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Fans have been waiting almost a decade to go hands-on with Hollow Knight: Silksong and the hype was off the charts. Now that people are finally playing, those expectations have been brought back down to earth. Silksong is a good game. Maybe even a great one. But it is also a hard one. Harder than the first game? That depends on who you ask. While players rave about their favorite new characters, secrets, and boss fights, other are bouncing off the game, feeling unwelcomed by the new Metroidvania Soulslike.

One of the biggest differences between Silksong and the original Hollow Knight is that enemies hit harder earlier in the game. Instead of taking one mask of damage off Hornet, even some rank-and-file minions can knock two off with each hit. Add to that the fact that Hornet can’t heal until a full wheel of silk has been earned and you have a recipe for an uncompromising early game. Maps and UI elements must also be purchased as upgrades, leaving newcomers who tend to easily get lost in 2D mazes scrambling more than usual to figure out where to go and what to do.

“My wife is a massive Hollow Knight fan and has been waiting for Silksong to come out for years,” reads one of the biggest threads on the Silksong subreddit from this weekend. “She is not the most skilled of players but she was able to complete Hollow Knight and enjoy her time. Silksong, instead, is breaking her apart. She has spent three days fighting Moorwing without beating it and she’s dropping the game for good. I hope she’ll pick it back up sometime but it’s sad to see all the anticipation die out like this.”

Team Cherry

Moorwing has been brutalizing many players in the Greymoor section of the game. The flying moth has lots of attacks that are tricky to dodge, and it requires a shocking number of hits to finally bring down. There are ways to accidentally skip the fight altogether or cheese him into submission, but if you’re just grinding Silksong out without searching for guides or trying to exploit tricks, it’s a pain in the ass, one of those fights for true Soulslike sickos and not necessarily for the people who come to Hollow Knight for the worldbuilding, exploration, and wonderful characters.

Is Silksong really harder than Hollow Knight?

There’s a good comment on the Silksong Steam discussion page that breaks down some of what might be going on with the initial reaction to the sequel. “People are complaining because this game doesn’t give them nail upgrades and an early charm system with charms that trivialize a lot of boss mechanics for 3/4th of the entire game, and instead attempts to get its players to recognize tells, queues, patterns, positioning, and programmed it’s enemies to specifically punish overly aggressive or greedy play,” it reads.

Instead of treating Hollow Knight like a tutorial for Silksong, this argument claims some players are treating the new game like a continuation of the old one instead of recognizing the clear yet subtle differences, including a diagonal downward attack that complicates combat and platforming, especially for people used to the first game’s more straightforward up/down pogo-ing on top of enemies. Though there are Crests players can find in Silksong even early on to help make the game easier, it seems clear Team Cherry also made a point of not greasing the wheels with combat as much as it did with Hollow Knight.

Hunter’s March is insane bro.

Crazy difficult platforming and the enemies are hard too 💀

These stupid bugs took FOREVER to beat. #Silksong pic.twitter.com/2EAEAnq5Vq

— KAMI (@Okami13_) September 6, 2025

Enemies deal more damage, take longer to kill, and some of the longer run-backs after you die to a boss can be lowkey soul crushing. Here’s a 30-second clip of a player going back to the Act 1 boss after dying, a trek which includes more than one non-trivial platforming section. Whether players ultimately enjoy it or not, the double damage many enemies do compared to Hollow Knight is already the biggest meme coming out of Silksong‘s launch. “The reason it took so long to come out: Team cherry was trying to beat the game before they released it,” one fan joked.

Silksong is too hard vs. Silksong is bad

The post-launch conversation around the Hollow Knight sequel has generally followed this arc, forking along to parallel tracks over the weekend. First: “Yay, it’s out!” Second: “Check out cool thing X.” Third: “Boss fight Y was incredible” or “Help, I can’t stop dying.” And finally: “This game is too hard and it’s the best” or “This game is too hard and it sucks.” We’re at the point where an initial backlash to how much more punishing Silksong is has been followed by a backlash to the backlash. Much of it essentially boils down to: okay, maybe Silksong is much harder but that doesn’t make it worse than Hollow Knight.

My guess is that there are two things going on here. The first is that Silksong is reaching a much wider audience at launch than Hollow Knight ever did, and I would guess many of those players are coming to it from non-Souls-inspired backgrounds. They are here for the neat story, excellent art, and top-notch Metroidvania exploration, not necessarily the “git gud” grind that comes with hitting what seems like an insurmountable challenge you that you persevere through, knowing eventually, whether hours later or days later, you will overcome it.

Team Cherry

The second is that so much is riding on Silksong, following years of hype and secrecy, that everyone is extra touchy about the possibility it could be worse than Hollow Knight. We’ve all been there. You go to see a movie you were really excited for. It washes over you in haze. There were parts you loved. You talk about them outside the theater with friends. Than days go by, weeks, years even, and you eventually admit it wasn’t as good as you hoped. Disappointment sucks! Do I think most people are actually disappointed with Silksong? Not at all. But I think any naysaying this early on in the “honeymoon period” of a new indie darling’s release can feel like an attack.

TL;DR: the internet is currently designed to make negativity go viral, which elicits defensive hyperbole in response.

What’s clear is that there’s a not-insignificant number of people already feeling burnt out on Silksong or bouncing off of it entirely because of its less forgiving design. “I beat Hollow Knight twice through (Radiance), I love the game and its world and its vibes and everything you mentioned, and I’m currently falling out of love with a sequel I desperately WANT to enjoy, due to a difficulty curve that feels completely out of sync with Hollow Knight’s,” wrote one player on the subreddit. “I’m handling the difficulty fine, but it’s just exhausting,” wrote another. “I think Silksong is beautiful and a masterpiece, but the two mask damage is tiring. Most people WILL have a skill issue, even if they’re managing, so rather than the game be fully enjoyable like Hollow Knight, it will create exhaustion which is not fun.”

Silksong doesn’t have difficulty options or any other way to mitigate its challenge outside of in-game remedies like finding certain upgrades and Crests as early as possible. We’ll see if that ultimately holds it back from the same level of fawning adoration that its predecessor achieved, or if Team Cherry decides to address the skill gap in a post-launch update. Purists will be able to say they were there on day-one with their double-damage victories intact to prove it, but at least that way everyone else can discover the rest of the special game Team Cherry spent seven years making.

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