I've played 100s of hours of Soulslikes, and I think Hollow Knight Silksong is harder than Elden Ring – but what makes games difficult anyway?

All games used to be hard by virtue of not really having endings. It's not like the sort of difficulty challenge you find in Hollow Knight: Silksong is only a modern trend. Arcade games stretching back to the '80s were designed to balance the thrill of score chasing with munching quarters – no game was truly finished before a kill screen literally broke the code. Donkey Kong will be beaten but always rise. The Centipede will keep descending. And Pac-Man will forever be hounded by ghosts. And, as we all know, video games have come a long way since Pac-Man.

To grossly oversimplify the trajectory of tricky games – this trend continued with home console gaming through the '90s where relatively short and simple games would last you multiple replays with life systems, and began to soften up when storylines came to the forefront alongside memory cards for saving game progress. Eventually, on PS3, the enigmatic world of Demon's Souls captivated many with its old school design, developed by the equally old school FromSoftware. Demon's Souls' sheer hostility and demanding nature of its fights became a defining trait that'd be honed to a fine edge with Dark Souls. It's from this trend of Soulslikes that Hollow Knight: Silksong takes inspiration.

The bigger they are...

Difficulty isn't the only thing that makes a Soulslike, but it is one of the most obvious – both to spot as a player, and to hone in on as a designer. Not all imitators match up – and I have played a lot – sometimes leaning too hard on sheer difficulty for difficulty's sake and missing all the other ways FromSoftware's games feel so good to play.

One of the reasons Hollow Knight and Silksong stack up is that – despite being in 2D and fusing Soulslike DNA with that of a Metroidvania – developer Team Cherry really understands what makes FromSoftware's series tick. Exploration isn't just about progression, but about unravelling a mysterious world and piecing together scraps of information to build a bigger picture of a land fallen to ruin. Strange characters aren't just hanging about waiting to be killed, but provide vital color and clues to move forward. The ancient insect kingdoms of Hallownest and Pharloom in Hollow Knight don't just go horn-to-horn with Dark Souls' worlds – they drip with so much atmosphere that at times they can genuinely surpass them.

Crucially, Hollow Knight and Silksong's boss fights – often large and intimidating just like in Souls (though both series also have some superb duel-style fights) – aren't trying to be hard simply to make you crumble. Instead, these flashy moves all have clear tells that enable you to learn how to react, and lists of moves that aren't long so you can actually remember them. Even FromSoftware stumbles with this from time to time – I'm looking at you Dark Souls 3 DLC.

Compared to its predecessor, though, Hollow Knight: Silksong is definitely harder – feeling like there's a direct line between it and the original game's more challenging post-launch updates. Silksong is more demanding from earlier on, from harsh platforming gauntlets to how all the bosses dish out double damage like they got a bargain two-for-one offer they couldn't refuse.

Plenty of bosses feature lengthy and tricky 'runbacks' to re-challenge each boss when you die, and a currency-hungry resource system means nabbing checkpoints, maps, or even refilling your tools to use in battle can force you to grind screens at a time just to get back on neutral terms with boss fights. They can factor towards an unwelcoming hostility and get in the way of enjoying Silksong's best moments, which I grappled with in my Hollow Knight: Silksong review.

All the above may be familiar to those who have played FromSoftware's own games. Dark Souls revels in it, and the gothic-dripping followup Bloodborne even more so (where you're especially delicate due to a lack of shields). Likewise Sekiro, which centers more around a specific authored ninja character build, also has you burn through resources to use its own ninja tools.

Yet, even in older FromSoftware games, the lengthiest runbacks aren't too tough to master, dodging respawning enemy hordes in three dimensions and cutting down ledges where you please just makes it more forgiving to sprint to the boss fight without taking damage.

Even though I was raised on tricky 2D platformers, I have to say – I think Hollow Knight: Silksong being a side-on platformer as well as a game about epic combat clashes is one of the major reasons so many will find it tougher. I can feel my battle scars from the likes of The Revenge of Shinobi, Rocket Knight Adventures, and heck, I'm not afraid to say it, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (the blue blur is colorful but back in the day he took no prisoners – I'd like to see you revisit Metropolis Zone), itch when I tumble into thorns and meet my demise in Silksong.

Bell to pay

There's one specific sequence in Hollow Knight: Silksong that'll stump many towards the end of Act 1. Each time, you have to chain together multiple bounce jumps over health-shredding hazards, evade strong aerial enemies that shoot projectiles that ricochet off walls, and also stay away from a couple of big hulking tanky dudes as well. I can clear it 90% of the time perfectly, and it takes about 30 seconds to do so. But having to do it every time you want to retry a boss fight is brutal even for me, and I've become pretty numb to this kind of high skill jump gauntlet. The simple truth is that few high-profile games play in this space at all. Silksong as a cultural phenomenon will likely entice many to jump in who wouldn't even think to play a tough-as-shells platformer.

Nothing in Elden Ring requires that amount of consistent dexterity every time you need to retry something. It has its fair share of tricky jumps as you explore, but rarely does it ask you to repeat them over and over again, and there it's more about careful falling and angling that it is about flips and precision. Solid reaction times will help you out in Elden Ring, but it's not quite the bee-all-end-all it is in Silksong (by the way, that's not a typo – I was going for a kind of bee as an insect thing to fit into the game's bug theme).

Even when it comes to boss fights, Hollow Knight: Silksong is less forgiving than Elden Ring. For starters, simply being on a 2D plane limits your ability to avoid boss enemies, meaning you can only really go over or under hulking foes – while feeling the pressure of encroaching attacks. No circle strafing here. In my experience too, Hornet's dodge doesn't have the kind of iframe grace you often get in Elden Ring. You better have a clear window of escape.

Elden Ring and its Dark Souls brethren are just different kinds of games too, where despite serving tough challenges there are always a multitude of ways to mitigate the difficulty. Online co-op is one, of course – but even solo you can level up and build your stats in certain ways to, for instance, focus on dodging while dishing out immense damage, or go the other way, turtling up to soak as much as possible.

Crucially, though, Elden Ring represents a culmination of FromSoftware's many years making these games, and knowing where to shave off friction just enough to keep players invested in mastering its most devious designs. Almost every fight in Elden Ring did away with runbacks entirely, Stakes of Marika provided respawn points distinct from its full-featured checkpoints to give the option to jump back into the fray. On the rare occasion Elden Ring ditches having a Stake of Marika, the pain of runback repetition is well and truly felt. It's why I have such a vendetta against Dragonlord Placidusax. And, thankfully, we've not felt the pain of running out of Sekiro's Spirit Emblems since.

I'd prefer it if Hollow Knight: Silksong made more use of some of the quality-of-life improvements FromSoftware has brought to the table over the course of its series. With a whole bunch of rebalancing coming from Team Cherry for Silksong already, maybe we even will. But I think it's because Hollow Knight: Silksong channels even older magicks that its own challenges are truly difficult – the pain of feeling so overwhelmed you have to yank that cartridge out of the Sega Genesis and click it back into the large plastic box, jamming something more soothing inside instead, like Columns.

Hollow Knight Silksong has made me realize how much the Steam Deck has changed the way I play games