I played Hollow Knight for the first time in 2020 and loved it! (112% completion) So of course I wanted to play Silksong whenever it came out. I was distracted by other games the first week or so that Silksong released, mainly Nightreign. But after hearing hype about it, I couldn't put it off any longer. I had spent about 40 hours replaying Hollow Knight in preparation, and now, 73 hours later, I've achieved 100% completion in Silksong and beaten Lost Lace.
Anyone who's even heard of Silksong in some capacity has likely also heard complaints about how difficult it is, even compared to Hollow Knight (which was already known to be a hard game). Before I started playing Silksong for myself, hearing people criticize it for its difficulty both scared and intrigued me, lol. But when I finally started playing it...the first 30% or so was honestly not that bad. The difficulty definitely increased in Act 2, but looking back now that I've gotten 100% completion, there were really just a handful of bosses/areas that took me more than 15-20 minutes of attempts to finally conquer. For someone who's spent hundreds of hours playing difficult games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring, that's about on par with what I expected (the main exception was Lost Lace, which took me over an hour of attempts. But she is the secret final boss, so I expected a tough fight!)
The three major complaints in terms of difficulty I heard about Silksong were 1) everything does two masks of damage, 2) the runbacks are awful, and 3) too many gauntlet battles. For the first point, this may be due to the fact that I played the game after they patched it to make enemies do less damage, but from what I saw, basic enemies (the ones that respawn if you leave the room) only do one damage, while some "elite" enemies and bosses do two damage. Environmental hazards like spikes typically do one damage unless you get double tapped, which did happen sometimes. But overall, this allocation of damage didn't bother me one way or another. Sure, I could have beaten some bosses faster if all their attacks only did one damage instead of two, but to me it just felt like I was fighting the harder versions of Hollow Knight bosses in God Home where they do more damage. Plus, I felt that Hornet being able to heal three masks at once, even in midair, compared to the grounded, one-at-a-time healing in Hollow Knight, made up for the fact that enemies did more damage.
I should definitely mention that throughout my playthrough of Silksong, I used guides from IGN and Fextralife. I do this with certain games if I know they're going to be very difficult and filled with secrets that I'll likely never find without looking them up. Rather than spend my limited free time looking for items in the wrong places, or missing a helpful tool that would eliminate extra frustration in a later challenge, I'd rather make sure I'm fully prepared whenever possible and that I'm making the best use of my time in the game. Using guides no doubt made my experience different from the majority of players who played blindly...I can't speak for others, but I would say it definitely made things less frustrating even though I still had plenty of frustrating moments (in terms of learning how to fight a boss or maneuver through a difficult platform area, guides can only do so much). But in general, why not know that the Wreath of Purity exists before going into Bilewater? Or why not know you can get the last Pale Oil in Act 3 before you fight any bosses there (screw the Flea Juggle and Flea Dodge btw - Flea Bounce is fun though!) I know using guides in an unorthodox way to play, but personally I think it only made my experience with the game better.
And going back to the second difficulty point about bad runbacks, again, maybe it was because I was using guides which helped me find all the benches and shortcuts in areas, but I didn't find runbacks in the game that bad overall. At worst I had to do some basic platforming and jump past a few enemies, but I don't recall any runback being more than 30 seconds. Honestly, the worst ones in my opinion were for the big platforming areas like Sands of Karak and Mount Fay, not bosses. And the only bad boss runbacks I can think of off the top of my head were for the single Conchfly, Groal the Great, and the two bosses in Lost Verdania. You don't know bad runbacks unless you've played Dark Souls 2, lol.
As for gauntlets, I didn't mind them in general, but one thing I didn't like was having to do them before a boss, especially a relatively difficult boss. Fighting a gauntlet of basic enemies in an area is fine, but having to do the same every time you can attempt a boss was definitely one of my least favorite things in the game. Luckily, out of all the bosses, there weren't too many of these situations (and thank goodness you could skip all but the last gauntlet before Crust King Khann). I'm also not a fan of contact damage from enemies, especially when you take damage from touching a boss that's stunned. I learned how to work with it, but was still annoying when it happened.
I guess besides a few unnecessary gauntlets and contact damage, my one other nitpick with the game is that it would have been nice if more enemies dropped rosaries. I was surprised that you don't get any from bosses or some elite enemies in gauntlets and such. Some random basic enemies don't drop rosaries nor shards, which was odd. Thankfully I was always very careful with retrieving my cocoon after I died, so I only recall having to farm once or twice and was never short on rosaries by mid-game. I suppose it was a bit annoying having to pay for practically everything with rosaries, even benches sometimes, but again, being careful to not lose my rosaries and keeping consumable ones on hand made it okay. It was also nice that you could use rosaries to buy endless shard bundles from NPCs to save farming time, since tools really use up those shards faster than you'd think!
