For seven years, the discussion around Hollow Knight: Silksong focused on the cult-like levels of devotion among fans patiently waiting for the sequel. Now that Silksong has been available for about a week, though, that discussion has turned decisively toward seemingly endless takes on the game’s relative difficulty (or lack thereof). The discussion has gotten so loud that the developers at Team Cherry have vowed to implement a “slight difficulty reduction in early game bosses Moorwing and Sister Splinter” in a coming patch.

So is Silksong too difficult for its own good? Or do players just have to “get good” and stop whining?

To help answer those questions, we felt it was a good time to bust out the Ars Difficulty Matrix (ADM™), which we first used to analyze Elden Ring‘s difficulty in 2022. By breaking down the various ways a game can be “difficult,” the ADM™ can more precisely critique the ways Silksong is and is not designed to challenge players, both for good and for ill.

Each section of the ADM™ starts with a broad definition of the specific questions we’re attempting to answer, followed by an analysis of how Silksong fits into that paradigm of the long history of video game difficulty.

Note: The remainder of this piece has very minor spoilers for some of the earlier portions of Silksong.

Mechanical difficulty

Does the game require players to hit a specific sequence of buttons in a certain tight timing window to succeed? Also sometimes referred to as a “reflex test.”

Hollow Knight Silksong requires pretty good gaming reflexes. There’s no way around it.

This is especially true when facing the game’s many bosses, who often only briefly telegraph their intentions before unleashing attacks that can fill a huge portion of the screen. Players need to keep a careful eye on the sometimes small animation cues that presage an attack, move quickly and precisely to avoid that specific attack, and then dart back in during a quick counterattack window to do some damage before starting the cycle over again.

Unlike many Souls-like games, Silksong doesn’t have a spammable dodge button that offers the player brief invulnerability to almost every attack, regardless of location. That means players must actually carefully plan and execute quick movements to a safe region of the screen, which can be exceedingly difficult in tight timing windows.

Bosses aside, Silksong‘s platforming often requires players to bounce off of aerial enemies or objects using a series of mid-air downward attacks. These precisely timed bounces are especially difficult early in the game, when the downward attack launches diagonally forward in an arc that can be challenging to aim precisely.

Later upgrades that allow you to float and/or dash in mid-air help reduce the challenge of these multi-bounce strings, as do optional upgrades that straighten out your downward slash. Even so, Silksong‘s platforming challenges will likely trip up a lot of players without extensive run-and-jump gaming experience.

Punishing difficulty

How much of a penalty does the game extract for mistakes? How many mistakes can you make before “dying”? And when you do die, how much progress do you lose?

On the plus side, Silksong never extracts the ultimate punishment by sending you all the way back to the start of the game. You have effectively infinite lives, and death never pushes back farther than your last save point.

On the downside, those save points are often spaced quite far apart, meaning death can require a good deal of backtracking through treacherous areas to get back to where you were (and to recover the crucial rosaries you collected in your previous life). This can be especially punishing when you reach a new region of the game and are forced to search for a convenient save point without the aid of a map, which makes retracing your steps all the more fraught and confounding.

The individual enemies in Silksong aren’t very forgiving, either—just a few false moves can allow even random scrubs to get in enough damage to lead to a premature death. Bosses can do even more damage with a single attack and can also absorb a lot more damage than your poor avatar. Getting in five or 10 hits against a boss might be relatively simple, but getting in 50 or so before dying yourself often requires near-perfect levels of focus and execution across multiple challenging attack phases.

Like its predecessor, Silksong allows players to refill some of their health after gathering enough silk by hitting enemies. But even this nod to forgiveness is relatively punishing, since the health refill freezes your character in a defenseless pose for a few seconds. There’s nothing quite so deflating as seeing an attempted health recharge get thwarted by an enemy lunging in for an inopportune attack.

Arcane difficulty

How well does the game explain its inner workings? Are there detailed tutorials explaining the basic controls and deeper strategies? Or do you have to figure it all out on your own? Are there signposts showing you what to do next?

The most difficult part of Silksong, for me, is often figuring out where I should be going. Before I find a map in a new region, I often find myself flummoxed trying to remember which paths I’ve already explored and which I still need to work through. And even with an in-game map in hand, it’s difficult for me to remember which previously inaccessible corners might now be opened thanks to a new ability.

I’m willing to allow that this might be a personal problem with my sense of direction. Still, I’d imagine I’m not the only one who finds navigating Silksong‘s labyrinthine halls to be unexpectedly difficult.

The in-game map also purposefully obscures some of the game’s secret nooks and crannies, which can only be found with careful observation (or a handy walkthrough). Many players could miss some of the game’s most useful abilities if they’re not observant. And while the game gives some basic tutorials for new abilities, a few mechanics seem intentionally obscured. I didn’t know until hearing about the move in a YouTube video that you could dash downward to quickly reach the ground, for instance.

Grindable difficulty

Does the game give a patient player enough additional power, upgrades, tools, or knowledge to defeat difficult challenges? Or are you pretty much stuck with the techniques and abilities given to you at the outset?

For players willing to do a little optional exploring, Silksong can actually be pretty generous with the power upgrades. Hidden paths and missions can often lead directly to improvements for your health, weaponry, and move set that can pay huge dividends for later challenges in the game. And the required upgrades that you receive after certain bosses (see “Gated Difficulty,” below) can often make earlier challenges in the game that much simpler if and when you backtrack a bit.

That said, there are limits to how much this additional power can help Silksong players. This isn’t like some old-school RPGs where dozens of hours of grinding can lead to a Level 99 character that can take out the final boss in a single attack. Even with all the extra upgrades you can muster, you still have to struggle through the same basic dodge-and-counterattack repetition to get through some extremely difficult and unavoidable bosses.

Gated difficulty

Are large portions of the game hidden behind in-game challenges that need to be bested before you can move on? Or does the game offer alternative options for getting around what might be impassable progression walls?

Like any Metroidvania worth the genre name, large portions of Silksong require finding and unlocking new movement or attack capabilities. And in Silksong, those required abilities are usually gated behind major bosses that you’ll need to take down before accessing massive chunks of the expansive in-game map.

If and when you do get stuck on one of these bosses, you’re not necessarily trapped. You’ll usually be able to backtrack a bit to explore a few optional side paths and missions, which can offer power boosts that can make the boss a bit easier (see “Grindable Difficulty” above). Speedrunners have also found some arcane sequence skips to get around certain bosses or methods for putting off some boss fights until later than the developers intended.

These will be of little use to many casual players, though, who may well give up on Silksong after banging their head against a progress-blocking boss for an hour or two.

Tunable difficulty

Does the game offer explicit options for players to change the difficulty level or make the game generally more accessible? If not, does the game tune its difficulty automatically based on a player’s performance?

The lack of any difficulty-tuning options seems like a major omission for a modern title like Silksong. The game’s options menu includes toggles for screen shake and HUD size, but nothing in the way of difficulty adjustments.

Here, the developers at Team Cherry would have done well to take a few lessons from Celeste. While the default Celeste experience requires extremely precise jumps and split-second reflexes, designer Maddy Thorsen also felt it was important to offer an extremely forgiving “Assist Mode” for players who want or need a little boost.

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