The drastic increase in difficulty from 2017’s Hollow Knight to its highly anticipated successor, Hollow Knight: Silksong, has been a controversial topic in the community over the last couple of weeks. Now, developer Team Cherry has addressed complaints of Hollow Knight: Silksong being too difficult, explaining that it mainly comes down to one thing: the game’s new protagonist.
After years of waiting, Hollow Knight: Silksong finally launched for PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Nintendo Switch on September 4. Despite being an indie title, Silksong has been just as anticipated by gamers as the likes of Grand Theft Auto 6 or The Elder Scrolls 6. But now that the sequel is finally in players’ hands, there’s been one major talking point: the drastic increase in difficulty compared to the original Hollow Knight. In an attempt to smooth things over with players, the first Hollow Knight: Silksong update did “slightly” reduce the difficulty of two early-game boss fights.
The slight reduction in difficulty to some bosses was welcomed by many players, but there are still many who believe Hollow Knight: Silksong is just too hard. Developer Team Cherry has now responded to these complaints during the ACMI Game Worlds Exhibition (attended and reported on by Dexerto), revealing why the game is so much more difficult than the original Hollow Knight. “Hornet is inherently faster and more skillful than the Knight – so even the base level enemy had to be more complicated, more intelligent,” Team Cherry’s Ari Gibson said.
Team Cherry admits that Silksong is much more complicated than Hollow Knight, but explains how the sequel is built to give players choices. “The important thing for us is that we allow you to go way off the path,” Gibson said. “So one player may choose to follow it directly to its conclusion, and then another may choose to constantly divert from it and find all the other things that are waiting and all the other ways and routes.” The developer goes on to explain how players can mitigate the difficulty of Silksong‘s bosses via exploration, learning, “or even circumventing the challenge entirely.”
As for Silksong‘s new protagonist, Hornet, Team Cherry says it wanted to bring enemies to her level, as opposed to scaling back Hornet’s powers. “The basic ant warrior is built from the same move-set as the original Hornet boss,” William Pellen said. The developer then compared Hornet to Hollow Knight‘s protagonist, The Knight. “The same core set of dashing, jumping, and dashing down at you, plus we added the ability to evade and check you. In contrast to the Knight’s enemies, Hornet’s enemies had to have more ways of catching her as she tries to move away.”
Despite the controversy surrounding the game’s difficulty, Silksong appears to be far more successful than its predecessor. In just a matter of hours after its launch earlier this month, Silksong smashed the concurrent player count record set by 2017’s Hollow Knight. On September 6, just two days after its release, Hollow Knight: Silksong managed to peak at more than 587,000 concurrent players on Steam. For comparison, Hollow Knight‘s record was just 95,655, which it achieved on September 7.
September 4, 2025
E10+ For Everyone 10+ // Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood
Team Cherry
Team Cherry
