Hollow Knight: Silksong

Hollow Knight is one of my favorite games of all time. If you didn’t know that already, well you do now. It’s one of very few games I would call perfect aside from Bloodborne and Hades. Will this statement apply to everybody who has played Hollow Knight? No, but I genuinely have very little to complain about. I think it's one of the greatest examples of how to do a video game, and it’s amazing that it managed to blow up the way it did. This tiny indie metroidvania made by a small team in Australia, Team Cherry, has grown in popularity since its initial release in 2017. It’s gotten numerous expansions, ports to consoles, merchandise, and a massive fanbase that rave about the game including me. I remember when I initially played Hollow Knight in 2018. I saw it during the Nintendo E3 showcase that year, thought it looked pretty cool, and picked it up on a whim. It blew my little mind away at the time. Getting lost in its expansive world, learning how it all fell apart, and being rewarded for exploring every inch of it and overcoming its challenges. It got me to start seeing video games as art, and without it and Octopath Traveler my love for the medium wouldn’t have grown. Hollow Knight is a masterpiece and I stand tall on that hill.

I used to mention Hollow Knight a lot in my reviews whenever I talked about metroidvanias and indie games. I used it as a comparison a lot, but stopped after a dozen games. The reason why is a bit odd for me. A few years ago Yahtzee Chrosaw did a video on why he never made a review for Undertale, one of his all time favs. He explained that Undertale was such a magical piece of art that writing a review for it or bringing up for comparisons felt shameful to the work it’s trying to be and others. That’s how I feel about Hollow Knight. It’s a game I love so much that I want people to experience it on their own. See it for themselves rather than have someone online tell them what makes it good. One of my first long written critiques was on Hollow Knight, and even though it’s my favorite analysis I’ve written I feel as though my writing skills have gotten a lot better since then. Hollow Knight to me is a one of a kind game and for a very long time I thought we were never going to get another game like it again. That wasn’t until a major reveal back in 2019. Hollow Knight became a massive hit and Team Cherry planned to develop a sequel. One that would be bigger, grander, and more expansive than the first game they made. That sequel would follow one of the major characters of the first game, and be titled Silksong. When I saw that trailer back in 2019 my mind exploded, again. I’m a very easy person to impress.

I couldn’t wait till the day Hollow Knight: Silksong finally released. A good one or two years and it would be in the palm of my hands. One year passes, and then the next year. Another year after that and…. Well you saw the memes online so you know how this story goes. Silksong spent a very long time in development, and during that time Team Cherry gave no updates on how the game was going. They didn’t give any updates on where they were during development and none of the workers responded to questions on social media. Team Cherry never gave a release date on when Silksong would come out, and people grew concerned. Development hell, a term known among many gamers for being the place where games with unknown release dates or long dev time go. It’s been six years since Silksong was announced and people speculated it would never be released. That Team Cherry would work on it forever or that it would get cancelled. However, like many of you I clinged onto hope. I stayed patient and waited till Hollow Knight: Silksong would eventually release. When I played Hollow Knight for the first time I was a freshman in high school. I have since graduated from high school, learned how to drive, and currently four years into college. A lot has changed since then. My personal life has seen a lot of high and lows but I didn’t let it change who I am as a person. I’ve played a lot of great games in between the time it took to make Silksong, and even though I remained excited for its eventual release I didn't mind how long it took. Silksong will be released, and when it does I’ll be ready. 

That day has finally arrived. A month ago there was a massive game showcase and it was said that Team Cherry would be at the event. It was a rumor at the time, and people were clowning saying it was another lie spread through the internet. They were in fact at the event and they were there to reveal the release date of one of the most anticipated games of recent memory. We all thought it would be next year, but then they said the game would come out on September 4th of 2025. This year! Holy sh*tballs. Hollow Knight: Silksong was finally coming out. The younger me bursted out of my chest in excitement. It’s been a long while since I’ve been this happy. The longest wait I’ve ever endured, and it did not disappoint. I bought Silksong day one, and for the last week or so I’ve been playing it nonstop. I was debating whether to write this review when I got the base ending or the true ending. It was the second option, because I really want to handle this review carefully. This is one of the most special games I’ve played in a long time. Heck it’s my Game of The Year for 2025. Sorry Clair Obscur, but Silksong has taken the stage. Silksong is a masterpiece. Would I say it’s better than the original? Honestly, no. Silksong has a few flaws and some of them you may have seen through online discourse last week, but for as rough as its low points are the highs are really high and they add together to form yet another work of art. Today we’ll be talking about Hollow Knight: Silksong, and why it deserves your attention.

