Silksong's Bosses Are Brilliant, But Their Rewards Feel Hollow
Hollow Knight: Silksong's brutal difficulty spike and unrewarding boss fights make victory feel hollow, even as its gorgeous world shines.
I really, really want to love Hollow Knight: Silksong. And in so many ways, I do. The long-awaited sequel is gorgeous, buttery smooth to play, and packed with more content than I ever expected from Team Cherry. I have stopped mid-air just to stare at Pharloom's fungal cathedrals, and I have grinned like an idiot at its weird, colorful residents. But after dozens of hours, I have to admit something uncomfortable: my first playthrough is being hampered by one specific problem. It is tied to difficulty, yes, but it is not just that the game is hard. It is that the game's hardest moments often give me nothing back.
Now in 2026, months after launch, the conversation around Silksong has not cooled down. Players are still arguing about the difficulty spike between Hollow Knight and its sequel. The platforming can be finicky, standard enemies hit surprisingly hard, and the bosses are the main event. From the Bell Beast onward, most boss fights strip two chunks of health per hit. When you start with only five Masks, that is terrifying. Compared to the early game of the 2017 original, it feels like a huge leap.
The Difficulty Spike Is RealThat spike has left many players stuck for hours. The notorious early-game walls include Moorwing, Sister Splinter, Last Judge, and Savage Beast Fly. I have seen people report spending three hours or more on a single one of these fights. You memorize attack patterns, learn when to counter, and adapt, only to die and face a rigorous runback. It can be exhausting. I felt that exhaustion firsthand.
Victory Without RewardHere is the part that really gets me. After hours of ramming my head against the wall, I finally beat my nemesis. Relief floods in. Excitement, too. But then the adrenaline wears off, I look around the battlefield, and I realize I have been given nothing for my effort. Most bosses in Silksong do not drop Rosary Beads. They do not even drop Shards. Often, the only reward is the ability to progress to the next area. In rare cases, you unlock a pathway that eventually leads to a new item or skill. Very few bosses actually hand over a tangible reward.
Boss
My time spent
Tangible reward
Moorwing
~2 hours
None
Sister Splinter
~1.5 hours
None
Last Judge
Hours for many players
None
Savage Beast Fly
Hours for many players
None
That makes Silksong's victories feel hollow to me. I grew up on Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro. Those games drilled a simple promise into my brain: boss fights are worth the effort. You may spend hours getting speared into the floor by the Nameless King, but you know a wealth of Souls, a boss weapon, and potentially great loot are waiting. That reward loops directly into character progression. It is a vital motivator. It encourages you to stick with a challenging game when your patience is razor-thin.
With Silksong, I started asking myself why I was putting in the effort at all. Moorwing took me around two hours. Sister Splinter took me about an hour and a half. I enjoyed both fights well enough in the moment. But when their bodies hit the ground, I did not feel the satisfaction I expected. All I had earned was access to the next part of the game. Worse, I had lost far more than I gained. Both Moorwing and Sister Splinter claimed at least 200 Rosary Beads from me each during our long battles. That sense of loss is made sharper by Silksong's controversial economy, which currently asks players to spend far more Rosary Beads than they earn.
I Am Not Asking for Easier BossesLet me be clear: I am not saying Silksong's bosses should be easier. Aside from a few frustrating attacks and an overreliance on RNG in some fights, I have been enjoying most of the boss battles. The choreography is often brilliant. The music swells. The tension is real. But the lack of rewards after victory is starting to make me feel like I am not making proper progress. It turns a triumphant moment into a shrug.
Maybe that is the point. Maybe Silksong wants progress to be its own reward. Maybe the journey through Pharloom is supposed to be enough. But in a game this demanding, with an economy this tight, and with runbacks this punishing, I need a little more than a doorway. I need a reason to believe the next brutal wall is worth climbing. Give me Rosary Beads. Give me Shards. Give me a weird charm. Give me something that says, yes, you did it, and your character is stronger for it. Otherwise, even a beautiful, brilliant sequel can start to feel hollow. 🕷️⚔️💀
That same calculus — what you put in versus what you get back — shapes how I decide which games are worth buying in the first place. A sequel like this one earns its cost simply through sheer hours of content, but plenty of other titles demand seventy dollars up front and hand back a weekend's worth of play. Before I commit to anything now, I like to know what the going rate actually is across storefronts, because the gap between a full-price listing and a discounted key can be wide enough to fund my next two purchases. It is the same instinct that makes a boss reward feel satisfying: effort in, something tangible out.
If you would rather not pay full price for the privilege of being flattened by a giant insect, it is worth doing a quick [game price comparison]( before you check out. DealNest pulls listings together in one place so you can see which retailer is actually offering the better deal instead of guessing. That way the only thing draining your resources is Pharloom itself, and not your wallet. 🕷️