Silksong Reminds Us that There’s Room for Tough Games

By Moises Taveras | September 9, 2025 | 2:00pm

Video Games Features hollow knight: silksong

Silksong Reminds Us that There’s Room for Tough Games

It is fine, actually, that Silksong, as well as Hollow Knight before it, are hard games. Nothing wrong with that at all. Games can be hard if they want to be. I do not think either would be a richer experience if they were easier or offered difficulty options, and though I believe they deserve scrutiny for their lack of accessibility features, in both cases, it has often feels thematically cogent that the journeys be as arduous as they are. I say this because some of the conversations surrounding these games currently feel out of touch with the ways that either title actually utilizes difficulty. They are not unfair and relentless gauntlets, looking to spite the player. They are patient, and occasionally harsh, instructors who merely wish to show you how to execute their dance.

Wisdom and knowledge are abundant in the Hollow Knight games. They are often lost to time, but they are not beyond salvage. It is why you can find scrawlings of the people that have come before in long-forgotten journals and scrolls and why you can often exchange these relics for currency. It is why the fringes of both games’ kingdoms are home to masters willing to impart their greatest lessons to you. And it is why the world itself, as well as its inhabitants, are so quick to humble the player and mold them into the best version of themself through tireless, and yes, repetitive, challenges and drills.

Hollow Knight is a hard game, and Silksong handily inherits the mantle from it and pushes the player even further, but I think even this short-and-sweet descriptor flattens what they actually do. It would be more apt to describe either title as rigorous, and I don’t believe this to be some great sin on either game’s part. I think there’s space in the world, and in games culture, for tough art, and it hurts to see audiences want to chip away at that and soften it.

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What sets titles like Hollow Knight and Silksong apart is that these games are unafraid to be work. In a world filled with casual and passive experiences, art like that should be valued! They are unafraid to ask things of their audience, much like the Souls games of From Software’s oeuvre, and to expect results. In turn, you get the privilege of being able to read it. You can parse its language and eventually become fluid in it. You may even become masterful at it. But at the very least you become learned.

Here’s a true thing about Silksong‘s difficulty: it is more apparent at the outset of the game than it ever was in the first. Maybe it is that Team Cherry heard people complain about the first game’s “boring” opening—a refrain I’ve heard dozens of times now—or that it simply decided to aim higher, but the sequel is certainly tougher out of the box. Even the simplest of opponents will check the player quite harshly if they smash an input at the wrong time, and if they are not slain by the whiff and punishment of the foe, something in the environment is almost bound to eliminate the player. Just look at Hunter’s March, a devilish early area in the game that has elicited a lot of groveling over its platforming demands, and which contains a harsh vibe killer of a boss fight in the form of the Savage Beastfly.

Here’s an untrue claim people have made, though: that this massive and grueling game is unbalanced and punitive for the sake of it. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Lord knows that I struggled against that Beastfly boss for an entire evening before throwing in the towel, going anywhere else, and training up to fight them at a later point. But by the time I’d returned, I took them out in one fell swoop, and the melee that ended in their demise was, in short, beautiful.

What exactly transpired in those hours? Well, I explored. Just like the first Hollow Knight, I interpreted this roadblock as an opportunity to pick another direction and did just that. I placed a pin down on my map, marking the area so I’d know where to return to, and embarked on other journeys where I learned skills by pushing on unfamiliar boundaries. I learned how to make careful and precise use of Hornet’s full tool belt, which includes crests that swap out some of her attacks and movement skills, as well as equipment like throwable knives, armor-piercing spears, and spike traps that do a hefty chunk of damage.

I learned how to embody Hornet, who plays in entirely unique ways that separate her from the Knight of the first game, whom I’m exceptionally familiar with after several playthroughs. I studied the average enemy’s patterns by poking and prodding them in combat. I learned how they respond to aggressions, and in turn realized how to parry and push the attack in ways they couldn’t expect. I learned when to heal and how to space out an encounter to make the most of Hornet’s agility and acrobatics, and before long, I was gracefully diving at opponents, somersaulting over their heads, and luring them into poisonous traps that’d whittle them down. I was dancing so far above their heads they could barely see me before I cut them down.

I think we often confuse “balletic” combat or choreography, which appears to flow from the player effortlessly, with systems and mechanics which are easy to execute. The simpler it is to achieve a flow state, the better players often feel about an in-game scrap. In truth, ballet, like any other form of dance, is excruciating in its demands and components, and asks a lot of the dancer and company. Silksong is no different.

Have you ever watched Swan Lake? It is one of the most famous ballets of all time, and I had the pleasure of being able to sit in on a performance of it some years ago. I cared little for the show going into the evening, merely knowing its reputation, and how it inspired tons of other work I had enjoyed, like Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan. Not only was I struck by its drama, which wordlessly communicates the entirety of its plot, but I was awed by the movements of every performer on the stage. I’d rarely seen a dance recital to that point in my life, deeming them a luxury too lofty and rich for my blood, but I was stunned by how potently an expression of the body could capture feelings I’m most used to putting into words and how far the dancers were willing to extend their bodies to communicate this so boldly. I walked away from the theater that night with a newfound appreciation for the complicated and often miniscule movements that make the difference between a rousing success and an epic failure on the grand stage. It is harsh, but it’s the truth, and this is Silksong’s truth as much as it is ballet’s

I can’t become an accomplished warrior—nay, dancer—in Silksong without first being asked to bleed for my art, and the game cannot ask this without first promising to be unflinchingly difficult and harsh at times. It needs to be able to push me around in order to instill the desire in me to get better and surmount it. This isn’t just “Oh, it feels good to overcome this difficult boss because it beat me mercilessly for hours” difficulty. The difficulty that courses through both Hollow Knight games is as integral to the experience as the ability to aim down sights in most shooters or jump in a Mario game. It may be grueling getting to the very bottom of Hollow Knight, or the very top of Silksong, but it is a quality of the game which wholly makes or breaks the entire experience.

And so I believe in Silksong’s dance, and I believe in the process by which it teaches me to be fluent in its complicated steps. I believe in its precision and the ordeal that ensues should I miss my mark. I believe in my company, which at times appear like my enemy in mortal combat, and I believe that should I find my footing and hit my cues, we can make something elegant and beautiful together. And that takes work.

Moises Taveras is a struggling games journalist whose greatest aspiration in life at this point is to play as the cow in Mario Kart World. You can periodically find him spouting nonsense and bad jokes on Bluesky.