Hollow Knight: Silksong (2025)

It's been like a month or so since I last touched the game and I think it's time to uninstall and just drop it.

It's hard to review this game because I liked so much of it. The movement, the artstyle, the combat, the cute characters. Sherma's song still echoes in my head every know and then.

Silksong features some of the best and most memorable bosses in recent times. The Clockwork Dancers were a highlight in terms of atmosphere; a true masterclass of telling a story through combat design. The First Sinner was fast and exhilarating; a fight that felt like a wonderfully choreographed dance onces perfected.

But then there's all the bloat and tedium that overshadows the shining moments. The interminable gauntlets, the long runbacks, the frankly embarrassing MMO-style quests, and the stupid corpserun mechanic that keeps infecting gaming like a bad venereal disease. The game feels bloated and padded out. Maybe a symptom of being in development for too long.

It is a shame that in the end, Silksong left me with a bad taste in my mouth, because I really wanted to like it more.

Kinda hard for me to not give this the same score as HK. Kinda just took the original game, added more complexity and aggressiveness to it, along with a much more intimate and personal story. Very enjoyable to play through. Had a lot of fun.

I will say the bigger world could feel more annoying to traverse through especially for someone like me that's trying to see and do everything. Also the original had a bit more wonder to it that I think impacted me a lot more than this one did in terms of exploration, might just be the silent and doomed protagonist though. Still loved Hornet and seeing more of her past and her ability to take claim over her future.

Looking forward to the DLC in 10 years.

Silksong was winning me over again after the absolute trash that was Groal the fuckwit. First Sinner was great and Guardian Seth was good and emotional, especially knowing a bit of the history.

But then I got to the Coral Tower. What an utter disaster. Just bad. Boring, tedious, uninspired. One boring gauntlet after another with some of the most annoying enemies in the game.

Previously I said that the MMO sidequests were the second worst part of the game, now I remember that the second worst part of the game is all the useless gauntlets. They suck in general, but when they are used instead of a boss fight, they are particularly irritating.

It is done.

Nana SIlk was fun but strangely easy. Cross Stitch really helped out, since I could parry her claw attack and do a bunch of damage.

Now to do some chores to get to Act 3. Kind of annoying that I apparently I need to complete that bell-finding mission. These early MMO-style fetchquests are the second worst part about this game.

I don't typically pick up games so close to launch but Hollow Knight holds a special place in my heart. I just couldn't keep from snatching up Silksong for long when it launched at such a low price. The good news is it's very very good. There was much love put into this and while playing it just feels like a super high quality piece of work in almost every respect. The bad news is it has a bit of an Elden Ring thing going on.

To elaborate on this, I mean that it feels like the devs got into their heads that they needed to outdo this game's predecessor in just about every way-- in particular, difficulty. Silksong feels like it wants me to suffer. Flying enemies will always float just out of range of my attacks before countering as I fall to the ground helplessly. Benches (rest points) often feel placed to provoke frustration rather than adhering to any balance of convenience and challenge. Bosses are relentless to the point where I would often find myself overwhelmed by the sheer quantity and pace of the stuff going on on my screen. I'll admit that this last point can sometimes work in the game's favor but it just feels like too much a lot of the time. I had to take a sanity break or two when fighting the final boss because of this. It just wouldn't let up. Conquering it all feels good in retrospect but there was so much frustration that could have been avoided along the way without compromising on the sense of accomplishment I got.

Heads up, this image features some pre-final boss encounter spoilers.

Excess really does seem like the right word for everything here. The world is as massive as the bosses are vicious. Again, I couldn't help but feel pushed to make the comparison to Elden Ring in my head as I played. The great thing here though is pretty much all of the environments felt carefully crafted. They're brutal, but present challenges that feel immensely satisfying to overcome. I was very pleased to see the game throw some genuinely challenging platforming at me on the main path instead of relegating it to side content. Each biome also feels distinct even beyond their color palettes-- hundreds of unique enemy types and area-specific hazards help make you truly feel like an insect in a huge world. I kept stumbling into entirely new zones as I poked and prodded the walls in Pharloom and at times it felt endless in the best way.

I also think the way Hornet feels to control as you navigate this brutal world deserves special mention. She's nimble in a way that makes both horizontal and vertical movement feel fucking great. It's part of why I enjoyed the platforming challenges in the game so much. Growing accustomed to the exact angle of her down slash move and using it to bounce around various locales and find openings in enemy movesets is such a good feeling. And the abilities she gains as she goes almost always expand her mobility in ways that I now struggle to imagine playing without at the end of things. And I say all this as someone who barely even touched all the alternate movesets you can play with. There's a lot here for those who wish to replay the game to dig into, I think.

Hornet as a protagonist also stands apart from The Knight of the previous game by having her own voice. She is sharp, singleminded, but never unreasonable or bloodthirsty in the way others around her often are. It makes her easy to root for even if I don't see myself in her exactly. Her voicework also is just excellent. The various yells and exclamations she lets out feel contextually appropriate and just oddly pleasant to listen to. I can totally see myself mimicking the "Ayyylah!" and "Brenn!" for a long time coming. I don't mean to overshadow all the other cute little voices in the game either though! All of it is excellent and gives characters so much personality on top of what's already been afforded them with their simple but effective designs.

