Hollow Knight is frequently compared to another difficult and genre-defining game like Dark Souls, and whenever either game franchise gains mainstream spotlight, a debate about video game accessibility often reignites. Hollow Knight: Silksong, for that matter, has sparked off yet another discourse about video game difficulty following its huge mainstream success. Silksong‘s low price is often a driving factor as to why it sold so well. However, for gamers expecting better gameplay accessibility, Silksong might have gate-kept too hard.
You don’t exactly have to go far to see the complaints this time around. Even a simple comment section on social media paints a picture of frustration for a certain percentage of Silksong players, complaining it’s too hard, or even potential buyers being turned off by the difficulty. Some have even alleged that Silksong has had a considerable difficulty spike compared to its predecessor in recent threads like these:
The top comments all point to a similar sentiment:
“People are not saying that HK was easy. People are saying that Silk is way harder. And I just finished Frey, and I’m 100% sure there wasn’t something as demanding as Frey in HK (white palace was optional).”
“I just beat hollow knight for the first time a few days before this game released so it is very fresh in my mind and I am not rusty at its style of gameplay. This game feels at least twice as difficult,” claims another Reddit user.
Players who managed to catch up on the hype by playing Hollow Knight first and then Silksong after swear that the sequel is so much more difficult. With this many players agreeing that Silksong is indeed harder than its predecessor, this highlights a glaring contradiction for the Hollow Knight sequel.
One Bar of Entry Was Lowered, Another Was Raised
Hollow Knight: Silksong doesn’t exactly need more sales at its current level of success. However, I can’t help but question the point of raising the bar higher for difficulty when Hollow Knight: Silksong‘s devs already made the commendable and empathic choice of keeping the price at $20 or even lower in certain regions. If accessibility to the game was that important, why stop there? And why be selective about which crucial features are accessible?
I’m not exactly suggesting that Silksong lower its difficulty to accommodate casual crowds or even gamers with disabilities, but options clearly wouldn’t hurt. Perhaps even a simple division of “Original/Intended Experience” and an easier “Newbie Experience” would’ve worked if the developers wanted to keep their artistic vision intact.
It just so happens that a recent survey in Resetera asked that very question to around 1,500+ gamers, and while most voters (60%) were in favor of trusting whatever the game devs wanted for difficulty and accessibility, the second biggest chunk (20%) is a gamer population that craves options, and some even prefer a story mode.
At the end of the day, we play games for fun, and I kind of hoped that Silksong’s developers, Team Cherry, would lead not just in indie game excellence or pricing, but also in other areas such as accessibility. Elden Ring certainly evolved past its Souls roots when it introduced Spirit Ashes (which I stubbornly avoided since I’m a Souls purist), and Lies of P later added an easy mode; what’s stopping Silksong from evolving like that and becoming even greater?
