Tomi on 5/9/2025 at 20:30
Hollow Knight: Silksong is certainly one of the most anticipated games of the year, and I remember the first game getting lots of love in here as well, so I suppose that Silksong deserves its own thread. It was only released yesterday, but has anyone played it yet?
I have! It's been years since I played the first Hollow Knight, so I've forgotten how much I actually liked it and what exactly was it that made it so special. My first impressions of Silksong are rather good, and even though metroidvanias often tend to be a bit boring before you learn a special move or two, I think that even the basic movement and combat here feels pretty good and smooth. The game looks really nice with its hand-drawn kinda art style, and there are a lot of cool little details that add to the immersion. So far Silksong has also been a bit more colourful than the original Hollow Knight which is a welcome change to me. The sound design is top notch and just everything else as well feels very polished already.
At this stage everything feels a bit overwhelming to me, but that's my usual experience with metroidvanias. Once the gameworld opens up a bit and I learn some new moves, I'm fairly certain that I'll have a hard time putting Silksong down. And even though I've only seen like 1% of the game, I'm also pretty sure already that this game will feature in a lot of GOTY lists. :)
Al_B on 7/9/2025 at 16:21
I've played a (very) little of it but enjoying it so far. The original Hollow Knight is one of the few games I've played through more than once and got used to its quirks and enemy patterns. I'm having to go through the process of re-learning new enemies / bosses and the best approach to defeat them. It feels like it's a step up in difficulty but that may just be because I'm not used to it yet. The complaints I've seen online about more enemies doing two hits of damage and the currency being harder to obtain are ones I'd agree with. However, it's not spoiled the game and as you say the aesthetics and music are spot on.
Tomi on 11/9/2025 at 15:29
Quote Posted by Al_B
It feels like it's a step up in difficulty but that may just be because I'm not used to it yet. The complaints I've seen online about more enemies doing two hits of damage and the currency being harder to obtain are ones I'd agree with.
I've read a lot of comments about the high difficulty now, and I must say that I'm a bit puzzled. I'm fairly sure that the original HK was harder, although obviously it's still too early for me to say, as I've only beaten the first three (I think) bosses in Silksong. But they have been surprisingly... not hard? I mean, I died a couple of times, but it never felt like I was just banging my head against a wall and not getting anywhere. I read somewhere that they'll tweak the difficulty level and make things a bit easier in an update next week.
I can't understand why the "two hits of damage" is such a big deal either, I think it's just logical that the bigger and more dangerous foes deal more damage. However, I do not like the fact that I still get hit if I just happen to touch the hitbox of an enemy that is stunned or not attacking - that's a bad design choice in my opinion, and sometimes a bit annoying. Fortunately the healing system is an example of great game design, so they kind of balance each other.
Renault on 11/9/2025 at 16:16
Judging the difficulty of the game and comparing it to the original after only 3 bosses is not logical at all. That's like playing Dark Souls through Undead Burg and saying "what's the big deal?"
I think the "two hits" thing has been mentioned because in Silksong the earlier bosses are doing this, whereas in the first game, it didn't happen until the later stages of the game. And of course in the beginning you only have the bare minimum of health shields.
Al_B on 12/9/2025 at 08:43
I'm still in the early stages (playing slowly when I have time) and I'm still enjoying the game. In general I think the complaints are because people have forgotten how HK was when first experienced - you didn't know how to handle certain enemies or bosses when first encountered. HK was a game where the biggest upgrade was the person playing the game itself - you gained knowledge that benefited more than the game gave though its mechanics (not unlike Thief in some respects). Silksong has reset that to a large extent and perhaps I'm still at a stage before making a final judgement but so far I'm still keen to see how it ends.
Thirith on 15/9/2025 at 06:27
I played a couple of hours over the weekend and am fascinated by how familiar this feels, yet it's different enough not to feel like a Hollow Knight reskin - and that's true in several respects. There are a couple of elements that pretty much seem to be relabelled bits of the original game - such as the fleas replacing the grubs - but movement and combat have enough of a twist to feel fresh... and punishing. What I'll have to relearn: when do I give up on banging my head against a particular wall and try elsewhere, and when is success just within reach and I'll just have to try one, three, ten more times?
Thirith on 19/9/2025 at 22:29
I'm in this odd place with Silksong where I'd absolutely say I like it less than Hollow Knight - and yet I'm finding it impossible to put down. I find its world less atmospheric and coherent than that of the original, and I especially think the music lacks the strong leitmotif and is nice, but there hasn't been a single tune that I find myself humming afterwards... and yet, I don't want to play anything other than Silksong right now, and that's with frequent deaths and much repeated boss battles. I suspect that some of what I'm not liking as much as hoped is down to me not knowing the game as well; it is likely that I grew to love Hollow Knight with repeat plays and increased familiarity. But even if this lacks the freshness of Hollow Knight (and I'm not yet sure it does, because it changes up a fair amount), Team Cherry have again succeeded in giving me a world that I don't want to leave.
Though I'm only six or seven hours in. Ask me again once I've encountered a boss that I can't beat even after hours of trying.
Tomi on 12/10/2025 at 16:16
Quote Posted by Renault
Judging the difficulty of the game and comparing it to the original after only 3 bosses is not logical at all. That's like playing Dark Souls through Undead Burg and saying "what's the big deal?"
Well, I did say that "obviously it's still too early for me to say"... and now that I'm well into Act 2 and maybe a bit more qualified to say, I still don't find the game impossibly hard. I'd say that so far the normal enemies have been more challenging than in the original Hollow Knight, which is only a good thing. I hate it when in so many games the normal enemies are only there to slow you down, and the bosses are frustratingly hard. I'm sure that there are still a lot of tough bosses ahead of me in Silksong, but so far I've loved how they're designed!
There was only one particular Act 1 end boss that caused me some frustration
(The Last Judge), but that was mostly because of the annoyingly long distance between the boss and the place where you respawned after each death. But even that boss took me only around ten tries, and like every single boss fight so far, it was a lot of fun. So I'd say that the difficulty level is just about perfect for me.
SO FAR. I'm pretty sure that that'll change.
As for Dark Souls and Undead Burg, I think that the very first boss was actually my biggest obstacle in the game, or at least the most frustrating one. :D
Tomi on 18/10/2025 at 13:47
Okay, it finally happened. :( I bumped into my first difficulty spike in Silksong, and it's really bad. There's this room where you have to beat some pretty tough enemies, one wave after another. At wave 5 there's a fairly nasty mini-boss. Just getting there is tricky enough, so after beating the boss after ten attempts or so I was sure that that's all. Nope. Another wave of nasty enemies appear. And another. Surely that's it now? No... I've died so many times at this point. Wave 7. Wave 8. Then we get to wave number nine that has not one but two of those goddamn mini-bosses and I'm dead again in seconds. WTF Silksong?
I've loved the difficulty in Silksong so far, so I find this really disappointing. It'd be fine if this was an optional side quest or something, but this is a part of the main quest. I understand that this may just be one of those "progression checkpoints" that you often get in games like this, but it still feels like bullshit game design to me. I've still got a few other places to explore and perhaps I'll find new skills and things that'll help me with this, but even with double health and infinite tools I think I'd still find this battle pretty damn annoying.
Pyrian on 20/10/2025 at 16:48
I think that's where Yahtzee quit the game, too, lol.
It's very much a difficulty gate where you're supposed to do other things. I feel like maybe the big problem there is that instead of a big instant "lol no" you get all these easy waves to go through first that lures you in and makes you think you can beat it until you can't.
