I remember when Dark Souls was the new hotness, it didn't take long for the "actually, this game isn't hard if you're just cool and smart about it" crowd to crop up. I see a lot less of that with Silksong, which PC Gamer reviewer Tyler Colp called the "videogame equivalent of sticking your hand into the Dune pain box" in his review (where he also gave it a 90).
It's hard—much harder than you'd expect, even if you factor in the metroidvania's reputation for difficulty—and that aspect of it is fielding some mixed reactions. In an interview for a gaming-focused exhibit at Melbourne's ACMI museum spotted by Dexerto, Team Cherry honchos Ari Gibson and William Pellen talked about their perspective on difficulty with an admission that yeah, Silksong's hard, but that's more or less the point.
"Hornet is inherently faster and more skillful than the Knight—so even the base level enemy had to be more complicated, more intelligent," Gibson said. "[Players] have ways to mitigate the difficulty via exploration, or learning, or even circumventing the challenge entirely, rather than getting stonewalled."
Gibson's and Pellen's comments on difficulty came from an interview in a booklet printed to accompany ACMI's in-person Game Worlds exhibit, which means it was almost certainly conducted before Silksong's release—and before a whole lot of players got riled up about the game's difficulty. It's possible they'd say the exact same things today, but the pair have yet to comment on how players are reacting to the challenge. Based on the second Silksong patch, though, it seems they're not rushing to make the game easier.
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