Way back in 2020, Team Cherry reckoned Hollow Knight: Silksong would "sit alongside" Hollow Knight in difficulty. Ari Gibson and William Pellen told Edge magazine that it could be anyone's "first Hollow Knight game," and that they didn't go out of their way to ramp up the difficulty. I have been pondering Gibson and Pellen's words each time Silksong has pummeled me into Hornet mash without even having the good grace to blink.
I don't know what they're putting in the water in Australia – snake venom, probably – but the first few hours of Silksong feel way harder than Hollow Knight's. I'm not complaining, but it's not even a question. I finished a 112% replay of Hollow Knight the day before Silksong came out, and that was my first time ever playing the Pantheon boss gauntlets, as well as my first time clearing the Path of Pain platforming challenge in over seven years. It's all very fresh in my mind, and it's abundantly clear that Silksong's opening hours – I've had one good five-hour marathon so far – have more in common with the mid-to-late-game portions of Hollow Knight.
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The kicker is that you still start Silksong with limited abilities, as the game pulls a direct Metroid by robbing new hero Hornet of her normal strength. The result is distinctly 'thrown to the wolves' design. You don't deal a lot of damage, your initial movements are basic, and you have the standard five starting health. Meanwhile, almost every boss and even several basic enemies can deal a whopping two damage in one hit. Hollow Knight would generally only bust out two-damage attacks for special occasions, but everything is an occasion in Silksong.
This frames one of the biggest differences between the two games. I was getting three-hit within the first hour of Silksong. That's a huge difference compared to dying in five hits. You will have five maximum health for a while, and because you can only heal for chunks of three health, if you take two hits of two damage and then recover three, you're still down one health and within two-hit range. The math is sinister. Healing was slower, but it was also comfier to spot-clean your health bar in Hollow Knight one hitpoint at a time. Again, I'm not complaining. I'm loving the game. But boy, it's definitely harder. (This also makes that first health upgrade a Very Big Deal. Persevere!)
Maybe the studio built up its design muscles to the point that, by the time it unleashed Hollow Knight's uber-bosses upon the world, it was hard to go backwards
The first bosses of Silksong would beat the daylights out of the opening bosses of Hollow Knight, not just because they deal more damage, but also because they have more varied attacks and greater mobility. Hornet herself is a more agile protagonist, and as Team Cherry said, the whole world of Silksong has been built to keep up with her. In boss fights with closed arenas, it can feel like you're a tasty-looking rat trapped with a hungry cat.
The first bosses of Hollow Knight are big ol', video game-grade Round Dudes with more predictable movements than a clock's minute hand. The Silksong difficulty curve goes more like this: "I hope you've acclimated in the past hour because here come the omnidirectional dash attacks and 300-degree AoE swipes."
The ultimate barometer for difficulty in a Metroidvania is how often you ask yourself, "Should I be here yet?" I have been asking this a lot more frequently in Silksong.
Pick up the pace
That's just the combat. Silksong is also more demanding in its platforming, and for one big reason. Hollow Knight worked in straight lines. Fall straight down, pogo straight up with a downward slash, and dodge straight to the left or right. Silksong deals in angles and arcs. If anything, Hollow Knight muscle memory can hurt you. Ask me how I know.
The pogo has been replaced with Hornet's 45-degree dive attack, which I've found more challenging to visualize and execute. When you jump off a ledge, Hornet goes rolling through the air. And where Hollow Knight introduced pogo tech softly and gradually, I am already chaining multiple dives together with pits of two-damage spikes underneath.
Here again, the game rapidly becomes more advanced. The training wheels come off after an hour or two, if they were ever attached at all. "Hope you've learned how to ride!" Team Cherry seems to say. I've played a ton of Metroidvanias, and their sequels often feel something like this: more aggressive difficulty curve, more RPG elements, bigger world. Silksong is very much that, but it's among the most aggressive games I've ever played.
Here's my theory. Maybe Team Cherry had a slight change of heart since that 2020 interview and became more comfortable really pushing players in Silksong from the get-go. Or maybe, just maybe, the studio built up its design muscles to the point that, by the time it unleashed Hollow Knight's uber-bosses upon the world, it was hard to go backwards for Silksong. Once you start benching 60s, it's tough to go back to the 40-pound dumbbells. The floor had been raised. An easy Silksong encounter would be a solid medium in Hollow Knight, and it feels like the whole game's been retuned to match that scale. I can't wait to see what awaits me at the top.
Our Hollow Knight Silksong review in progress finds that it's "worth the wait and then some."
