Hollow Knight: Silksong (2025)

Hollow Knight: Silksong (Switch) La verdad que ya pasó la época en la que tenía ganas hace tiempo, y no esperaba demasiado. Sin embargo tengo opiniones. Es un juego precioso en lo visual, con muchas ideas buenas y otras no tanto. El tema es que las que no tanto pesan mucho. La OST no brilla igual, las oleadas de bosses ya estarían, las maratones para llegar a los bosses pues tal y las misiones con estructura de 1997 pues no son muy estimulantes. Las herramientas me han dado igual, y que dependan de consumibles me parece una idea de diseño cuestionable, pero el control sigue siendo igual de preciso que siempre, y los bosses una delicia. Y la historia me ha vuelto a dar exactamente igual. Un tema.

Roll Credits?: Yes!

Surprised/Let Down/As Expected: Surprised

Favorite Mechanic or Narrative Moment: The worldbuilding (in both the lore and mechanical sense) is unmatched here. The world is massive - constantly expanding from areas you thought had to be the edge of map. Each new zone adds to the history of what happened in Pharloom, and the designers delight in hiding important things that you might never see without a guide in a way that few do in this era of streamlined, intentional game moments. All of this culminates in a modern day retelling of the inverted castle which doesn't disappoint in the slightest.

Least Favorite Thing: The only negative I really felt while playing was in regards to some of the obtuseness or ease of overlooking hidden items/npcs and their importance in progressing certain content. But even then, some of that I would chalk up to my own impatient tendencies, and thinking back on the experience I know that it was more memorable because of this design.

Silksong expands on the world of Hollow Knight, as well as the movement and combat. I loved Hollow Knight for the exploration, the rich and interesting world, and the comfortable movement mechanics when exploring that world. So, being in a new kingdom with new enemies, bosses, areas, music, items, and mechanics is very refreshing and was an incredible experience.

I think that, in expanding on these things, Silksong is technically a better game than Hollow Knight, though I prefer Hollow Knight. I will spend the rest of this review explaining why I prefer the first game over this sequel. It may sound negative, but I want to be clear that I do think Silksong is an amazing game for the same reasons that Hollow Knight is.

I played Hollow Knight a couple of years ago, when it already had its status as a legendary indie game, and after all of its DLC content was released. This means my experience with Hollow Knight was an experience of a fully polished and updated game. Silksong was just released and has no DLC content. Maybe my opinion of Silksong is skewed because it was such a highly anticipated game and I went into it with lots of expectations. Mostly, these expectations were met, some were exceeded, and others were not. Overall, I just didn't enjoy Silksong as much as I did Hollow Knight.

I loved Act I, because I was dropped into a whole new world and had so much to anticipate. each new area and ability was fresh and exciting, and I couldn't wait to uncover more. I didn't have a problem with the difficulty, though I had heard how others were struggling. The boss fight at the end of Act I was difficult but doable, but Act II was where I started to understand the difficulty complaints.

Pretty much any enemy, as well as each of their individual attacks deals two masks of damage in Act II. It made exploration difficult and annoying. Every boss became a hassle, rather than a fun combat challenge. I'm not fully against high-difficulty games, but I hated the high density of this high difficulty. Every enemy is annoying. Every area is annoying. Every boss is annoying. It is fine for a game to be hard, but it is also fine for me to be annoyed by this.

Like I said, I love these games for the exploration, the rich and interesting world, and the comfortable mechanics of exploring that world. But the exploration was also worse in Silksong than in Hollow Knight. Everything is hidden behind a secret wall and I felt a lot more lost when exploring. I couldn't figure out how to get into the "Cauldron" area of The Citadel because the part of my map that I needed to explore showed that I had already explored it. This same issue happened multiple times, which I don't recall happening at all in Hollow Knight.

I completed Act II without even getting the double jump and having left at least 5 areas unexplored (because I didn't even know they were there). I was shocked when I completed the game because I thought there was more to do. It turned out that there was more optional content and a third act, which I wouldn't have known if I hadn't looked it up. I wanted to get to Act III because I wanted to explore more and was unsatisfied by the abrupt ending. It took me 20 hours to beat Act II initially. Now, I am at 35 hours without even having entered Act III. I'm not going to keep playing because I'm just not enjoying exploring. And by "exploring", I mean following a guide.

Again, Silksong is a great game and these are all problems that affected my personal enjoyment. It reminds me of Jedi: Survivor as the sequel to Jedi: Fallen Order. I think the sequel is technically better, but I didn't enjoy it as much. this is why neither Silksong nor Jedi: Survivor is in my "When The Sequel Is Better" list. But Ori and the Will of the Wisps is in that list because it expands on the world and introduces new mechanics while still being a delight to play.

Why does every single boss fight need a runback? When you lose against Karmelita, the game fully heals you, reloads your items without cost, and puts you right outside the entrance to try again. But no, it can't be that simple. Even in this ideal situation you still have to watch a cutscene, fully circle around the stage, and defeat 3 waves of enemies before she even dares showing up.

I absolutely loved the fight but my god this is getting ridiculous.

You know, it's interesting.

