It doesn’t appear to have been under any pressure, even if the entire world was waiting for Hollow Knight: Silksong’s cocoon to eventually burst. As a brilliant continuation of the original Hollow Knight and a superb game in its own right, this superb follow-up to an all-time classic has more than met my high expectations. While staying true to the formula that made its predecessor so remarkable, it makes significant and little changes to almost every aspect of it.
Silksong is unreservedly difficult, incredibly imaginative, and remarkably reflective in both its beautiful setting and the tales it tells. Even though the transformation took over ten years, this butterfly is now among the largest and most daring in the world. The most important thing to know if you haven’t played Hollow Knight is that you really missed it. You might want to start by playing it again. Action, adventure, and a ton of fascinating mythology abound in this masterwork of a 2D platformer.
Though it is undoubtedly improved by having played the original, Silksong follows in its footsteps and doesn’t require it. This is because the story has a lot of fantastic little references and callbacks to catch, and it also feels like an evolution of what Hollow Knight was doing mechanically. In fact, it adheres so closely to the original’s structure and style that some of the initial shock has undoubtedly been lost. However, that doesn’t stop it from scattering surprises, joys, and secrets across the place, which a fan of Hollow Knight like me loved to uncover.
In any case, your voyage through the whole new universe of Pharloom as the shrewd and self-assured Hornet is worthy of its own merit. Hornet is a great hero; she was brought to this area against her will at first, but after learning the reason, she is motivated to act morally for the inhabitants of this land. I don’t want to spend this entire article analyzing Hollow Knight’s changes line by line because we’d be here all day, but the tone contrast between her driving and your silent Knight is significant, and it’s a choice that mostly benefits Silksong.
The excellent writing throughout allows you to get to know Hornet through chats with a fascinating ensemble of bug-based characters that I came to love. She is kind but firm, guarded but not frigid. Throughout their individual storylines, they exhibit a wide range of emotions, from cute to silly to truly moving, with notable characters such as the singing pilgrim Sherma spanning the entire spectrum. Hornet’s ability to speak makes the greater plot more plain, elucidating the “why” of this voyage and several significant events in a way that I found to be very effective.
Although there are still many subtle secrets to solve on your own, I found that I was more interested right away in this game than I am in most others, where you have to spend hours reading a wiki to grasp what’s actually occurring. Here, like so much of Silksong, it finds a wonderful equilibrium.
Pharloom is an intriguing universe, and Hornet is a great hero.
Though few actually make it through the journey you now unintentionally find yourself on, Pharloom is also a fascinating place: a dying land where hopeful bugs make a pilgrimage from its lower levels all the way up to the shining peak of a spectacular cogwork city called The Citadel in blind service of their faith. The ability of games to connect themes and actions is one of their best features as a creative medium.
Celeste, for instance, helped you understand Madeline’s battle to conquer her own personal mountain by forcing you to climb a real one, which is one of the reasons I gave it a ten back in 2018. Silksong accomplishes a similar feat: it’s about conquering adversity, leaving the world in a better state than when you found it, and persisting while yet finding time to be kind to yourself when you fail.
You can sense those themes from your own behavior without even reading a single line of conversation. That’s because Silksong will put you to the test, just like Hollow Knight did. Tough with a capital T is the adjective I want to use to describe this game, but I like to say “challenging” because it isn’t just tough for the sake of being tough.
It pushes you to tackle hurdles that often seem insurmountable at first but are calibrated to be overcome as your knowledge, skill, and toolkit of acquired abilities advance. An area like Bilewater, which has very few respawn benches for resting and some of the most punishing poison water I’ve seen in any game, is probably an extreme example of this.
After falling into it, you have to clean yourself by wasting your valuable healing ability and depleting the resource that powers that ability—a double whammy. When I originally tried to push my way through this region, I believed it was unreasonable; however, I took a break, looked about,and came back hours later with a better strategy that made it easy, new combat options, and goods to lessen the effects of the poison.