Finally, I appreciate what Team Cherry accomplished with the story here, even if the true ending ultimately feels a bit underbaked. Silksong never felt like it let the story get in the way of player agency but still fed me enough to have it be clear what was going on. And the way gameplay mechanics like the availability of currency tie into its themes of dogma and servitude is a treat even if it presents an additional challenge to be overcome.

I'm a little intimidated by the announcement of upcoming DLC for this game because I feel I've gotten more than my fill of it. So much so that I'm not even sure I intend to do some of the few bits of side content I missed. I consumed pretty much all of Hollow Knight with gusto, so it seems telling of the excess in Silksong that I'm not sure I want more. We'll see though! Maybe if they let it sit in the oven for a bit I'll have my appetite back by the time it's done. Heh. Maybe that's enough of the food metaphor.

I need to say more about silksong than "peam." I'm too old for "peam," but "peam" is really funny. I cannot stop reading/watching things about silksong (the best, bar none, is kayin's "silksong loves you," on which I sign off whole-chestedly). you'd think with so much content consumed I'd have a thought to output by now.

my life has been rather a lot to work with lately, but every moment I have not been working with my life has been occupied with silksong. finally found my switch dock and got a pro controller so I could play games on the big tv in the rec room from my beanbag chair, a yearslong dream I have somehow only just achieved despite long having had the components to do so. it feels incredible. and yet, overwhelmingly, I played in handheld mode lying prone on my bed, my elbows chafing on flannel in dry air, my left shoulder decrying that I can not be propping myself on it suchly for lengths of extended time; I have callused my right thumb on those tiny joycon buttons. silksong has been intimate, and pleasantly damaging.

my life was rather a lot to work with when I played hollow knight as well. I'd just had a difficult conversation with a partner, an "I've got a couple months of this left in me if things don't change" kinda conversation, and hallownest was the rock I disappeared under as I tried to accept that things were, probably, not gonna change. it was a good place to be lost a while, a place that demands your whole attention, that consumes you and also seeps out into you, leaving you both devoured and sated. by contrast, after the breakup, I played octopath traveler, a game that also consumes your attention but should only be played when you have very little attention to offer it. a comfortable grind that gestures at world and plot and emotions and import, but contains only an aftertaste of them; a systemized routine ensconced in the idea of an rpg.

not long ago, I played octopath traveler 2 for tragically similar reasons; the mainline octopath games are so ideally-suited for playing depressed, I believe it incorrect to play them otherwise.

it is a sign of spiritual growth that I was, finally, ready to play, and to love, silksong.

I had put it off because I could see a proximate ensorcelling. I couldn't touch it til I was ready to disappear. I couldn't play when I was in octopath mode. (I hear the new octopath is a genuinely good game, which is a betrayal?) I needed to play in hollow knight mode: I needed a full heart to offer. you can look at my review history and see a run of metroidvaniae in the months following silksong's release date announcement: astalon, xanthiom zero, nine sols didn't get logged cuz I didn't finish it but that happened as well. experimenting. checking the state of my soul like checking the state of a bruise by pressing on it.

new year's always feels like a fresh start - also I'm a capricorn - and I was ready. or, ready to become ready. to see what it would ask of me.

it is so, so good. it's peam.

one joy of arriving late to the thing everyone's been talking about is finally tucking into the discourse you've avoided (hence the glut of reading/watching). I have read and read and reread dan olson's skong thread. I watched the boss keys on silksong a month late, and heard mark brown describe act one as "linear" with a sequence of events that bore little resemblance to my act one. he then said "aha, but you could break sequence and go this other route" which was also different. what do you mean everyone first enters bellhart from the right? what do you mean you found the mist through sinner's road? was I not supposed to have the doublejump before I entered the citadel?

I dunno, I get like this with a game as open as silksong. it's not that I avoid the "intended" path, I just rarely sensed a developer intention at all. is this why people suffered so much? why reddit butts were hurting so? they thought they were "supposed" to be fighting the last judge so they just kept hurling themselves against her thurible? I tarried with her three times and said "lol." I fucked off to do other stuff. was I not supposed to do that? was that weird? I do avoid developer intention when I have a choice; when I feel guided from A to B I will dig around for aleph and sigma, just in case. B is where I'ma end up anyway, so what's the rush? but I do not feel that with team cherry. I feel I am supposed to wander. I do not understand how anyone felt "ushered" from bone bottom to the marrow to deep docks to far fields to greymoor. I buy that you didn't get curious about that locked door and end up in wormways and, after several jaunts to other areas, return and plop yourself out in shellwood, but I'd assume it was because you were jaunting off elsewhere! what do you mean I "sequence broke"? in 100 total hours with this game I detected no "sequence."

I do not remember bosses from hollow knight. I mean, I know they were there, and that I loved them at the time. I remember what some of them looked like. I loved the mantids, that I know. I remember what a hilarious struggle the false knight was before the gud had been gitten. the general sense of "these bosses are sick." but not much in the way of standouts. silksong is almost wall-to-wall bangers. everyone says cogwork dancers because they are right to say cogwork dancers. nobody is saying second sentinel. second sentinel rules! second sentinel with wanderer's crest and cross stitch? in that tight little arena? fuck. me. up. trobbio is annoying as fuck prima donna and I love him. fuckin phantom? fuckin widow? first fuckin sinner? crawfather is more memorable than most of the hollow knight bosses - whom, please remember, fucking rule - and he is, by silksong standards, mid. range, variety; theme and variation. poking and prodding with crests, skills, tools, loadouts. maybe crust king khann is hard if approached incorrectly but after a few rounds I tried flintslate on him and it was like I stopped hitting him with a needle and started hitting him with a school bus. hours later I attempted something similar with lost lace, but flintslate made me play too aggressively, where lace has to be approached like a fencing match: stay out of range til you're ready to strike.

