Hollow Knight: Silksong is enduring the age-old difficulty discourse in video games of people debating what they deem well-designed versus what isn’t. Indeed, Hollow Knight: Silksong has been polarizing; it’s a difficult game, to be clear, but difficulty is subjective, and this isn’t going to ruin Hollow Knight: Silksong’s reputation as one of the most highly anticipated games of all time. Still, it can be tough to reconcile with the fact that I’m simply not falling madly in love with a game I’ve been looking forward to as much as Hollow Knight: Silksong for the past seven years.
I adore Hollow Knight, for instance, but I am well aware of the skill gap that prevents me, specifically, from enjoying it as fully as someone else might. I commend Hollow Knight for how challenging I perceive it to be, chiefly in nightmarish ‘pogo’ platforming sequences that I never mastered, and I was also relieved that the hardest content in Hollow Knight was optional. Conversely, while I’m neck-deep in my first Hollow Knight: Silksong playthrough, I do have some substantial gripes with the sequel. As for the patch that Hollow Knight: Silksong is releasing, I feel as if its boss nerfs are largely inessential.
Hollow Knight: Silksong’s Recent Patch Misses the Forest for the Trees
Among a lengthy series of patch notes that are all intentionally beneficial to players’ experience, tuning the game to perhaps what Team Cherry had initially envisioned, two bosses have received “slight” nerfs. As the Hollow Knight: Silksong patch notes on Steam read:
- Slight difficulty reduction in early game bosses Moorwing and Sister Splinter.
Now, as it is with nearly any difficult game, especially if it tangentially aligns itself with the same crushing ethos as a Soulslike game, everyone in the Hollow Knight community has opinions on whether they think either Moorwing or Sister Splinter’s nerfs are warranted. That’ll be doubly true of anyone who’s proudly achieved 112% in Hollow Knight, and probably perceives any degree of difficulty experienced in the sequel a “skill issue” that players should “get good” at, rather than hoping a perceivably tedious boss—much less anything under the sun between perilous platforming and arduous runbacks—is smote with a developer-sanctioned nerf.
Thankfully, Soulslike or Hollow Knight veterans who shun others for not playing the game in a way that’s as challenging as they’d like, or having valid complaints about how a game is designed, are a loud minority and nothing more.
Some players will have no trouble slaying Hollow Knight: Silksong’s Moorwing in Greymoor when they originally come across it. Likewise, some players may be remarkably skilled against flying enemies like Splinterbarks and have terrific reaction timing against environmental hazards that Sister Splinter erects while also being tremendously mindful of the creature’s enormous hitboxes.
Regardless, others may find both bosses terribly difficult, and Team Cherry has obviously felt as if they’re both a bit too punishing in Hollow Knight: Silksong Act 1. Personally, I believe that neither Moorwing nor Sister Splinter was deserving of nerfs, but for the following reasons:
- Moorwing is a wholly optional boss that players aren’t locked into an arena with, ensuring that players never have to battle it if they don’t want to.
- Progressing the Flea Caravan wish/quest can ‘skip’ Moorwing, though Moorwing does return to the area, only this time it appears near the Greymoor Bellway.
- Players can cheese Moorwing incredibly easily, if they so choose, by ascending to the top of the area and downward-attacking from the safety of a ledge that the beast can’t circumvent.
- Garmond and Zaza can be requested to aid players in battling Moorwing (in my experience, however, Garmond and Zaza did not appear after requesting them when I had transitioned Moorwing to the Bellway-adjacent area and pursued the Flea quest).
- As for Sister Splinter, I found the only obstacle in the boss fight to be the Splinterbarks (a pattern, I wager, with me disliking many bosses that revolve around ads).
Hollow Knight: Silksong is Rife with Divisive Design Choices
I’m dying on the hill that flying enemies are egregiously grating pests, gank gauntlets lean too heavily on the first game’s Colosseums in that they’re overtuned and excessive, and that Hollow Knight: Silksong’s rosary economy is brutally impoverishing (the latter being mitigated somewhat in this patch, fortunately). That said, I don’t actually think the game is too grueling.
Everyone in the Hollow Knight community has opinions on whether they think either Moorwing or Sister Splinter’s nerfs are warranted.
If anything had to be nerfed, I’d prefer that gauntlets had fewer waves or that the fodder enemies in them didn’t take several hits to kill, compared to the two to three hits they need—including insidious contact damage, which I also despise in any 2D game—to kill me. I don’t expect such nerfs to strike Hollow Knight: Silksong’s gameplay, though, and I genuinely do respect Team Cherry for having a certain level of challenge in mind, even if I’d argue that some design choices were made to impede or frustrate me beyond anything else.
For example, I know myself and my skill level well enough to predict that I’ll have a miserable go of attempting the Pale Oil courier quest from Bellhart to the Citadel, inspired by Hollow Knight’s Delicate Flower quest.
Interestingly, the patch notes do declare that Team Cherry is working on a second patch already, which suggests more nerfs and/or buffs have been considered based on whatever might have been brought to its attention and worthy of its curiosity in the matter since launch. In any case, each subsequent patch that Team Cherry decides to dole out for Hollow Knight: Silksong is sure to come with a hearty helping of division in the playerbase in terms of what it considers redundant or appreciated.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 91 /100 Critics Rec: 97%
- Released
- September 4, 2025
- ESRB
- Everyone 10+ / Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood
- Developer(s)
- Team Cherry
- Publisher(s)
- Team Cherry
WHERE TO PLAY
- Engine
- Unity
- Franchise
- Hollow Knight
- Number of Players
- Single-player
- Steam Deck Compatibility
- Verified
- PC Release Date
- September 4, 2025
- Xbox Series X|S Release Date
- September 4, 2025
- PS5 Release Date
- September 4, 2025
- Nintendo Switch Release Date
- September 4, 2025
- Nintendo Switch 2 Release Date
- September 4, 2025
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PC
- OpenCritic Rating
- Mighty
- Wiki