Story

Slight spoilers for the lore of the original game, but I promise the rest of this review will contain very little mentioning of what happens storywise in the later acts of Silksong. The game has been out for a week, but not everyone has the free time nor skill to beat it as fast as I and a few others have. I want people to enjoy this game at their leisure without having its best moments be told to them. Please enjoy the rest of this review and this summary:

Decades ago a great ruler named The Pale King tried to guide the kingdom of Hallownest toward the best it could be. The kingdom was made up of multiple sectors and within them the different races. A tribe of Mantis who hunt and stalk their prey in the wilds. A hive of bees and hornets who work together to produce honey. Some of these tribes and groups had their own personal rulers and queens, and one such was a group of spiders. Weavers who lived deep underground in the darkest pits of Hollownest. Producing silk, chasing unwanted outsiders away, and serving a fearsome queen. One of the scariest beings in Hollownest, but she was also friends with the king. Herah the Beast, the first wife of the Pale King before they eventually divorced. When they were still together they conceived a child. A half spider and half wyrm bastard child who’d never hold the mantle of royalty. However, she’d do her best to serve her kingdom and fight alongside its strongest warriors even when it fell down to the spreading infection. Her name is Hornet, and she has been to hell and back. Watching her home crumble before her eyes, witnessing the closest thing she had to a brother get sealed away, and helping a little warrior finally put him to rest. She has lost everything, but yet she continues to strive for a better world amongst the chaos. Hunting, preying, and scavenging whenever she can. A weaver with her own accord.

It does not explain how Hornet got kidnapped at the start of this game, but she did. Captured and now being transported to a faraway kingdom known as Pharloom. Another great society that one time glistened with hope. Citizens and followers looking towards the heavens. Praying for things to get better, and above them all was a queen. A grand spider they looked towards as both a god and mother. She protected them all long as she could, but something happened. Madness spread and now the realm is struggling to hold itself together. Access towards the grand Citadel above had been cut off, and townships below question what’s going on. Pilgrims attempt to reach the Citadel to escape the chaos outside kingdom walls, but are cut down by wildlife and those who are trying to get by in this now fractured society. Hornet was being brought here for a reason. A reason she and no one understands. Confined within a magical cage that weakened her, but soon enough the spell broke. Using her power she freed herself from the cage, but this caused the cliff she was being escorted along to break and plummet deep into the world. The depths of Pharloom and the only path from there was up. Along the way Hornet learns more of the world. Residents who reside in each town, the pilgrims making their way up, and many others who wish for aid in these trying times. Hornet will explore Pharloom, uncover powers and tools to aid in her journey, and discover the fate that lies down the road.

Gameplay

It’s another metroidvania, but it’s been awhile since I’ve talked about one of these kind of games and Hollow Knight has a slew of differences that separate it from the pack. So we’re gonna treat it like you’ve never played one of these games before. Silksong is a 2D metroidvania with heavy emphasis on exploration and challenge. You start off in the lowest point in the world and on your map a marker is placed on where you need to be. However, getting there is the trickiest part as you are not shown what the rest of the world looks like. Heck, you’re not even shown what the first area looks like. All you can do is explore and grow familiar with the world. Leave a mental note on where key locations and formations are, and if you gotta backtrack remember where each path leads. However, the developers aren’t cruel and you unlock a map by spending rosaries, the main currency of the game. The map can be updated whenever you rest at a bench, but layout of new areas must be purchased by the same merchant. The exploration of Hollow Knight shines on how its world is revealed. Most games show a new room on the map once you enter it, but in Hollow Knight you can’t see it until you rest. Making every journey into unknown territory a risk reward scenario. It's a very rewarding risk-reward though. You can get lost easily, but right when you see a sign indicating a bench or fast travel spot is nearby your heart races.