I kept waiting for the cruelty I'd been warned of, and it simply did not arrive. dan said he sank six hours into the coral tower gauntlet, and over twelve on lost lace. only twice did a boss hold me up anywhere near that long - I don't have a count, it definitely did not break six hours, but I know the number would embarrass me - but, both times, the enemy was my own bull-headedness. (and I am not saying I'm better at games than dan, dan beat celeste: farewell and, despite sinking dozens and dozens of hours into the base game and all the be-sides, I have not.) I spent days on the unravelled because I refused to fuck off and do something else. I know, now, that I was too attached to my specific crest and tool habits, was treating them as "my preferred build" (reaper crest, tacks, cogflies, pollip pouch), and I could see myself improving with each pass. I knew I could do it. I know, now, that I could've savaged him with wanderer's crest, because my strategy was to avoid his attacks by pogoing on his helmet, and wander's crest has a much easier pogo, but I had been a reaper main. I knew I could do it with what I was familiar with. and I knew I was being stubborn, so I could hardly get mad when I kept failing. I knew I could leave at any time. same was true when I spent two straight days held up on groal the great, getting the epic bilewater runback down to muscle memory, shifting red tools every few attempts to whatever I still had in stock because I didn't feel like farming for shellshards; I should've fucked off, but groal is so far from the bellway station and I didn't feel like going through all of bilewater to come back to him later. I didn't even know what was on the other end of the fight - turns out, nothing I could use just yet! - but I didn't care. I fight the frog man because the frog man is there. I've no one to blame but myself.

those were the only times I was "stuck," and I knew, the entire time, I was sticking myself. I wanted to do this, now. I wanted to do this my way. I swore I would learn other crests after I beat the unravelled, that I would start stocking shard bundles after I took out groal. I kept those promises, but I also proved I could win with sheer determination. I could, eventually, make it work the ding-dong way.

I don't want to talk about the things everyone has to talk about, about two masks of damage and enemy health scaling with your needle and pharloom's weird economy. I don't care. I don't judge you for caring, but I do not understand you. I do not know how to talk to you. grab something from the candy dish and then please leave my house. do you see how beautiful this thing is? can you feel the blood pumping through it?

I don't want to talk about lore. I want to hear about lore; I loved hollow knight's lore, how rich and intriguing it was to embed yourself in, how enticing to disentangle on wikis and theory channels. its endless supply of mystical substances - soul and essence and lifeblood and void - and its true ending of joining the battle of light vs. dark on the side of dark. knowing it would be the goofiest shit if you wrote it out in summary so everyone has the good sense not to fuckin do that; keep it nonlinear, keep it to snatches and inference. that's what religion is! "god made a man out of clay and then made him a wife out of his own rib and told them not to eat a specific fruit and to this day hasn't told us why" do you hear yourself??? I'ma go enter my sibling's brain because they are ineffectively remembering a moth and it's killing the kingdom.

I don't know if silksong is less lore-rich or if I benefited from getting to hollow knight late, when the theorizers'd had years to pitch stuff. right now, silksong's story is comparatively straightforward. still a lot of inference and suggestion, still gotta dig up all the bits n pieces (i.e. check the wiki) to piece it all together, but it neither answers nor raises many questions. this is an epic character study of one spider wrestling with her nature, a game with four endings achievable through very different playstyles, where whichever ending you get is the only ending that would make sense given the way you played.

I played silksong after - and during - a period of wrestling with my own soul. I am not done. but I am stronger than I was. (I probably deal more than one mask of damage now.) I am glad to have waited as long as I did to play silksong, to have been ready for it. it is among the best games I have ever played. it bodes well for my year.

Hollow Knight Silksong is, in my opinion, a major improvement over the original Hollow Knight. And while I really appreciated the original, I feel like the scope of this game just so organically trumps the original that it feels like such a fuller and really AAA kind of title. That, for me, Hollow Knight didn’t feel like.

And while I know that Hollow Knight’s reception is generally universally positive, and maybe even greater than this game’s, or will be in the grand scheme of things, I always felt that it was more of an indie title that was incredibly polished and well-designed. But Silksong really elevates its formula in every possible way.

Narratively, it’s still quite bare, but there is definitely a vision for the story. As simple and straightforward as it is, it’s a vessel for some really interesting ideas that build the Hollow Knight world more than they flesh out a distinct storyline. And the world that Team Cherry has created is simply packed with lore and opportunities to explore more of the Hollow Knight world, not unlike one of the Soulsborne titles.

And quite honestly, Silksong owes a tremendous amount to the Soulsborne titles, particularly, I think, in boss design and how difficulty is approached. But even these areas are improvements over Hollow Knight. In general, the game is definitely harder, but shockingly, while I found many of the bosses troubling, or rather, troublesome, I enjoyed dying over and over again to them.

