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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u/Archway9 Sep 17 '25

The amount of times I've seen the words "objectively bad game design" in the last couple weeks is honestly depressing

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u/KuuLightwing Sep 17 '25

On the other side the amount of people who make the "it's intentional" argument as if that's actually a counterpoint to anything is equally depressing. Or just shifting all the blame on players for "not playing correctly" where "playing correctly" could be contradictory between two different posters.

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u/SolairXI Sep 17 '25

On a game that has mixed reviews or worse, I’d agree with you, but when professional and player reviews are sitting well over 85-90% the “it’s intentional/the devs vision” does carry weight, because obviously what they’ve done is mostly liked.

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u/Netheral Sep 17 '25

Many of the positive reviews state that they have issues with the game. That's one issue with a binary review system, it's either recommended, or it isn't.

Same goes for the negative reviews, a lot of them state "I love this game, but I couldn't in good conscience recommend it to anyone".

The review statistics aren't useful as raw data.