Hollow Knight: Silksong hasn't even been out and in players' hands for a full day yet, but one thing is already clear – the metroidvania sequel is tough.
Team Cherry kept Hollow Knight fans waiting for over six years since its initial reveal of Silksong, so there was plenty of time to hone our skills and get ready for the big day. After all, Hollow Knight was far from an easy game itself, but even so, folks are struggling here, and part of that is down to the changes made to pogo jumping.
One of Hollow Knight's staple mechanics was the ability to bounce over enemies and obstacles, such as spikes, with a perfectly timed downward slash – a feature also present in Silksong, albeit in a way that seriously disrupts players' muscle memory. In Silksong, Hornet descends at a diagonal angle rather than straight downwards. As one Reddit meme puts it, "get ready to learn 45° angle buddy."
What early game Silksong feels like from r/HollowKnight
"Couldn't express it better lol the times I fucked up because she goes diagonally mate I can't lol," one comment reads. "It's actually pissing me off, I'm about to quit in Hunter's March because it's so much harder to input than a regular pogo. Half the time I just do a regular attack and fall," another frustrated player responds.
It's not just the movement mechanics that are proving difficult to get used to, though. "I have six locations unlocked so far and jeez man. [...] Hell broke loose on Hunter's March. It felt like a recreation of [Path of Pain] and Deepnest. There's only ONE bench in the entire area. I haven't seen any Bellway there at all," another struggling fan writes.
"About seven hours in and this game seems noticeably harder than the first," another thread notes. "I think I've beat four main bosses. Explored a bunch and I realized aside from getting used to the pogo, the game just really pushes you."
Bosses are also proving to be a major issue. "This game is way harder than Hollow Knight. It was NOT necessary to make every boss deal two damage," one player writes on Twitter. Another says: "Nearly five hours into Silksong and I think it's safe to say either I have a skill issue, or Silksong is a way more aggressive form of Hollow Knight. [...] These bosses are ruthless [for real] but fuck yeah."
I'm sure fans will get used to things soon enough, but for now, there's a definite adjustment period, which perhaps isn't what was expected. After all, Team Cherry previously declared in an Edge magazine interview that "we're trying to be really, really mindful that we want this to be a game that new people can come into, and experience as their first Hollow Knight game – that it sits alongside the original game, and the difficulty also sits alongside the game in that way."
With a peak of over 535,000 concurrent players on Steam alone, however, the difficulty doesn't seem to be bothering people too much.
