| Hollow Knight: Silksong | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | DLC & Pre-Order | Review |
Note: The following article contains spoilers for some mid- to late-game bosses in Hollow Knight: Silksong. Proceed with caution if you have not yet completed the game.
Silksong players are finding the difficulty to be a huge step up from Hollow Knight. Discover what makes the combat more demanding and how Hornet's new abilities change the challenge.
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Silksong vs. Hollow Knight
How Much Harsher is Pharloom Than Hallownest?
Silksong may be set in a kingdom full of enemies, but it's managing to make a fair share of them in the real world too. Forum threads, Reddit posts, and Discord servers are overflowing with frustrated players either airing grievances or rage-quitting entirely. The verdict from a noisy corner of the community is that Silksong is punishing, maybe too punishing. The backlash got so loud that Team Cherry themselves stepped in yesterday with a patch toning down a handful of early-game bosses and smoothing out those first few hours in Pharloom.
The memes have been relentless. If Hollow Knight was Dark Souls, Silksong is Dark Souls 2 in terms of difficulty. Others are calling Hollow Knight the tutorial for Silksong, as though Team Cherry had been training us all along for it. However, the real question persists: is sIlksong actually harder than Hollow Knight, or do we really just need to, as per Hornet, "git gud?"
The answer, unfortunately for your sanity, is yes. Silksong is harder. I mentioned in my review of the game how it demands a level of commitment and skill that can make even a simple run back to a boss feel like a stressful ordeal. I can still feel the bruises in my fingers after suffering all three acts, but I wouldn't want it any other way, to be honest.
⚫︎ Image from Hollow Knight (2017)
Of course, Hollow Knight, is by no means an easy game to beat, but it does offer plenty of ways to alleviate that pain. As a sequel, Silksong is naturally going to up the ante. But the why of it is more interesting than the what.
Hornet Moves Differently, and So Should You
One of the easiest mistakes players make when booting up Silksong is assuming that Hornet will handle like the Knight. After all, both protagonists share a taste for pointy weapons and Metroidvania spelunking, so how different could they be? Very. Hornet is very different. Her acrobatics, healing, and dash mechanics fundamentally rewire how you approach encounters. That may be why so many players who played Hollow Knight in preparation for Silksong find themselves face-planting into Pharloom’s bosses and hazards.
Take movement, for instance. The Knight’s bread-and-butter was pogoing (slamming downward with the Nail to bounce off enemies and hazards) and, eventually, a Shade Cloak dash that granted invulnerability. His movements had a certain level of predictability.
Hornet, by contrast, is acrobatic almost to a fault. At the beginning of the game, she only has an angled dive that sends her careening diagonally. It feels great when it works, but the margin of error is razor-thin. Misjudge the angle of a dive or dash, and you’re eating damage that could eat two of your masks (her health).
You can alleviate this by exploring a bit and unlocking the Wanderer’s Crest, which grants the same attack patterns as the Knight, or the Reaper Crest for a slower downward slash. Much later in the game, you can also acquire the Shaman Crest, one of the best equipment available to Hornet. These crests are unlocked through exploration, but until you find them, some platforming sections will test your skills, especially those that require a precise sequence of diagonal jumps.
As you progress, you'll unlock a whole new suite of abilities. Hornet can dash, sprint, and double jump, or float gracefully with her dress. She can cling to walls and even use a grappling hook. She can even heal mid-air. These give her the agility to traverse much more of the world than the Knight ever could.
⚫︎ Note: (1st) Path of Pain from Hollow Knight; (2) Cogworks Core from Silksong
All of these, of course, sound liberating, especially once you’ve retrained your muscle memory. But this also means that Pharloom is designed to set up platforming segments far more ferocious than the Path of Pain DLC of Hollow Knight.
For context, the Path of Pain is the most sadistic platforming challenge in Hollow Knight. It was, however, tucked away as optional DLC. It's so notorious that players have shared their struggles and speedruns of it all over the internet. The reason, though, why platforming is far more difficult this time around is because Hornet has more tools at her disposal to carry her from platform to platform.
Almost Everything Deals Double Damage
This shift in mobility also alters combat. Hornet can’t dodge attacks with the same invincibility that the Shade Cloak gave the Knight. There's little room for error when fighting bosses or even regular enemies. Although her dash is quick, it’s not as safe. In most fights, it’s easy to dash directly into danger if your timing is even slightly off, and the momentum from her sprint can carry you farther than where you want to be. This is especially risky when even just touching an enemy boss can take off two of Hornet’s masks.
In Hollow Knight, you could afford to eat a few hits while trying to learn an enemy’s pattern. There was space to be sloppy while still finding your footing. In Silksong, that luxury doesn’t exist, especially in later fights, where some bosses don’t even allow you to touch the ground. Losing focus can mean your demise; you immediately panic to heal mid-air while the enemy’s already charging at you.
Once you’re down a few masks, the window to recover narrows because healing itself is riskier. Hornet’s Bind (heal) demands an entire spool of silk (mana) and a precious sliver of downtime. Against aggressive enemies who keep the pressure high, that recovery window can feel like threading a needle. You can make it so that Hornet heals faster than normal by equipping the Injector Band tool, but you still have to be careful when and where you do it.