I think a lot of post-Dark Souls games, including some of the Soulsborne games, ratcheted up difficulty purely for the sake of frustrating the player or making the experience harder. And that’s a really rudimentary way of elevating the genre, which unfortunately we’ve seen happen a lot. But Silksong adheres to strictly challenging bosses that nonetheless are fun to fight, feel fair, and can be battled defensively, something that you don’t see a lot in many other Soulsborne titles or adjacent titles.

A lot of times there is this sort of demand for the player to quickly learn tactics and aggressively punish the boss. In some of the worst Soulsborne titles, which, unfortunately, is like Elden Ring for me, it feels like you can really cheese or spam against bosses and completely avoid the intended gameplay loop associated with learning to beat the boss.

Hollow Knight: Silksong avoids all of that impressively. Bosses have only a few distinct attacks. They are challenging to deal with, but you learn them, and then you can play defensively or mix defensive and offensive strategies to quickly take care of the boss.

And quite honestly, the bosses feel so fresh and so fun. It really takes me back to the first time I played something like Dark Souls or Bloodborne or the more prestigious titles in the genre, where there was a true joy in replaying and relearning bosses upon losing. I just found that the mechanics are so simple but also satisfying to master, and can be applied in a surprising variety of ways. And the bosses always felt fresh, quite honestly. There was barely any bad boss, and even the levels themselves, or I guess the maps themselves, are just so delightful to explore, for the most part, other than one or two.

I mean, Bilewater stands out as a little bit frustrating and purposefully so, but I can kind of let the developers get away with it, because it’s basically an optional area anyway. But the Metroidvania aspect is also incredibly strong. I kind of view this game more through a Soulsborne lens, but it’s definitely a Metroidvania. There are areas that are gated, and there’s a couple of exploratory abilities that you grab, but it’s just such a joy running through each map and fighting enemies that have multiple different kinds of attacks. It’s just so crunchy attacking them and dealing damage, and it’s always so satisfying.

And then beyond that, there’s just a slew of quests of different types that really felt like an open-world game, but compressed into only what was necessary as far as the number of types of quests. It didn’t ever feel too baggy, like some games in the open-world genre can feel, and everything was rewarding one way or another. There’s such a large variety of tools and play styles that somebody can really spend a long time playing this game and beating it multiple times, tapping into these different play styles if that’s their choice.

For me, it’s really more about having fun with the bosses and trying to get all the side content completed at least once. There’s such a checklist dopamine built into the game that isn’t too overwhelming in terms of breadth, but is satisfyingly weighty in terms of depth and content. So I do feel like this is one of the best games I’ve ever played, and it has me excited to replay more Soulsborne games and just get that satisfying loop of mastery and completion from them.

I feel like, with every step on the way, someone in the development team raised the question, on how can we find more ways to frustrate the player. With every other enemy dealing double damage, the environment designed to kill, jump and wall controls needing perfect precise button pressing, enemy AI forcing you to wait and watch, extra long runbacks for everything, relentless gauntlets of enemies before facing the boss.. overall, it's the lasagna of difficulty that got me. The game wasn't fun enough to balance the rage moments. I'd be a happier person if the game ended at Act I, dropping it in Act II with the knowledge that it can get harder still.

A shame, though. Story, characters, maps, world design, audio score, secrets, it's all well done.

Edit: I am returning to Silksong, redrawn by the mon-frustrating parts. Enjoying it again, let me update my views after some more playing.

Final edit: 4/5 GG.

Life is long if you know how to use it, but it remains finite. I’m learning to love myself by learning how to let things go.

This is a beautiful work but sadly not one I’ll see through to the end. I think I’m about two thirds of the way through but it doesn’t feel worth it to persist. Maybe we’ll meet again some day.

I was originally excited to play Silksong. I may not be the biggest Hollow Knight fan, but I liked it well enough, and thought a sequel would've allowed the devs to fix any issues the original had. The trailers looked pretty promising too.

Unfortunately, I don't think this was the case, because I recently finished playing through Silksong, and I did not like it at all. While it's a very well made game, and one that definitely shows how much effort the developers put into it, the game mechanics never feel fully thought-out. It's like, deep down, the core of the game is... rotten.

But let's start with the positives. Silksong is one of, if not the most beautiful game I've played in recent years. Hollow Knight was already a gorgeous game, and Silksong doubles down on it by making the graphics even better. The game's been in development for 7 full years and it really shows. Team Cherry has taken every second of development to make sure the visuals are as detailed as possible.

I especially love how well made the particle and lighting effects are, they're the final puzzle piece that makes the world stand out. They do contribute to the game being too dark in some areas, but these are few and far between, and the game is pretty bright overall.

The music is as incredible as it's always been, but I feel the voice acting in the sequel is somewhat lacking. Don't get me wrong, it's still really good, it's just not that iconic this time around. I'm also mixed on the Needolin songs, because while I like the idea of making all bugs you interact with able to sing, most songs clash horribly with the generic music you play, and the way the text scrolls is not very readable. It's just not as satisfying as the dream nail.

I really loved the story too. You play as Hornet, the deuteragonist for the first one, after she's been captured by a group of zealots from a foreign land, taken to the far-away kingdom of Pharloom. It's now your job to figure out why you're here, and find a way to stop them from attacking any other weavers.

Hornet's main difference over the knight is that she's an actual character. She speaks, she has her own personality, opinions, likes and dislikes, everything. While being Hollow was kind of the point of the first one, this is a very welcome change to the formula, and it makes the mysterious nature of the game feel a thousand times more approachable.