Hollow Knight wears its Dark Souls influence on its sleeve, and benches are essentially resting points. The bonfires of the game and every time you rest at one you fully restore your health. If you die you respawn back at the bench while losing all the currency you’ve built up to that point. The game even has a corpse running mechanic where you can reobtain what you lost, but if you die again before doing so it’s gone forever. Unlike Dark Souls though healing works differently. Instead of an Estus Flask you had Soul, or for the case of Silksong you had Silk. It’s built up whenever you strike an enemy, and when you have enough it can be spent to refill some health at the moment. Get hit while trying to heal and it cancels the healing process. Meaning you have to be really careful when trying to heal especially during bosses. Combat is a huge component in these games. There’s a wide variety of enemies to fight and bosses occasionally block the way forward. You’ll have to learn their attack patterns and find windows of opportunity to strike. If you pressure them enough they enter a short stun period where you either slash away or try to heal during that time frame. As the game goes on and you unlock new powers bosses will force you to make use of said powers. Often throwing attacks that are impossible to dodge with any other ability aside from one specific. Fight diligently, fiercely, and learn from failure.

By standard metroidvania fashion you have powers. Upgrades you find by exploring that give your character new traversal abilities. The ability double jump, wall jump, dash, etc. All of these are returning skills, but there’s some new ones Hornet brings to the table. Hornet is acrobatic so she can dash and flip through the air when at full speed. You unlock a hover ability for the cloak early on, and it allows you to fly long distance or upward when placed above an airdraft. There’s a needle thrown to hook onto grapple points, and one base ability you have from the start is the downward pogo strike. Just like the original Hollow Knight it’s mainly for attacking, but it can also be used to reach areas you wouldn’t be able to reach normally. There are numerous charms you can find to offer Hornet passive perks and benefits, but new to Silksong are the tools and the crests. Tools are sidearms Hornet can whip out easily at the expense of Bone Shards, a second currency you can pick up. There’s a wide array of tools to use, so experiment on which ones best fit the current situation. Throwing knives, javelins, saws that run along the ground, spike traps, beetle buddies, the list goes on. Crests are different fighting styles Hornet can utilize. Each one changes Hornet’s attack range and speed, but also how many tools and charms she can equip. So choose carefully. Other than that there’s not much else I can say aside from my final opinions. It’s a thrillride from the start, so let’s rise all the way to the top.

Thoughts

Hollow Knight: Silksong is a masterpiece. The six years it spent in the oven were well spent and Team Cherry managed to pack more than I was expecting into this sequel. There are some flaws and I do want to discuss at some point why I still love the original Hollow Knight more. I mean it’s my favorite game ever and of course I’m gonna have some biases. Even then I think all of the pros for Silksong outweigh the cons, and as I stated earlier it’s one of few games this year that I wanted to keep playing after reaching the base ending. Most people probably would’ve stopped by then, but I wanted more. I wanted to see everything Silksong had to offer before writing my full review of the game. That’s why I said I wanted to handle this one carefully. Silksong is as good as I’d hoped and recaptures a majority of the magic Hollow Knight had with me all those years ago. The exploration and areas of Silksong are the peak of this game. Hollow Knight is a metroidvania, but it’s also a soulslike to some degree. Areas are interconnected to each other, and unlocking new powers either makes traversing the world easier or opens shortcuts. This design approach is what makes metroidvania and soulslike with good level design so intriguing to me. Hollow Knight’s approach is interesting seeing how segments of areas aren’t revealed till you rest at a checkpoint, and there’s no way to see where you are without a specific charm.

It’s a mixture of both metroidvania and soulslike design. Have the player explore the world with no clear direction on what the right path is. Let them get lost, mentally map out areas, and grow more familiar with the world. Give them a new power, let them test said power, and open up the shortcuts. Now the world which was once challenging is easier to navigate across, because not only did they just grow stronger but have knowledge of what they’re dealing with. This is genius, and it’s more impressive they’re able to do this in a 2D game. In Bloodborne or Elden Ring you have structures you can see in the distance. Places you know you’ll visit or walk across at some point. In a 2D game you don’t have this. It’s harder to mentally map out areas, but at least they still give you one. Showing you the lay of the land, so you can have an easier time mapping it all out.  Finding secrets, collectibles, and optional bosses in Hollow Knight has always been fun as sometimes the reward for overcoming it is worthy. Currency does matter and in Dark Souls you use currency to level up, but in Hollow Knight every discovery is not just more currency. Maybe it’s a mask fragment to upgrade your health bar. Ore or in this game Pale Oil to strengthen your blade. A new charm or tool you can experiment with to form different builds. Silksong makes it more worth your while by its crests and unlike the original side quests to partake in.

