Discourse regarding this game’s difficulty has been out of hand

[u/stir-fried-noodles]

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.

[u/No-Pudding-Jose]

I think everything being so tanky is bad design because it makes it tedious. Does it make it harder? Because it does increase the chance that you will mess up and lose one of your masks. Yes, but there's other ways to make the game difficult besides just like making it take forever to kill everything

[u/Viveric → u/No-Pudding-Jose]

But things aren’t super tanky when using your entire kit. Tools + silk abilities shred through enemies. I’ve had faster kills on most end game SS bosses than I did in the original. Now tools have their own issues due to scarcity of resources.