The way you take in the world has changed as well. In the original Hollow Knight, it felt like all the events important to the world had already happened, and you're just going through the leftovers. But here, Pharloom is still a living and sorta-thriving world, even after you arrive. It's still an old kingdom, of course, so there's still a lot of backstory for you to discover. It's just that Zanzibart-like hints are not the only thing the game has to offer this time around.

Unfortunately, that's as far as my compliments go, because the rest of the game's design is an incoherent and aimless mess that just ruins the whole thing.

The gameplay loop is fun enough. It mostly plays the same as your average action-adventure metroidvania romp, just slightly more acrobatic. The game really hits its stride as you unlock your dashes and hooks, and while they're never needed during fights, you're really missing out if you don't make the most out of your entire moveset.

The enemy design, however, does not compliment this at all. Most of the enemies you fight tend to stay outside your range and camp you out, before either spamming projectiles, or lunging right at you. Every single fight in the game ends up turning into a waiting game, lest you lose 2 entire points of health at any of the enemy's attacks. Hornet's agile moveset does help against some of these enemies, but these abilities end up costing you resources, and they're not available to you from the start. It's manageable, but fighting enemies never feels worth it for the rewards they give. Which is a shame, because money is so tight that you practically need to farm many of them.

This also extends to the design of the bosses, and while it's less egregious than with regular enemies, a great deal of the fights revolve around waiting for them to stop zoning you out. But don't worry, Team Cherry has come up with the perfect solution: 50% of the bosses are instead replaced with random enemy gauntlets!!! Fuck you!!!!!!

I had a lot of problems with how the map was in the original Hollow Knight, and I think the sequel does a better job at making the world fun to explore. In part it's because you just have a better moveset to traverse the map, but I also never found myself lost like before. Instead, I always had somewhere to go and a new item or ability to grab. In fact, the game may have a few too many new abilities to grab, as it's pretty easy to get sidetracked in the world now.

Silksong also introduces sidequests to the game, and while I think they're a nice addition to the world, a lot of them end up being nothing but boring grindfests. The game as a whole also relies way too much on fetch and trailing quests, even as part of the main story, and it ends up slowing down the game to a crawl.

A lot of people like to say the biggest problem with Silksong comes from its difficulty, but I never saw it that way. The game's tough, sure, but when you actually get down to it, it never really ask anything impossible from you. My problem, however, is that every other part of the game doesn't actually take its difficulty into account, instead opting to enrich the worldbuilding at the expense of the player.

A horrible economy that's heavily affected by the where you're at, rooms with no purpose except to mess with you, extra long runbacks after every boss fight, unending enemy gauntlets with minimal rewards, the entirety of Bilewater, deaths so cheap and frequent that you feel like you're playing a troll game, and punishments that snowball out of control are just a few of the ways the game messes with you.

At every step of the way, it feels like Silksong is sacrificing its own gameplay in favor of building its world. Sure, the original Hollow Knight did the same thing, but never to this degree. The gameplay has always been held back by its story, but until now, it never felt like your own fun was being compromised. At some point you just gotta stop and ask, is a two minute runback really needed here?

I became really worried when the release date for Silksong was announced. It's not normal to spend the better part of a decade working on a single game and then drop it with only two weeks of notice. I specifically remember telling my girlfriend that the game was gonna be a bloated mess, because the only way something like this could happen is if they didn't have a plan for the game and just kept adding stuff on top of it.

And now that I played it, yeah, it definitely feels that way. It's like every new addition to the game is just carelessly placed on top of everything else, leaving you with a wobbling tower of mechanics without any actual supports. The connecting tissue that keeps them together just isn't there, so while the individual parts of the game may be good, the game as a whole never feels good to play.

In conclusion: Silksong is a game that, despite spending 7 whole years in the oven, manages to feel undercooked. Not for a lack of polish or effort, but for a lack of thought to how all its parts mesh together. It heavily prioritizes telling its story over everything else, and while the story it tells is really good, it completely disregards the player experience and just leaves you in the dark for the entire duration.

I don't think it's a bad game, but with all the issues it has, it feels bad to play. When you look for them, there's definitely a lot of things to enjoy about Silksong (especially for fans of the franchise) but with all its frustrating moments, disappointing payoffs, and messy or outright disrespectful design... I really don't think it's worth it. 6/10

Worth every second of the six year wait. 2025 is the year of indie dominance and Team Cherry are at the top of the pantheon.

What's most upsetting about Silksong is not the difficulty, but the discourse. Hollow Knight was never an easy game, but somehow the greater challenge of its sequel was treated as "unfair". I'm no advocate for 'git gud' talk, but I believe the intense nature of Silksong is in lock step with its narrative and worldbuilding. Too many journos and players keep talking about balance as if they know how it's achieved. They're not playing the game on its terms, which feels disingenuous; a refusal to engage with the experience delivered in favour of an imagined alternative.

The world of Pharloom is built around a holy pilgrimage that winds through its lower districts, through harsh and demanding terrain, to the shining Citadel at its peak. It's immediately apparent on visiting Bone Bottom that the pilgrims embarking on this journey are woefully unprepared - humble, peaceable beings rarely seen with a weapon in hand. This sacred endeavour is a meat grinder, and the first of many indicators that Pharloom's cruelty is deeper and more insidious than that of Hallownest.

