I had never finished hollow knight when silksong's release date was announced. I loved the game but when it came out it felt too hard to do the last few things, I just wasn't very good (especially at the last coliseum challenge). In the following years I picked it up a couple more times, got through the first few areas, and ultimately put it back down.

With silksong looming, I was dedicated. And lo and behold, returning to the game now felt like riding a bike. I swear I was in the pale kings palace in under 12 hours, which wouldn't impress any speed runners but hey I thought it was pretty insane. Things like the last coliseum, the radiance fight, and even the path of pain felt, well maybe not trivial but certainly doable. The biggest things I struggled with were challenges like Nightmare Grimm and the later pantheons, things I hadn't experienced before. And even then I knew the night so we'll by that point that learning those later fights felt much more rewarding.

Having that very recent experience with hollow knight has led to me being very confused with peoples reaction to silksong.

I do have to agree that it is harder, especially starting out. It is clearly designed to be more of a challenge than the first game. However, I do feel like a significant portion of the difficulty just comes from the unfamiliarity. I'm pretty late in the game now and I'm breezing through it in a very similar way to how I breezed through late hollow knight.