Because Pharloom had so many potential places and branching paths, its obstacles seemed significant without slowing me down. Knowing that I would nearly always be rewarded for pursuing a different path prevented me from ever being too frustrated if anything was too difficult to defeat with my existing equipment, upgrades, or skill set.
The ideal way to approach Silksong is to let it come to you as you walk gradually and flow down the most alluring paths you uncover, rather than pounding your head against every wall you encounter. As you explore, you can keep track of all those out-of-reach ledges and the roads you don’t immediately go down thanks to the map pin system, which was available at launch (unlike Hollow Knight, which added it after the fact).
You can also avoid wasting time by choosing the paths that call to you. Additionally, I was regularly raising my mouth in awe whenever I walked into a new, aesthetically spectacular space, practically all of which had amazing music to go with it. The Citadel’s gilded halls, a blustery, snowy top that made me huddle for warmth, a colorful coral canyon teeming with flying beetles that like fish, and the clockwork innards that drive it.
Silksong does what all great sequels ought to do: it looks just like Hollow Knight, but in contrast, it makes its predecessor seem unimpressive. There is more color, more sparkle, and more diversity since every dial has been turned up to eleven. And whenever I thought I had uncovered the limits of this map, I’d wander into another new location with its own environment, mysteries, and hostile bugs.
Patience and spatial awareness are more valuable in combat than button timings alone.
The violent boss battles and hostile foes share the same “go with the flow” mentality as the surrounding areas: if you approach them in the same way as in one of the more conventional 3D action games, from which Hollow Knight obviously draws some inspiration, you may find yourself struggling.
Even Silksong’s most vicious foes will begin to crumble if you approach the game like the platformer it is, remaining patient enough to concentrate on location while dodging and absorbing damage when you can. Calling fighting a “dance” has become a cliché, but it really is the best way to characterize some of these engagements.
Although Silksong isn’t the world’s most mechanically sophisticated action game, it does feel like a bit of blade-based choreography that prioritizes spatial awareness over button timings alone as you learn an enemy’s patterns as you settle into a rhythm of dodging a swing, dashing in for a hit, hopping to safety, and then repeating. Another reason why Silksong’s haymakers inspire rather than annoy is that, compared to other challenging action games, this one is really quite forgiving.
Much of that might be attributed to the healing mechanism, which allows you to instantly restore a significant amount of health by using Silk, a resource you obtain by striking enemies. Although it would appear that this would encourage violence to collect more Silk, I ended up being cautious and putting accuracy first.
If I were ever going behind in a fight, it was always comforting to know that I could theoretically recover back up to full like nothing had gone wrong if I simply stayed alive long enough to get a few pokes in. (Of course, it’s not always easy to accomplish that.) It’s up to you to find out how to reach out and grab this lifeline, but Silksong’s major battles and the routes between them usually make sure to keep it within grabbing distance as well.
Bosses have safe healing windows, and platforming areas often present you with weaker enemies that are only meant to replenish your Silk. This gives you an incentive to fight even these smaller enemies, but to do so carefully because, while they may not be directly threatening to kill you, a careless hit reduces the amount of respite they can offer before a more formidable foe lurks up ahead.
Although developer Team Cherry may test you with challenging commands, there are always ways to meet them. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the areas with that poison water are essentially the only ones where their more frequent enemies can respawn while you are still on the screen next to them.
Even though I enjoy how Silksong pushes me, there are some parts of Team Cherry’s approach to difficulty management that occasionally leave me feeling bitter. To put it plainly, I believe the tuning is incredibly well-balanced overall: aside from a few late-game battles, I defeated almost every boss in six tries or less, typically requiring only two or three tries, which felt like a sweet spot in terms of giving pushback without ever making me want to drop my controller.
