Silksong: a missed opportunity?

[Shadow1980]

I can't speak on Silksong yet. I've only recently started playing the first Hollow Knight. It's a great game so far. It's hard, but, aside from a couple of optional areas/bosses, isn't as soul-crushingly difficult as I had heard. It's not an easy game by any stretch, but it is a mostly fair challenge (Primal Aspids can go the hell, though). There have been multiple fights (e.g., the Watcher Knights, the Trial of the Fool) that gave me a hard time and took me several tries. But once I learned all the enemy patterns and everything, and actually took the time to beef up the Knight and tried the right combination of charms whenever possible, I eventually prevailed in those various encounters. I'm currently in Godhome trying to complete each Pantheon at least once. Took me about four times to beat the first one (had to practice on the main boss of the run a bit), I beat the second one on my first attempt, but the third one was a massive pain in the ass. Finally beat it last night after like twenty attempts. I'm on the fourth one and I have a bad feeling about that one. I already know the fifth one is a boss rush against literally every boss, so I might skip that one since it's apparently not needed for 112%, though there is an achievement for it.

I do intend on playing Silksong at some point, though I'm probably going to wait until it gets a physical release for PS5. I already have a ton of other games I need to play in the interim. I want to experience for myself whether it's as bad as some people say. I never played a Souls game until this generation, and I felt Demon's Souls and Elden Ring weren't nearly as bad as I heard the series can be. Very tough, but still mostly fair. I felt Ghosts & Goblins is a harder series where you play as a guy in armor in a dark fantasy setting.

But while I haven't played Silksong yet, I do want to talk about difficulty more broadly, but that's off-topic enough to warrant it's own thread. I will at least say in regards to the OP's statement "there's no such thing as 'artificial difficulty'" that there's a reason why TV Tropes has an entire article devoted to "Fake Difficulty." The phrases "artificial/fake difficulty" are in at least semi-common use, though there's no exact definitions and what they mean may vary from person to person.