Hollow Knight: Silksong Mods Offer Relief as Difficulty Debate Rages

Hollow Knight: Silksong is already proving to be one of the most talked-about releases of the year. Team Cherry’s long-awaited sequel to the indie classic Hollow Knight launched to immense player counts on Steam and critical praise, but the celebration has quickly been tempered by a heated debate over its difficulty. For some, Silksong feels like a beautifully crafted continuation of everything that made the first game special.

For others, it has become an exercise in frustration, with many walking away entirely after hitting punishing roadblocks in its earliest hours.

Difficulty discourse is hardly new in gaming, especially for titles that blend precision platforming with tough combat. But Silksong seems to have pushed the conversation further than most. Across Reddit threads, Discord chats, Steam reviews, and social media, the same themes keep emerging: harsh runbacks after death, enemy damage spikes, and miniboss encounters that punish mistakes far more than expected. Even a relatively early boss, Moorwing, has become a notorious sticking point, leaving some players feeling stonewalled just hours into the adventure.

Players critical of Silksong’s steep curve are quick to insist they’re not calling for hand-holding or trying to strip away challenge. What frustrates them is a sense that Team Cherry has tipped the scales toward unfairness. Some fans argue the sequel leans on inflated enemy health pools and repetitive tasks, rather than carefully designed difficulty arcs. As one frustrated Steam reviewer put it: “The game has artificially inflated difficulty and playtime due to overtuned numbers and menial runbacks.” On the other side, defenders argue that challenge has always been part of the Hollow Knight DNA, and that the community should resist watering down what makes the series unique.

What complicates matters is that Silksong has an unusually broad fanbase. Not everyone who loved Hollow Knight did so because of its boss fights or its high skill ceiling. Many were drawn in by the haunting art style, mysterious lore, and layered exploration. When the sequel locks key moments behind walls of brutal combat, these players feel excluded from much of what they came for. That disconnect is starkly illustrated in a widely shared Reddit post: one user explained that their wife, a devoted Hollow Knight fan who beat the first game, simply quit Silksong in despair after three days of failed attempts against Moorwing. “She’s dropping the game for good,” they wrote. “It’s sad to see all the anticipation die out like this.”

The story struck a nerve, drawing thousands of upvotes and sparking debates about what challenge really means in a game like Silksong. The poster admitted they themselves were loving the experience, but recognized that punishing lower-skill players could alienate a large slice of the audience. Their argument was that Silksong risks gatekeeping the very things – lore, atmosphere, exploration, and build experimentation – that defined Hollow Knight’s broad appeal. “If nothing about it is done,” they warned, “casual fans will be inevitably estranged from the game.”

In the middle of this ongoing argument, a practical solution has emerged – mods. Within days of launch, the NexusMods page for Silksong was dominated by tweaks aimed squarely at easing the pain. Xiaohai’s ShowDamage HealthBar, which displays enemy health and attack numbers, has already been downloaded more than 16,000 times. Baiker’s No Double Damage, which ensures attacks never deal more than a single mask of damage, has cleared 15,000 downloads. Mods like Always Have Compass Effect and Always Have Magnet Effect – both from modder LordGregory – are similarly popular, making navigation and shard collection less punishing. All this in just a few days shows how widespread the hunger is for accessibility options, even unofficial ones.

For PC players, mods are becoming the bridge between Team Cherry’s vision and player comfort levels. Communities are actively pointing struggling players toward these downloads, essentially creating a parallel safety net for those who want the world of Silksong without the punishing grind. Console players, of course, remain out of luck for now, bound to face Silksong’s harshest edges without recourse. But on PC, at least, the growing mod scene is ensuring that fewer fans have to choose between quitting outright and pushing through misery.

The situation also highlights a broader truth about modern gaming: the conversation about accessibility and difficulty is evolving. Gone are the days when simply telling someone to “git gud” sufficed. Players now recognize that accessibility doesn’t have to erase challenge – it can broaden a game’s audience, making room for people who want the atmosphere and lore but lack the reflexes or time for relentless trial and error. In fact, many mod users say they still experience plenty of challenge, but in a way that feels rewarding rather than punishing. For some, No Double Damage simply makes enemy encounters more consistent, removing spikes that felt arbitrary rather than skill-based.

Even among hardcore fans, there’s acknowledgement that Silksong’s uncompromising design philosophy might not serve everyone equally well. One Redditor joked that they were a “masochist” for enjoying the full double damage system, but admitted they were bookmarking easier mods to share with friends who weren’t having fun. That duality – loving the intensity while recognizing its alienating effect – runs throughout the community’s discourse. In essence, the mods aren’t about “cheating” the game, but tailoring it to the player’s own capacity to enjoy it.

Team Cherry hasn’t weighed in much on the debate yet, leaving fans to hash it out among themselves. But the presence of so many highly downloaded mods within days of release underscores that this isn’t a fringe complaint. It’s a mainstream concern. And whether through official patches or continued community support, the difficulty debate will likely remain one of Silksong’s defining narratives.

Ultimately, Silksong is both a triumph and a test. It proves Team Cherry hasn’t lost its gift for world-building, combat design, and atmosphere. But it also raises a question every developer must face eventually: how do you balance artistic vision with inclusivity? For now, players are answering that question themselves – with mods, with heated debates, and with personal stories about why they play games in the first place. Some play for the fight, others for the feeling. Silksong delivers both, but perhaps not in equal measure.