Hollow Knight: Silksong arrived as one of the most anticipated sequels in recent memory, and its September 4, 2025 launch quickly became a cultural event. Demand was so intense that Steam, the Nintendo eShop, and the Xbox Store all experienced outages on release day, while the game went on to earn a 93 percent player approval rating on Steam. By 2026, the conversation around Team Cherry’s sequel has matured, and one complaint continues to surface across community forums: the long stretches of traversal that separate benches from boss arenas. Players describe these runbacks as tedious, punishing, and at odds with the fast, fluid combat that defines Hornet’s adventure through Pharloom.

The core issue is not that Hollow Knight: Silksong is difficult. Difficulty has been part of the series’ identity since 2017, and many players celebrate the challenge. The frustration centers on pacing. Benches serve as the only places where progress can be saved, and when a boss defeats a player, the retry loop often requires a lengthy journey back through enemies, platforming sections, and environmental hazards. For a game built around learning attack patterns through repetition, that downtime can feel like an unnecessary barrier. Instead of focusing on a boss’s tells and timing, players spend minutes re-clearing rooms and re-navigating hazards before they can attempt the fight again.

Community discussion on platforms such as Reddit has framed the issue as a form of artificial padding. Some players accuse Team Cherry of extending the game’s length through tedious runbacks, arguing that

dealnesthq