Hollow Knight: Silksong’s Brutal Difficulty Made Me Rethink My Love for Challenging Games

I was chomping at the bit to play Hollow Knight: Silksong when it finally landed in 2025. After years of waiting, I dove in headfirst, ready for a tough-but-fair Metroidvania—the kind of thing the original Hollow Knight delivered so beautifully. But man, was I in for a rude awakening. What I got instead was a game that frequently felt less like a challenge and more like a slap in the face. And now, even after a handful of developer patches, I can’t shake the feeling that Silksong has done something dangerous: it made me question whether we’ve all been tricked into equating suffering with quality.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m no stranger to hard games. I’ve bashed my head against Elden Ring, danced with the bosses in Sekiro, and got my butt handed to me more times than I can count in classic soulslikes. I love that rush when you finally beat a boss after a dozen attempts. But Silksong often left me feeling hollow—and not in a poetic, tragic sort of way. It was the little things that piled up like a snowball rolling downhill. Dying and realizing you don’t recover your ammo? That’s a real kick in the teeth. You’d have to trudge back through areas you’ve already cleared, grind for resources, just so you could take another shot at the boss with a fighting chance. By the time I’d get back to the arena, my mood was already sour, and my fingers were tensed up for all the wrong reasons.

And the bosses themselves—oh boy. Some of them, like the infamous Last Judge
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