This article concludes with the thought "if you liked Hollow Knight, you won't like Silksong".

That is the same conclusion that I and my brother both came to. The game is bizarrely punitive, from the very beginning, for no reason. It's as if they thought of it as being the next Hollow Knight expansion after Godhome, providing an additional challenge for the people who have beaten every pantheon with all bindings. ("The new challenge is: all of your controls now do something different!")

But it's a sequel. Supposedly. Most sequels are aiming to appeal at least as much to players who enjoyed the first game as they do to a hypothetical new audience.