Hornet is no such pilgrim. You control a demi-god warrior whose nimble capacity feels far beyond your own, at first. By the time the credits roll, you feel akin to her. The rhythm of battle is one that you set. It helps that Hornet is distinctive and vocal, unlike her silent predecessor - she has a point of view that acts as a guiding light throughout the game.

Team Cherry are beautiful character designers. It's impossible not to fall in love with Sherma, Shakra, Pavo... even Grindle, the little piece of shit. The moments of tragedy that befall those around you hit much harder than Hollow Knight's beats - each injustice stings as much as it galvanises.

There's also something about the 'unfairness', again, that feels intentional. At one point, the game will nickel-and-dime you for every single save, and that feels wholly appropriate given where it happens. Additionally, not all benches are safe, with good reason. My most despised location - the gruelling poison swamp trudge through Bilewater - remained enjoyable because of its hidden secrets, and having the best track in Christopher Larkin's immaculate score. These designers know exactly what they're doing, they've spent years honing this specific experience and it is remarkably consistent and comprehensive.

Yes, it's brutal, but Pharloom could not be otherwise. They've since nerfed a few early bosses (Moorwing and Sister Splinter), which will hopefully mean a few more players surmount the high barriers to entry, but difficulty should not be confused with accessibility. This was also going to be the experience Team Cherry intended, and I applaud them for sticking to their guns despite overwhelming demand.

I struggle to put into words how deeply affecting the whole experience was, as someone who already loved Hollow Knight. There were tears, gasps, exaltations of victory, crushing defeats, moments of glory only experienced in this very specific genre of game. I never bested Hollow Knight's Pantheon, but I completed Silksong 100%... and I still feel there's more to see of Pharloom. It's maybe the most difficult game I've played, but I never felt the desire to quit - Hornet and I had to see this thing through together.

SPOILERS BELOW:

You can (and should) complete the game in Act 2, but the turn into Act 3 is incredible. It's a huge reason why I would highly recommend turning to the community for tips. It's been a staple of Soulslikes since the beginning, and rarely robs your sense of discovery, especially when used sparingly. Checking the wiki meant witnessing the whole story, but I still found the Watcher At The Edge on my own, the Green Prince, the gambler, and so many other remarkable characters and locales.

The two most notorious areas are Bilewater and Hunter's March, and both have lore-based reasons for being terrible places. The ants of Hunters March are militant natives ousted by the Citadel, so they trap the shit out of their turf. Bilewater has lore reading, "We have their shells, we have their souls, our hate is forever" - thanks to the Putrified Ducts, they've been poisoned by the Citadel and loathe its denizens without exception. The cruelty inflicted on you in both locations is wholly appropriate, as frustrating as it can be.

I stuck with the Hunter Crest all the way - once I'd adapted to Hornet's diagonal attack, it felt unnatural to do anything else. That fluid sense of motion you get when everything clicks rivals the best of the genre (Ori & The Will Of The Wisps springs to mind). Favourite tools were tacks and spike traps, with Trobbio's healing blast and quickbind.

How can I review a game like silksong. One of the most anticipated games of the entire world - myself included. I knew it couldn’t live up to whatever crazy expectations I had, but ultimately I just wanted more Hollow Knight. And largely, that’s exactly what this was, but with so much more refinement and depth to it. And while I loved around 80% of my experience, there is an extra 20% that feels a little bloated and forgettable.

There is so much about this game that improves on its predecessor. The art and animation are just richer and look gorgeous. There are sooo many incredible moments of discovery, little scripted events that take a turn you didn’t expect, an incredible amount of biomes and enemies. The progression of gaining abilities is incredible, when you finally get that ability you weren’t quite sure existed, which opens up so many previous areas, it’s just an unforgettable experience. The amount of surprises and delights is unparalleled.

But for context, I am a completionist. I went in with the goal to get 100% (or whatever it may be, 112%?). And this endeavor took me 98 hours… so yeah, by the end I was just begging the game to end. My main complaint is that the game just has too much content, and it’s not all the same quality. There’s so many optional little bosses and areas, and a lot of them just don’t stand out. So maybe my final few hours with the game have tainted what was otherwise a 10/10 experience.

That’s the thing I think Hollow Knight has over its sequel - simplicity. The crest system just didn’t work at all to me. I used one the entire game, and everytime I tried to branch off, I just didn’t like any of the other ones. So in my experience- that was bloat. Which makes a lot of the rewards for exploration meaningless as well.

But I will set that aside, it’s an amazing game that definitely lived up to the hype. Just for me personally, I would have cut out about 20% of the optional content as it got a little repetitive and meandering, and also cut out the crest system and just left the original badges. But the quests were amazing, exploration, art, bosses, music, it’s everything you would want. Maybe on replay I will feel different, but for now I’m feeling a 4/5.

Yes, it's hard. Yes, you'll be repeating the same boss fights until you learn them and win - sometimes dozens of times. Yes, some of these bosses have significant runbacks to even retry (although most don't). Yes, you sometimes need to grind a bit for money / shards. No, the game isn't perfect and a lot of this is detrimental to the overall experience.

With that out of the way - it still isn't enough to tarnish things. 40+ hours for my initial playthrough, doing a ton of side content and exploring every bit I could and it was amazing. The presentation, the world, the characters, the controls, the gameplay, the amount of content and Christopher Larkin's phenomenal music with you every step of the way. One of the best games I've ever played. It's kind of bonkers both this and Expedition 33 came out this year. We are spoiled.