However, compared to the original Hollow Knight, it is a little startling how many foes and environmental dangers deliver damage in two-piece chunks rather than one. This is frequently highlighted by two different impact sounds that give the impression that you’ve done something wrong to cause that additional suffering. That can lead to feelings of guilt even when the “difficulty” isn’t actually out of balance.
Additionally, health improvements come so slowly that it might be disappointing when a boss who only delivers damage in pairs (including simply bumping into them occasionally) practically cuts your life total in half.
A desperate quest for a bench hovers between exhilarating peril and growing fear.
A few places that place their respawn benches far apart can also give you a harsh feeling. Some even transform a couple into “gotcha” traps that viciously yank the rug out from under you just when you think you’ve finally found some relief. In fact, I find those traps humorous, but when you are initially exploring a new area, frantically looking for a checkpoint, it teeters on the brink of exhilarating danger in unfamiliar territory and a feeling of dread. However, much as a boss must be learnt from and overcome, this bench placement is not a careless error.
Finding a bench is a difficulty in places that utilize them less frequently, but once you do, it feels as good as eliminating a giant bug. At its core, Silksong is a true-blue platformer, and it was a real pleasure to learn how to navigate precisely through clever, spike-covered obstacle courses. Silksong’s customization features, which build upon the original Hollow Knight and provide you with more methods to adjust your playstyle to your preference, help you achieve that mastery.
Here, you can unlock Crests that alter your basic attacks as if you were using a completely different weapon. For example, you can switch from the default diagonal downslash to the Wanderer Crest’s more vertically direct option, switch to the Beast Crest for a claw-based attack that temporarily transforms your burst heal into lifesteal, or, my personal favorite, use the Reaper Crest to unlock wide-arcing attacks that cause your enemies to lose more Silk after a heal.
Once you’ve discovered which of these Crests you like best, there’s little reason to switch between them, but they all feel enough distinct to offer some real playstyle options. I really liked how adaptable the new tool system that fits within these Crests is. All of the tools you acquire are divided into three color-coded categories, and you can employ equipable powers that cost some Silk.
Yellow Tools offer more general support options like making dropped money fly to you automatically or marking Hornet’s current location on your map; blue Tools typically offer some sort of defensive effect, like increased Silk storage or fire resistance; and red Tools give you an extra, ammo-limited attack, like a throwing knife or mid-air spike trap.
Support effects and combat buffs no longer compete for the same limited space, and I was able to switch Tools in and out more easily based on the location or boss I was taking on. This split is a significant improvement over Hollow Knight’s single-slot approach. You can be quite creative with odd builds that mix and match certain skills or deprioritize items you don’t use because each Crest has a distinct balance of the color-coded slots your Tools go into.
The Architect Crest’s downside, which replaces the Silk slot with a third red Tool, ended up temporarily suiting my playstyle because, for instance, I usually reserved my Silk for heals rather than those special powers. Although I would have been happy to continue using the Architect for its Tool options and special ability to turn Silk into ammo while away from a bench, the more rigid, drill-like basic attacks that came with that (though cool) eventually made me switch back to the Reaper. That being said, I do wish the “weapon” styles weren’t permanently tied to a Crest’s Tool slots and passive effects as they are.
Verdict
By essentially transforming the dash of a game I loved into a full-on sprint, Hollow Knight: Silksong has lived up to my high hopes. It adapts every system in mainly clever ways and is larger, livelier, and equally imaginative as the first expansive epic. In a manner that few games do, Team Cherry has struck the perfect mix between exhilarating boss encounters, tempting exploration of a stunning and unexpected setting, and gratifying 2D platforming tasks. However, several of its objectives and a strangely constructed ending do make minor mistakes.
In all of that, it’s also shamelessly difficult, punishing you in a way that can occasionally hurt but never feels merciless, and providing you with both enormous challenges to overcome and a wealth of resources to help you do so. Regardless of how unachievable it may appear, it challenges you to confront the insurmountable, conquer the obstacles in your way, and ultimately leave the world in a better state than when you found it, all the while taking care of yourself and others around you.
