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.