Well, I beat Silksong.

This game is absolutely massive. There's no denying it can be frustrating at times, and I have issues with plenty of the design choices, but it's undeniably an awe-inspiring game. It's the sort of old-school experience where you get so mad you want to throw your controller sometimes but you still come out of it having had an unforgettable experience and it pushes you to your limits in a satisfying way.

Some of the lategame bosses, I entered, died immediately, thinking "I am never going to get this - I will be here for hours, I might have to stop playing here" but then after a few attempts I start to get the hang of it and after a dozen more attempts the boss goes down. That's absolutely a testament to the game's design - the bosses seem unbeatable but then teach you that actually you can do it if you slow down and analyze their patterns. The fast-paced duel bosses felt amazing in the end, like artful dances.

Metroidvanias are maybe my favourite genre, I love exploration, I love going places where the game "doesn't want me to go yet" and the best metroidvanias give you that feeling even if in fact the developer did intend you to go there. These games don't hold your hand, so there's always a sense of "wait, was I really supposed to find this? That jump seemed pretty tight, maybe they expected me to only do this later..." Silksong has a bit less of this than Hollow Knight I think, the first half of the game is kind of more guided. But the moments of finding a random breakable wall, expecting it to lead to just some small room with a health upgrade (which in most metroidvanias, it does), but instead you find an entire new biome, is unmatchable. Which is part of why I guess I'll give this 5 stars even though I think it has lots of flaws. Even though this genre has taken off, few are willing to lock actual substantial rewards behind optional paths. (Devs probably don't want to spend dev time on things 90% of players won't find - but I guess this game and BG3 and etc proved that it can pay off)

That said... when I say "substantial rewards", I'm mostly just referring to the shock of discovering a new biome, or a new sub-area or etc. That's exciting. I wish the actual rewards were exciting. Health and mana are always good, but finding some charm that I'm never going to use because it's clearly niche and I only have 2 slots which are already being used on important stuff I can't live without... Is not a good reward. It wasn't a good reward in the first game, where you had more charm slots but still couldn't make room for niche builds, and even less so in this one! I just keep finding cool stuff, but I'm not willing to unequip, for example, my extra attack range, or my shortened heal time, so even if some of these charms sound cool... They're never being used. Nevermind finding 20 different sub-weapons when you can only equip 1 (or 2, but it was just 1 for me - if you know why, you know) at a time. You have to love exploration just for the sake of it, to get satisfaction from this game.

Anyway, I never use sub-weapons or spells in games - I genuinely do not have the mental processing ability to handle more than 2 buttons - jump, and attack. (And d-pad to run away). Maybe a dash. But that's it. Literally any time I try to use sub-weapon in a boss fight I get hit lol because it takes all my brainpower to press a fourth button and then I don't dodge the boss's attack. I literally get hit while just trying to throw tacks anywhere without even aiming😂 So, maybe part of this is a me problem. It's cool to find a new spell but then I just feel the other 5 I found are pointless.

Anyway, I don't think any of the bosses are "too hard", I don't think the enemies are either - The problem with enemies is that way, way too many of them, encourage a hit-and-run playstyle. You walk up and hit it once - it immediately defends itself by shooting out spikes around itself so you back up. You walk back up and hit it again 3 seconds later, it repeats, etc. Worse when something like this happens on a flying enemy that dodges your first 3 attacks by flipping away, you get time for 1 hit, then have to run away, etc. I don't know if the enemies are too hard, but if you get impatient at all and just want to kill them and move on, you'll get hit because you didn't play it safe. But the safe way is slow and boring. I found this got better in act 2 as the enemies in those areas tended to just let you hit them more times in a row.

But the point is, when you die, it can be frustrating, not because the game is "too hard" (I think this criticism is not precise enough and misses the mark), it's because the ways you die feel cheap and not deserved, either like I said above because you just got impatient wanting to finally kill this flying thing that takes 5 hits to die but you can only hit once every 10 seconds, or because, say, a boss has simple patterns that you can see how to dodge and get it right 9 times, but on the 10th you're a pixel too slow so you lose 2/5 of your health, get disoriented and try to recover and lose another 2/5, then you're at 1/5 and can't find a time to heal so you're basically dead from one mistake. Again, gets better halfway through the game once you have more health and more abilities.

I also thought a lot of the early game areas (first half of act 1) weren't very interesting. just felt like random hallways and vertical shifts, just very generic metroidvania areas. But once you got more agency to explore in the second half of act 1, I felt the areas got better and more distinct with more unique layouts, and the layout of act 2 and its areas was very memorable and I felt had more landmarks that made navigating it fun.

I don't mind runbacks as I think I get what the devs are going for - they want the world to feel dangerous, you don't get given a nice savespot right before a boss, bosses or gauntlets can attack at any time and you have to be ready, and dying has consequences, you don't just pick back up right where you left off. They want you to play slowly and carefully, not button mash and run around like crazy. I suspect they also want to keep the vibe of a boss being a challenge you encounter after doing a segment of running around, not a thing that is it's own little world you do completely segmented from the area before it. Anyway, this is a tangent, plenty of people have more to say about the runbacks than me, since I'm largely fine with them.