Most of my problems with games with large open worlds that encourage seemingly directionless exploration stem from that exact thing...a large open world that encourages seemingly directionless exploration. Look, I grew up playing extremely on rails, linear games. That's what I want. I wanna be told what to do, where to go, when to do something. I don't wanna fucking explore. That isn't fun. That's just running around wasting time.

Except, and I don't know why, in the case of this franchise.

For some reason, both in the original and especially this iteration, exploration is my favorite part. Perhaps it's the fact that it's a world built around bug kingdoms, and I'm an enormous entymology girl, or perhaps it's just a very well crafted world in ways that nothing else is, or perhaps it's the fact that the world never seems devoid of discoveries (another big problem I have with games such as this, is that they encourage exploration and then are endlessly empty) but whatever the reason is, it's nice to know that sometimes the aspect I hate the most can, in the right hands, become the aspect I love the most.

Don't get me wrong. I love the fights. I love the lore. I love everything else. But I have my most fun in these titles when I'm just adventuring and then accidentally wander into something that then takes me 2 hours to get through. Or I discover something that isn't exactly tied to the plot but is interesting in its own right. A little side story, like the flower quest in the original. Wandering around the kingdom as Hornet, just bumping into shit and then trying to figure out how to continue? That I could do every day forever. That's what I really love.

I hate open worlds. I hate exploration.

But GOD DAMMIT do I love bugs.

The game expands on what the original in a delightful way.

It is pretty much the perfect metroidvania experience.

I feel there isn't much to say as this is almost overtalked about all over the web.

The one thing I think is worth mentioning is tha exploration feels extra-rewarding in this one, and that is one of my favorite aspects of the genre.

Even if I had a great time with it, I can't shake the feeling that it didn't hit me as hard as Nine Sols did.

I gave this another shot, and am now enjoying it more. Ultimately, I think I finally crossed the hurdle of getting enough abilities that the traversal is fun.

I recently went into the area with the broken bench and found the path to get it fixed. I died half-way through and my corpse was in the midst of some nasty platforming elements. I managed to juggle on the spikes long enough to reclaim my beads and finish the area to fix the bench. The platforming is really satisfying when you are in the right groove.

Since starting this game ~26 hours ago, I've been curious when Silksong was going to get as hard as people were complaining it was. Now I'm circling the drain of act 2, trying to finish every single quest and get every single item, and I'm still not seeing this insane difficulty everyone was complaining about on release?

This isn't a humblebrag - my aging eyes and brain can't process things as fast anymore, and I barely even use abilities.. I'm really not great at this game. Here's a video of me taking down First Sinner last night. It is extremely unremarkable and unimpressive. I barely used any abilities, missed half the hits, and basically relied on my own reaction time + the dodge-attack, which is great for the faster bosses:

I have found that if I hammer on a hard boss 15 or 20 times, eventually I just know exactly what they're going to do and muscle memory sorta takes over; autopilot if you will. I save nearly all of my silk for healing, instead focusing on taking my time with the boss and making sure I get clean hits in, to keep my silk levels topped off.

Perhaps the main difficulty comments stemmed not necessarily from the boss difficulty, but the unforgiving nature of the 2-health hits paired with the Last Judge runback? Either way perhaps it was just growing pains/people forgot how tough Hollow Knight was, but I'm finding this difficulty perfectly difficult, if that makes sense.

I have a feeling there is going to be a bonus act after I take down the "lady up the elevator" but already I'm eyeing my next game... and I'm heavily leaning towards finally pulling the trigger on Elden Ring. I've put it off for years because I really never liked Dark Souls, but this game seems like a must-play, and if Silksong taught me anything, it's that I'm pretty damn good at pattern recognition. It might be time.

There's been a lot of talk about how the game rewards exploration by putting a lot of roadblocks on you, and then making them easier to clear by going somewhere else and trying again later. While I think it's a completely valid approach to reward exploration, I don't think Silksong does a good job encouraging exploration.

One of my main problems with this is how disconnected act 2 feels from act 1. Not only does it take place inside its own separate area of the map, but it features its own fast travel system and even blocks some of your exits after you enter. Everything about its design says Don't exit until you're done!, all while wanting you to continue exploring outside.

The money and shard system also contribute. You need to pay for tools, maps, benches, bell stations... You need to buy so many things that even trying to explore without enough rosaries in your pocket feels like suicide. But also, you lose your money when you die, so make sure you're extra careful or exploring with many rosaries will also feel like suicide!

This is especially bad in areas where the enemies don't carry money. One time I found Shakra but wasn't able to pay for the maps, so I went back to the previous area to get more, and then came back just to find her gone. So now I'm locked out of this area until I backtrack all the way to town just to find her again.

Idk, it feels like the game just keeps sending me mixed signals on what I should be doing. I got stuck on an enemy gauntlet and after bashing my head against a wall for a while, i decided to exit the citadel and explore Pharloom. It's been a few hours and while I've gotten a lot of rewards and skills, it doesn't actually feel like I was supposed to do this. Its like being outside the citadel is a punishment, instead of the intended way to progress

But what do you think?