Hollow Knight operates on a similar principle; healing is slow, and worse, you can’t do it mid-air. But this is exactly why Silksong’s bosses are more aggressive. You’re given more tools and options in combat, so the game expects you to be more proactive. The bosses, in turn, are designed to push you to the limit. Like I mentioned in my review, that tension is exhilarating when you’re playing. You feel as though you’re moving automatically, but it can be exhausting when you’re just trying to get your bearings.
The math behind all of this matters more than you might think. Multiple mask damages in Hollow Knight are almost always reserved for the game’s toughest bosses, so more often than not, you could reliably make three or four mistakes in a boss fight before things got truly dire. Hell, even Grimm does single mask damages.
Double damage so early on in Silksong compresses that tolerance into only a few slip-ups. Sure, you can heal for three masks at a time, but you’d need to land nine hits just to refill your spool completely. Every time you dodge, attack, or do anything else, you’re risking not only the three masks you just gained but also the chance of taking even more damage just to heal.
Mods adding invulnerability frames to her dash and reducing damage of everything to a single mask have already appeared in the community just a day after the game’s launch, which says a lot about how players feel about all of these.
Learn to “Git Gud” Even During Runbacks
What complicates this further is how the damage model interacts with the rest of Silksong's design. Environmental hazards, like spikes and traps, often deal double damage, which makes platforming sections even more nerve-wracking. To make matters worse, some boss fights have incredibly long platforming sections between the nearest bench and the boss room. This means that a "Walk of Shame" back to a fight can be brutal.
Each failed attempt requires you to redo these platforming sections, and a single mistake can put you on the back foot before the fight even starts. Dying once more during these runbacks can cost you your resources, and if you do make it back, you may already be limping back into the arena with fewer masks than you would have had otherwise.
To Team Cherry's credit, they did include some safety nets. Silksong has more benches and shortcuts scattered throughout Pharloom. The thing is, many of these shortcuts cost Rosaries, the game's currency. Unless you've stocked up on Rosary Strings—which hold a certain number of Rosary Beads and don't disappear when you die—you'll be losing a lot of cash, because everything from maps to upgrades costs Rosaries.
Although farming for Rosaries isn't that huge of a hassle, the entire economic system of the game ends up adding to the difficulty. Your supposed safety nets are only there if you're willing to grind for the currency to actually use them.
Some of Hollow Knight’s Bosses are Just as Brutal
⚫︎ Image from Hollow Knight (2017)
This isn't to say that Hollow Knight is a cakewalk compared to Silksong. One of the funniest things about the current discourse is how quickly people forget that the former could be absolutely vicious. The White Defender, Nightmare King Grimm, and even the Radiance were long, punishing encounters that took me and many others a humbling amount of hours to beat.
But these bosses I mentioned are ones you encounter far down the line in the game. By then, the Knight's toolkit is already loaded. Aside from the Shade Cloak, charms like Quick Focus or Shape of Unn can shave off the risk of healing. Add in charms like Unbreakable Strength for damage output, Grubsong for generating Soul (mana used for healing and spells) passively, or even just simple Nail Arts, and those endgame fights become far more manageable. The bosses didn't get weaker; the player just got stronger in ways that radically tilted the risk-reward balance.
Hornet doesn’t have many of the Knight’s tools. She has a lot of trinkets, for sure, but most of the time, you’d still have to "git gud." Or, you could, maybe, take a break from the game if you suddenly feel the stress building. That’s an option, too.
Silksong is Difficult, but not Unfair
All this to restate my thesis: yes, Silksong is more difficult than Hollow Knight. But who wants just more of the same? It’s a sequel that deliberately retools the foundations of its predecessor and asks players to relearn habits they thought were set in stone. Hornet’s enemies hit harder and faster, and Pharloom’s level design has little patience for clumsy hands.
But "difficult" isn’t the same thing as "unfair." It’s tempting to frame the game’s sharper edges as punishment, especially when you’re two masks away from victory and a mistimed dash sends you back to the bench. What Silksong really does is narrow the gap between player input and consequence. You can’t coast through fights leaning on invulnerability frames. You can’t brute force platforming by tanking hits until you land where you need to (though I feel like speedrunners will prove me wrong in a few days). The sequel rewards those who master its tricks and toys and punishes those who hesitate even for one bit.
Of course, not every player will experience that difficulty spike the same way. Some will relish it, find satisfaction in the tighter margins. Others will bounce off, frustrated by the feeling that the game is punishing them for mistakes they didn’t know they were making. Both reactions are valid, because the difficulty depends on how we perceive it, and perception is shaped by what we expect going in and our experience.
I find myself caught somewhere between both perspectives. On one hand, I pushed through and saw the game all the way to its many endings; on the other, I’d be lying if I said those late-game bosses didn’t wring every ounce of patience out of me. The victories were exhilarating, yes, but the road there was paved with more than a few curses hurled skyward. I’m not exactly proud of those moments of weakness. Here’s hoping Silksong’s eventual DLC offers something a little more forgiving than its endgame gauntlet. I doubt it will, but a man can dream.
I just beat Grand Mother Silk and you're telling me there's an act 3?! How long is this game?!