Oh, and I nearly forgot! Sidequests! Why, oh WHY, would anyone think that what Hollow Knight 1 was missing was a bunch of random "go fetch 5 of this flower" "go get 25 insect pelts" quests????????? And fetch quests?!?!!?!? "Go back to this place you've already been to to get some item from this NPC, then bring it back here". The whole point of this genre is there's no filler, you spend every moment exploring and finding new things and you never know what you'll find but everything leads to something new. Backtracking to places you've already been to grind an enemy is antithetical to the genre! (I mean I know some games in the genre have grinding or quests already, but still) Why does this game continually insist on fixing things that weren't broken? I appreciate the added scope of the game but you don't just need to add sidequests just because "well every game has sidequests". I got so sick of these and they just kept popping up. What's worse if when you explore, find some room that seems important but is empty - then learn later it's for a sidequest you hadn't unlocked yet so now you have to go back. It's a miracle they didn't also add a crafting system.

There's definitely a part of me that feels the game doesn't deserve a perfect score and maybe I'd do a 9/10 or something if the site had 10 stars rather than 5, but ultimately I have to concede that the game (obviously, writing this review a week after it came out) kept me enraptured the entire time despite it having way more frustrating parts. I'm not good enough at games to play Elden Ring and I like 2d platforming so games like this are where I get the joy of exploration and there aren't many that do it like this series. Also, not to make a "quantity > quality" argument, but this game is soooo huge and just does so many things, it's really impressive. And the things it gets right, it really gets right.

If you really invested yourself in Hollow Knight and developed your skills for the end game, overcoming the white palace's platforming challenge and perfecting your skills against the boss fights in godhome, and what you really really wish for is more hollow knight but a remix that will be different, more, but not condescend to your skills from finishing the first game and go straight to up the incline to late game, hoo boy do I have a sequel for you.

Silksong feels like the hard mode from a game with nothing but hard mode. I don't want to harp on the difficulty too much, because it's not unbearable. it's not even the hardest 2d soulslike I've played. But it has, like it's predecessor, a lot to show you. a world crafted lovingly with music that couldn't be more well suited, if you can survive it's demands to see it.

The challenge comes from both not gently ramping up but instead starting at 10, and the combat being much more complex. there is more of a chance to have an actual build to how you approach combat, eventually, that is much more than the charm system and directional strikes with dashes and jumps the first had. combat is faster and more airborne, with combos and reactive actions. it's very fun but it's very very demanding. my aging hands were sore keeping up with it.

The set dressing is hollow knight but it also is not. the feel is the same, but you are somewhere else. Hornet is a very different character to control in more than battle. She doesn't passively listen to npcs talk at her like your dark souls protagonist, and the knight, did. She has much to say to everyone and it was sort of jarring at first. the writing won't win awards but for holding up the game and feeling mysterious, it wins.

Hollow knight was a once in lifetime title. and this is more of it with a twist. It didn't innovate so much as build on the foundation. as a stand alone it would be a pretty good but difficult metroidvania. as the continuation of your hollow knight experience, it excels.

I can't help but the love the charm these games have in their sound design and characters. It doesn't disappoint in any way that matters. I would love a lower difficulty, but I will respect the choice to not ever add one and I don't regret the ordeal that brought me through it.

Since Team Cherry doesn't know jack shit about Grouvee, Imma be a sneaky lil' fuck and say that I 120% completed the game so don't mind if I break the NDA. I'm gonna be honest: what did they even learn from Hollow Knight. Because what I am seeing here is so different from Hollow Knight that it doesn't deserve the Hollow Knight name. I waited 7 years for this???

I have to spoil this because I'm flabbergasted by this and it wasn't worth the 100 hour journey, but Hornet dies at the start. All that footage we have been seeing for 5 years? All in the first 30 minutes of the game. She gets killed by the Grubberfly which is such cheap fanservice because it doesn't make sense because in Hollow Knight, the grubfather ate every single one. For the rest of the game, you play as Abby from The Last of Us Part II. Neil Druckmann and Team Cherry are just acting desperate at this point. What's worse here is that they didn't carry over the iconic sex from the sex update that Abby is known for. The world lacks cohesion, there's no atmosphere. The story is just nothing, the lore is nothing. It's just Abby meandering for 97% of the game. Christopher Larkin left Team Cherry since he wanted dubstep and Mommy girlfriend comforts you ASMR roleplay in the game so they got Kenji Yamamoto as the composer for Silksong. And like usual from Kenji Yamamoto, the soundtrack is just straight up plagiarism. I heard tracks that sounded like Gucci Gang, The Less I Know, The Better, Stacy's Mom, Africa??? You really thought you'd get away with plagiarising Africa by Toto???

Hormet was awful to control, she was too floaty and her dash is too automated. It lacks communication as to what she is aiming at. The level design felt like I was going through the motions which is not something that should be expected out of Hollow Knight: Silksong. Abby was clearly not designed for precise 2D platforming. Everything that made Abby such a delight to control is not here in Silksong. No guns, no prone. Just walking through this world that is even bigger than Hollow Knight's. Bosses were just the same troll bossfight reused again and again with such little attack variety and no dynamism.

I waited 7 years for Silksong. 7 whole years. Never have I been more disappointed in a piece of media in my entire life. This is the kind of game that should have been delisted. Lost to the sands of time for all of eternity.

Edit: This original review was a 1 star review because it was an April Fools review back in 2024. I wish my actual rating doesn't change how this looks, but it is what it is.