Of course, none of this means that the game was easy for me at all. I definitely got some gray hairs during all the brutal platforming sections and the chaotic boss fights! But the way I see it, if, like, 80% of a game brings me a ton of joy and entertainment, I'll put up with 20% frustration. After all, no one's forcing me to play a difficult game and I can choose whether or not to be frustrated, especially if I know that I'll eventually be successful. Again, maybe it's because I've played a lot of FromSoft games, but compared to those, the bosses in Silksong are relatively straightforward. The easier bosses only do 2-3 different things while the harder bosses can do up to 5-6 different things, all of which are very telegraphed. It's just a matter of fast reaction time and multi-tasking when there's both melee and bullet hell attacks coming your way (or the boss summons adds, which I didn't like, but luckily there weren't too many of those).
Going back to tools though, those are one of my favorite things about the game! Admittedly, I didn't try out all of the tools, but the ones I did use often, like the cogflies, cogwork wheel, and conchcutter, became such an asset in most fights. And gah, the combat in Silksong is so good! Between the tools and Hornet's fast, agile movements, I enjoyed practically every single boss fight. Movement in general in Silksong just felt so satisfying and precise - dashing into jumping into clawline into pogo into double jump into wall cling, or some other combination of these...Hornet's graceful movements, among other things, really made the game more engrossing.
Going back to combat, I ended up rarely using silk skills (since I play defensively and like to ensure I always have silk for healing) and pretty much stuck with reaper crest for my whole playthrough, lol (didn't care for diagonal pogo - and getting extra silk after a bind was really nice!) I love how Silksong took the charm mechanic from Hollow Knight and expanded on it with crests and tools. My favorite boss was Cogwork Dancers - such a unique and fun fight with one of my favorite music in the game. I also liked Trobbio, First Sinner, Last Judge, Phantom, and the Act 3 story bosses (Nyleth, Karmelita, Khann, and Lost Lace). I actually missed some Act 3 bosses that I'll have to look for later.
And oh my gosh, the atmosphere and world design of Silksong is off the charts! Every area is a work of art, both in background and foreground. And there's just so many little details added that make even an extremely stylized world like this feel real - the floating particles, grass moving as Hornet runs by, being able to break most objects and their fragments having believable physics. And the fact that they gave every NPC unique dialogue whenever they hear the Needolin! Everything about the game was just so gorgeous...and the music is near perfection, just like Hollow Knight. From the intense battle themes and gentle melodies, Christopher Larkin delivered once again. And the size and scope of the game! I was not expecting a map the size of Elden Ring, but that's what I got. When I played Elden Ring for the first time, I kept thinking "this game never ends!" and that's how I felt about Silksong too. You could just feel how much love and attention to detail Team Cherry put into this game over the past eight years. But seriously, only charging $20 for this amount of content and effort...I feel like I ripped them off!
I'm not one who follows the lore of these types of games very well, but I got the main gist of Silksong's story. I'll have to watch a lore/story explained video later, but I have to say one my favorite cutscenes was seeing baby Hornet.
My other favorite was the Act 3 finale where Hornet is rescued from the void by Hollow Knight/the vessel from the first game!
Pretty much all the characters in Hollow Knight/Silksong are charming and interesting - gosh, how do they come up with so many unique bug-like designs and unique voices/gibberish, lol. It was also nice getting to know Hornet a lot more compared to the first game. I love how calm, dignified, and articulate she is all the time despite getting beaten to a pulp in every inch of Pharloom, lol.
I know I could say more about Silksong, but this post is long enough already! To summarize, this game is a masterpiece in nearly all regards - art direction, music, gameplay mechanics, and world design. Team Cherry were definitely cooking for these eight years, and the product they delivered was well worth the wait. Yes, Silksong is a difficult, unforgiving game, but that's what it's trying to be. It's successful because even people who struggle with the difficulty want to preserver, because everything else about it is so wonderful.
After 73 hours of playtime, I'm going to put Silksong aside for now, but I look forward to playing it again, whether it's looking for the things I missed or starting a new playthrough. But for now, Hornet needs a nice long rest, she's been through enough~
