Which is harder: S&S or Hollow Knight?

[Kanye's Bottle of Adderall]

Just out of curiosity, which game did you find more challenging between Salt and Hollow Knight and why?

[MILKIE]

this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ atrocious dark souls but the only thing they took away from it, is that its hard. Not the tight gameplay or fair challenge.

[TheDoctor]

Originally posted by KD6-3:

this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ atrocious dark souls but the only thing they took away from it, is that its hard. Not the tight gameplay or fair challenge.

LOL? This game is not that hard to play, it's not even a dark souls game is more to a metrodivania like Castlevania SOTN and for what i watched on stream Hollow knight seems a lot harder than this game because of all platforming.

[Omegatherion]

Hollow Knight is easier than this, because the controls are not completely counter intuitive.

[Kanye's Bottle of Adderall]

Very interesting answers guys, thanks. After just having completed S&S a second go 'round, I wouldn't be surprised if HK is easier simply because of the way the enemy AI behaves in S&S. Their attack pattern and design can be so obnoxiously cheap sometimes, leaving you with NO window of opportunity to step away and heal or counter attack(cough*those pesky mini-xenomorph alien dog-looking things from the sunken keep*cough*cough). It makes for an extremely frustrating and peril experience. I certainly hope their isn't the same kind of cheesiness going on in HK.

[Ziel]

I think overall you're going to have an easier time with Hollow Knight. However, there is a lot of optional content in that game and some of it is way harder than anything you'll find in S&S. At least that was my experience.

[Vaati]

I had a harder time with hollow knight then i have with Salt and santuary, granted the challenge i had with hollow knight was simply finding out where to go. And the challenge with Salt is more dependant on what weapons your using (not individual weapon but more what weapon type) setting a baseline challenge with greatswords basically being easy mode while daggers being hardmode.

[Sticky White Stuff]

Hollow Knight by far in the White Palace.

[Mauman]

Hollow Knight...big time. And I don't mean that in a good way.*

S&S has a better balance on difficulty.

*Not saying Hollow Knight is a bad game, it's a good game. And I'm not saying that S&S doesn't have it's moments. It's just that it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ moments stand WAY out in count and comparison compared to S&S

[Fenfen]

Platforming, Hollow Knight for sure. Combat, S&S for sure. However its hard to give a black and white answer to which is harder over all because each game plays totally differently. In hollow knight you can change out your charms on the go to better tackle an area. S&S you can upgrade your armor and weapons to make some areas a total cake walk. Hollow Knight has, basically, one weapon, you could argue four if you added in the Soul abilities. S&S has dozens of weapons and armor sets to mix and match. In both cases it is down to the player rather than the game if it is difficult, for example I struggled on my first play through of hollow knight but breezed through S&S.

TL,DR: Both are hard but in different ways.

[gungadin22000]

I'm not much of a twitch player, so I found HK to be FAR more difficult. HKs bossfights require more speedy reflexes, S&S bosses are more Dark Soulsy and require more pattern memorisation and rewards being somewhat defensive, as you can heal a lot more efficiently in fights as opposed to in HK.

S&S has more difficulty variety, IMO, since you have more build variety. Some weapon types are just easier to win with than others.

[Arkhein]

Tricky answer. S&S is harder at the beginning and some enemies are dangerous even at higher levels but it NEVER reaches the peaks of pain that HK can achieve. And that's just on combat and exploration, add platforming into the mix and HK becomes far more troublesome by a large margin (White Palace + Path of Pain anyone?)

[wadrick]

Regarding the mandatory part of these games, it would be debatable, and it probably would depend on your builds. IF you have good builds at both, I think S&S is easier, but with a bad build it can be harder (at least in the beginning).

If you also consider the optional stuff, I found Hollow knight WAY harder. Salt and Sanctuary was not even close.

[Groove Wizard]

Well, I consider Hollow Knight as a "true" action-platformer, in that the fighting involves a lot of movement, and is just about hitting and avoiding getting hit, instead of S&S's wait, dodge-roll/parry pattern (which I usually HATE because it takes away a lot of the foes' identity when you just deal with 80% of the bosses in the same way, but I'm ok with it in S&S because it's really well executed.)

I'm more comfortable with the former, but I've seen lots of friends who're more into recent games than me do pretty good at the latter.

If you just go for an any% completion, I guess it depends on you. Optional bosses in HW are absolutely brutal though.

[freesaladman]

Originally posted by RevengeOfTheSuperHornySlipNSlide:

Very interesting answers guys, thanks. After just having completed S&S a second go 'round, I wouldn't be surprised if HK is easier simply because of the way the enemy AI behaves in S&S. Their attack pattern and design can be so obnoxiously cheap sometimes, leaving you with NO window of opportunity to step away and heal or counter attack(cough*those pesky mini-xenomorph alien dog-looking things from the sunken keep*cough*cough). It makes for an extremely frustrating and peril experience. I certainly hope their isn't the same kind of cheesiness going on in HK.

Hollow Knight is all around a better game. Leagues ahead of this one. Not to say this one's bad, but in HK enemy design is arguably the best across any game I have ever played and the platforming challenges are a step up as well (though far from impossible). The boss runs in the free DLC though... if you plan to 100% a game, HK is one of the tougher games out there.

[wadrick]

I want to add, after reading the other comments that even if Hollow Knight platforming elements are harder than the ones in Salt and Sanctuary, I did not find them hard at all.

Maybe it is because I'm a fan of precision platforming games, and others will disagree, but as far as I remember the toughest part in this regard was The White Palace, and for me it wasn't much of a challenge. If there was anything harder that I missed or forget, let me know.

And I don't want people to think I post this comment to brag or anything, other parts of the game were REALLY hard (DLC bosses.... oh my god ). But especially if you have experience playing platforming games, don't get the idea that it will be a problem.