Hollow Knight: Silksong - A Review

The whole "makeup and a mask" joke has been done to death, but seriously, what other game has pretty much stolen the spotlight at almost every single Direct or Showcase over the last five or six years, besides maybe Grand Theft Auto? Yep, Hollow Knight: Silksong was, and still is, a pretty big deal.

From the insane hype to the fiery debates about its difficulty, Silksong has sparked a lot of discussion. But beneath all that controversy is a game. A game with a ton of content, a game that's a feast for your eyes and ears, and a game with a gameplay loop that demands precision, finesse, and patience—but also a game that tries its best to make you lose that patience. To quickly get you up to speed, we're talking about a 2D adventure game in the Metroidvania genre, where you explore a huge world with different areas that open up as you find new powers (like a dash, a double jump, and more).

Hollow Knight: Silksong starts with its hero, Hornet, being forcibly taken to the kingdom of Pharloom. After she breaks free from her captors, the huntress goes looking for answers in this strange new place. Who kidnapped her? Why? These are the questions you'll try to answer throughout the adventure.

A Distant Kingdom

Unlike the first Hollow Knight, where the Knight journeyed deeper into Hallownest, Hornet’s entire quest is about climbing to the top of Pharloom. She’ll have to ascend from the lowest parts of the kingdom all the way up to the holy Citadel. Like any good Metroidvania, each zone has its own theme, style, and even its own mechanics. The backgrounds are incredibly detailed, the colors are much brighter this time, and you can't help but love every new area you discover as you slowly uncover the kingdom’s cryptic but fascinating history. And of course, the music that goes with your journey is just as great as before, getting stuck in your head even when it’s subtle.

The same can be said for all the characters Hornet meets on her ascent. Whether they’re small and cute or big and creepy, living in the few cities or out in the wilderness, the NPCs are everywhere and always have something interesting to ask you to do or tell you. Each one is memorable, with a personality that comes through in their voice. You’ll definitely find a favorite (it's a little boring, but Sherma wins every time). We see the same great quality in the design of the enemies and bosses, with a few standouts that are truly amazing. Silksong has that same "handmade" feel as its predecessor in its environments, its NPCs, the world, and everything else.

Pharloom is beautiful and a joy to explore. Team Cherry hasn’t reinvented the wheel, but they've mastered their Metroidvania and taken its size and interconnectedness to the next level. Sure, there's a clear line between the bottom and top of Pharloom, but the twenty-plus zones (if you find them all) are full of secret passages, characters, upgrades, and resources to find. You'll keep finding secrets and mysteries late into the game, and nothing beats that feeling of, "Oh, there's a whole other area here??"—even after more than twenty hours.

Silksong also has a ton of small side quests, from hunting down mini-bosses and collecting materials from enemies to finding lost characters. This extra content is a nice bonus and often a good excuse to show you the way to some of the most hidden places in the game or to revisit old areas with new powers.

More Acrobatic, More Deadly

This joy is even more present thanks to Hornet. She's faster and more agile, which makes exploring Pharloom, even its most horrible parts, a blast. She can jump, run, do long leaps, bounce off certain things, and so much more as you unlock her abilities. Her acrobatics feel amazing to pull off perfectly, thanks to the great animations. Hornet is constantly twirling and flipping in more and more impressive ways as you play.

Of course, you have to use those acrobatics in combat too, which adds another layer of complexity and depth. On top of that, Hornet has several different movesets to find in Pharloom, which she can then expand with a bunch of tools you can buy or find. There are so many options that everyone is bound to find something they love if they look for it.

We’ll get back to the combat later, but staying on the platforming, we have to praise Team Cherry’s precise level design. It forces you to use all of Hornet’s options while still letting you tackle situations however you want. The more options you have, the more choices you have for getting through a tough parkour challenge or a hard combat section.

The Honeymoon's Over

After a few hours, I thought I was holding a game that deserved a perfect score. But two undeniable flaws came up as I went higher in Pharloom. First, the French translation. While the mistakes and typos are probably going to get fixed, it's hard to ignore such bad errors. We’ll spare you the list of verbs that should have been past participles but were left as infinitives, and other mistakes like that ("I to must leave," seriously guys?), along with a few "pages" that were left in the final version of the game. For a game that got this much hype, you have the right to expect better. Other languages have these same issues, especially the Chinese version.

The other flaw—and this is where we get back to the controversy—is the tough question of difficulty. Silksong is meant to be hard. Some bosses are hard, some platforming sections are hard. But you can be hard and still be fair. The first Hollow Knight walked that line much better, and a good chunk of Silksong does too. However, some enemies, encounters, or even entire areas go past a simple "oh, this is tough" and land firmly in "*&@#$ bell-thrower and *&@#$ moving platforms and I lost all my *&@#$ &@#$ gems."

Silksong is regularly mean, even cruel. With its bosses that summon smaller enemies, its countless traps that drain two health points instead of one (out of five at the start of the game), and the painfully long "runback" to some boss fights (the path you have to take to get back to a boss room). It’s much more brutal than Hollow Knight was. Silksong demands patience and precision, as we said before, but it feels like Team Cherry took a sick pleasure in using every possible trick to wear down that patience and force you to make a mistake. A runback that's too long makes you lose focus, you die faster when you finally get to the boss, you start off more annoyed, you make more mistakes on the runback, you get to the boss weaker, you die faster—the vicious trap closes in. And a single patch that only tweaks the first few fights in the game won't be enough to fix things.

The End Is Still So Far Away

To be honest, Silksong is far from done surprising us, even after 35 hours of gameplay. Just when we thought we were finished, with only a few boxes left to check after seeing the ending, Pharloom actually has so many more surprises for those who are determined enough to push a little further. We’re still in shock from everything that was hidden (we were expecting a few alternative endings, but ended up with at least ten more hours of gameplay), so we’ll be vague to avoid spoiling anything. Just know that doing all the side quests and objectives is truly worth it, and we’re starting to understand why this game took more than six years to come out...

The difficulty wasn't enough to make us quit—in fact, we might have even enjoyed it in hindsight (no judging, please). We suspect that once players get a better handle on all the options Hornet has, things will calm down. Given how well the first Hollow Knight was received and how it's been dissected over the years with challenges, speedruns, and other fun stuff, we expected the sequel to be spicier. Let's also keep in mind that Silksong was originally meant to be an endgame DLC for the first game, and maybe the sometimes-brutal difficulty comes from that as well.

Verdict

We're not trying to excuse what is a clear, major flaw in the game: the difficulty. There's no doubt that a lot of players will suffer because of it and might even give up on Hollow Knight: Silksong completely. But thinking about why the developers took such an abrupt turn is fascinating. As for whether it’s a real design mistake or just the studio’s stubborn and uncompromising vision, the debate is still open. Other than that, Team Cherry has proven they have mastered the genre, confirmed their raw artistic talent, and also showed their slightly sadistic side in a second installment that is as enchanting as it is demanding. We just hope we don't have to wait as long for their next project, but at least now we know for sure that the wait will be worth it.