Dread it, run from it, Hollow Knight: Silksong gets hit by the difficulty discourse as players can't decide if they should "git gud" or acknowledge "legitimate issues" Team Cherry has with the Metroidvania

Dread it, run from it, difficulty discourse has officially taken hold of the Hollow Knight: Silksong playerbase, which can't seem to collectively decide whether Team Cherry has made things a bit too tricky or if everyone complaining just has a skill issue.

It didn't take long at all for Metroidvania enthusiasts to note that Silksong is "noticeably harder" than its predecessor, despite Team Cherry previously saying that "the difficulty also sits alongside" the original game. But how hard is too hard? Some think Silksong may have crossed a line.

One player, who previously "saw people complaining online" and thought they were just hating on the game, admits they're struggling to keep playing after reaching The Citadel, simply because they're "not having fun anymore," noting that arena fights are brutal and "runbacks are annoying."

"The runbacks are bad on their own," another says, but added onto the double damage bosses dish out, "it makes learning a new boss's moveset so punishing it's infuriating. It gives you so much less time in the arena to learn the new patterns, which means you have to do the runback even more on every new boss." They call it "an artificial difficulty increase that just makes them exhausting."

Others, however, clearly aren't too concerned. "For people who are complaining Silksong is too hard… did you not play Hollow Knight?" one Reddit user questions.

"Y'all need to git gud," says another. "You want a baby game with one mask damage? Tiny baby game for tiny baby player?? Gonna cry when you have to backtrack to the boss 14 times and then abandon your 500 rosaries to explore some other area when you realise you're not good enough to beat it? (that's me I did that). This game should kick your ass, I didn't wait six years to be able to complete S K O N G in a week?"

Regardless of how you personally stand, some have raised concerns that this can't all be boiled down to a skill issue, and telling people to "git gud" may be brushing off "legitimate issues" with the game. One argues that Silksong is "not perfect," but "that's fine" since that's "what updates and patches are for." However, "criticism is important for the well-being of the game."

Another suggests that there are aspects of Silksong – namely, its lore, buildcrafting, and exploration – that are "gatekept by an arbitrary difficulty barrier," despite being things that people loved about the original game. "I have seen many people here on Reddit saying to git gud, but don't think that discourse about the game's difficulty should be handwaved so easily. If nothing about it is done, I think that a lot of 'casual' fans will be inevitably estranged from the game," they add.

Whether the difficulty of Silksong is something that Team Cherry would address in a patch is another matter, but for now, it's safe to say that a lot of people – even hardened Hollow Knight players – are struggling to adjust to the sequel.

Silksong is way harder than Hollow Knight, and my theory is that Team Cherry became evil masterminds without even realizing it.