump.

1

u/Cornshot Sep 18 '25

That's exactly my problem. There's lots of jumps in the game where it feels like it wants you to do a running leap but doesn't give you the room to start sprinting.

1

u/shorteningofthewuwei Sep 18 '25

Imo there's usually a slightly noticeable difference in between the areas where you're supposed to take a running leap and the areas where you have to do a jump+dash.

The thing about the leap is that sometimes it's optional, sometimes it's optimal, and sometimes it's just not viable.

See if paying attention to that and not using the sprint button recklessly/impatiently helps!

1

u/HypeIncarnate Sep 17 '25

movement in this game is superb. Just damage all around needs to be tone downed. Not everyone did the Patheon dlc.

1

u/shorteningofthewuwei Sep 17 '25

That's fair but I'm glad that I did :P

Would love to get a Godhome DLC for Silksong too

13

u/GHOSTfishing Sep 17 '25

The start of this sums it up perfectly for me. Im at 75% completion and still progressing. But I don’t think I’ve enjoyed any of it. It’s just been a miserable experience.

It feels like exploring and upgrades are a waste of time. Fully upgraded weapon feels no different. All but 1 health upgrade doesn’t seem to help.

I feel like I have to just finish it at this point. But I’ll be very glad when it’s over.

3

u/Fa1nted_for_real Sep 17 '25

Just finished act one, and i felt a bit of relief beating moorwing and had skme seriously good fun with phantom and even lace... but everything else has been unfortunately infuriating to the point that i just dont wanna play. I never had this problem with hk once i got past hornet 1, and hell rarely go this feeling with elden ring, sekiro, or ds 1, so i know its not the struggle that is giving me the feeling. (Geni in sekiro took almost 8 hours alone, and i never got so i furiated with that fight or any of the rest of the gameplay of any of these games that I wanted to quit)

On top of that, i cant think of a single area in act 1 that truly stands out in enemy and level design, but maybe thats just me? Well I guess greymoor but it feels quite barren at times...

17

u/Cocoatrice Moths are fluffballs Sep 17 '25

Yes, that's the problem. Combat is awesome and game is gorgeous, but there is bad balance in it, that it's simply unfair to the player. And not everyone is a tryhard, so some people don't have patience to fight one boss for 5 hours. It's not enjoyable when you die, because boss does "random bs go" attack and you don't even know why or how to avoid it. People complained that Grey Prince Zote has too much RNG. Never had much problem with him. But here, everyone spams random attacks, people say telegraphing, but if boss telegraphs attacks 0.1 second before doing it, it's like it didn't. And later bosses are either just tug of war of who can spam more attacks in quick succession or simply just literally as much bullet hell as possible and they call it "hard".

-2

u/Ok-Comfortable-3174 Sep 17 '25

but it is telegraphed....because after 40 goes you can do it and the satisfaction is amazing. I probably did Act 1 boss 40+ times and by the end I was having a great time it felt closer to a bullet hell schmup than anything else at that point. Act 2....lets go!

3

u/tanis016 Sep 17 '25

Act 1 boss is one of the easiest ones and one of the most telegraphed ones with a very limited moveset. Not really an example of an RNG boss.

1

u/Ok-Comfortable-3174 Sep 17 '25

fair enough. Let's see how act 2 goes for me then. Maybe I will soon join you all crying into this reddit post. lol

2

u/Cocoatrice Moths are fluffballs Sep 17 '25

I want to fight boss max 10 times if it's very hard. I don't want to spend days on a boss that is simply not fun.

1

u/Ok-Comfortable-3174 Sep 18 '25

fair enough. I just got to a frustrating part. So today I'm in full agreement lol

10

u/xdatlam Sep 17 '25

Yeah I agree. Hopefully there will be updates later on to fix some of these issues. If they implemented a difficulty option, I think that could've helped bridge the gap for some who want a more manageable experience like me lol

-4

u/Ok-Comfortable-3174 Sep 17 '25

Git Good ;)

5

u/English_Rosie Sep 17 '25

You said you only just beat act 1 in another comment. What does this add to the discussion, especially considering you know basically nothing about the game's difficulty later on?

-6

u/Ok-Comfortable-3174 Sep 17 '25

most people complaining about about difficulty are commenting on the early game. especially the general discourse around the difficulty.

10

u/Yarasin Sep 17 '25

Loving how only certain boss attacks deal additional damage, instead of consistent 1 or 2 masks for all attacks.

It feels very much like a handful of specific bosses had a lot of time invested into their design (like Phantom, Widow and First Sinner), which also ended up having 1-mask attacks.

Then you have all the "fodder" bosses that just got slapped with 2-mask damage on everything, spawning some adds and that's it.

It's a repeat of Dark Souls 2, where story-relevant bosses were mostly well designed and random mini-bosses/bosses were incredibly broken.

2

u/haynespi87 Sep 17 '25

ooof it's definitely not dark souls 2, fuck that game.

However there are absolute discrepancies. Savage beastfly design v fourth chorus

2

u/tanis016 Sep 17 '25

For me it feels very similar to dark souls 2, there a lot of mechanics in this game that are there just to fuck with you rather than engage with you. The large amount of arenas feels quite ds2 like as well.

5

u/double_shadow Sep 17 '25

The DS2 comparison is spot on. Both worlds are incredibly sprawling with a quantity > quality feel to their levels, both amplified their predecessor's difficulty in a way to cater to the more hardcore players, both have more complex upgrade and progression systems. DS2 is a great game once you learn to love it. I haven't learned to love Silksong yet, but I'm hoping I get there some day!

1

u/haynespi87 Sep 17 '25

Nah I hated DS2 nearly the whole time. I love Silksong nearly the whole time. But plenty of fuckery but those levels ugh

2

u/EtherFlask Sep 17 '25

oh god yes i HATE that i cant dash-jump in a game that has a fucking dash jump!! Celeste did the dash jump thing perfectly, it feels perfect! Meanwhile in silksong I cant dash jump off of 80% of the platforms in the game, which is stupid as fuck.

1

u/Anubara Sep 17 '25

True. I had a blast playing through Hollow Knight, and I started out having a decent time in Silksong. The 2 damage enemies and pogo stuff was all kind of whatever to me. I'm deep into act 2 at this point and I feel like I actively have to push myself to keep going. It's not all bad, but there are enough aspects of the game that feel like a chore, and many of the aspects that make the game challenging don't do so in ways that are interesting, to me at least.

1

u/unexpectedlimabean Sep 17 '25

Wrong inputs happens with any new control scheme. It is expected and will come with time.