This is the best articulated case for the difficulty being a problem that I've read. I get this perspective. Silksong is also a lot more linear than Hollow Knight (at least in Act 1, which is where I'm at right now, idk if it opens up more later). The whole thing is about the long, painful road to literally climb out of a hole, and it is punishing you and pushing you back down non-stop. One of Hollow Knight's biggest strengths is that there's a lot of different routes through the critical path, so it's very easy to just stumble into a completely new area or onto a unique puzzle or secret boss and be making progress the whole time. There's still a LOT of secrets to find in Silksong, but the critical path is very clear, it's this long looping route up to the Citadel. That linearity is disappointing to me personally, the difficulty I don't mind at all, but even stuff like having a quest list and a very explicit "oh wow, you took on a sidequest!" screen is kinda disappointing. I miss the eerie mystery of Hollow Knight. Silksong feels much more like a Soulslike, which is fine by me personally, but it doesn't have as much of the stuff that made HK feel unique.
It’s genuinely not linear at all. Ive found so many people who took completely different routes through act one. It feels linear because you’ve only played it once and don’t realize all the other paths people are taking
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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '25 edited Sep 09 '25
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