This is something I will admit Silksong does better than the first game. Hollow Knight did have questlines and a lot of them were very interesting, but figuring out how to progress them or the place you needed to go was tricky. Silksong has questboards you can visit in each town, and you can partake in quests. Whether that’s hunting a monster for the locals, collecting items, finding a trinket for them, etc. Some of these questlines are actually really cool and get you to explore the areas more. Finding secrets you’d otherwise miss. Now I will admit some of these quests aren’t all good and there’s a bit of quantity over quality. Quests that require you to collect random loot drops from enemies aren’t fun, especially the ones that have you farm a specific type that is hard to fight or find. It’s not like Dark Souls 3 where the loot drop percent is in the single digits. It’s like fifty-fifty here and that’s good, but it’s not particularly fun. Otherwise I appreciate having more side quests now. Being given a tab to keep track of them, or read a brief description of the place you need to be. You have a good enough idea on where to work from, but aren’t being held by the hand. It’s great what they were able to come up with. Speaking of which, dear god this game is big. The world of Silksong is a sprawling maze that is a joy to traverse through. It’s vast and full of secrets like I said, but it’s also big. Really big, two times the size of Hallownest. It has I’d say roughly fifteen or more different areas and they’re all varied enough. More so than the original game. You’ll traverse desert cliffs, forests, city streets, ironworks, swamps, sewers, icy mountains, glistening hallways, etc. Each containing their own mechanics and enemy types that match their themes. The amount of content rivals that of Triple A games.

To remind you this is a twenty dollar game, which is expected of an indie game but surprised me at first. It surprised a lot of people in fact to the point it sparked debate. I’ve been seeing the price of indie games go up in recent memory. Some are twenty five dollars and some are thirty dollars. Heck, we’re starting to see indie games cost forty to fifty dollars which is the price of big budget games. I thoroughly believe developers should price their games according to the quality of their work and how much content they’ve made. I have the money to support folks like this and will do so, but at the same time I don’t want indie games to cost as much as Triple A games. That’s why it was shocking to see Hollow Knight: Silksong be charged for twenty dollars, because when you play this game and keep playing it you realize it’s bigger than what you expected. Almost as if we’re robbing the devs of what they truly deserve. Let’s get back to talking about the game. A major selling point for a lot of people is going to be the game’s art style. Hollow Knight uses 2D animation. Every area and background has been handdrawn, and every character and enemy has been animated with crisp movement. It’s like you’re playing an interactive cartoon, and it rules. It is expected of me to say that Silksong is a very beautiful game. Again, areas are quite varied and I love the different colors they used. The forest and swamp are made of different shades of green and teal. The desert canyon is made of tan, red, and orange. The glistening city above shines and sparkles of gold. Animation is smooth and enemies have readable enough attacks and positions to give you a clear idea of what they’re about to do. I say mostly.

This is where we start to dive into the more debatable aspects of the game. Stuff people argued over for a week now and why some of their criticisms are and aren’t valid. Silksong is a lot faster than Hollow Knight. The earliest ability you obtain is the dash, and right when I figured out how it functioned I realized this game would be faster. Hornet is acrobatic. Nimble, elegant, and flips around the world with ease. She strikes quickly, her downward attack is an angled strike that’ll launch her forward, and the healing animation you had to worry about before is faster. Instead of standing still to heal you can do it either on the ground or in air. It’s quick and refills three health dots at once rather than one at a time. The game is faster, and to balance things out Team Cherry also made it a lot harder. Enemies are as fast as you, can dish out numerous attacks within a short period of time, and recover quicker from being stunned. There’s also more enemies in the world that ambush and gang up on you. It’s a lot harder than the original Hollow Knight for better and for worse. A major criticism with Silksong for the last week has not been how crazy these bosses are, kinda. I’m personally fine with how a lot of these bosses function. They were fun to conquer. Learning their attack patterns, figuring out which build and playstyle work, finding openings, and striking them with all I have. I won’t say the bosses or the game itself is unfair, because if it was I wouldn’t have strived for the true ending. At the same time though I wondered if the game was challenging me or pushing my buttons a little too much.

What really makes some of these bosses hard is not their crazy attack patterns. It’s that a lot of them deal two points worth of damage each hit. Not a big problem on paper, but when you look at the problem further you understand why people are arguing about this. You start the game with five hit points. Mask fragments are hidden throughout the world, and you need four to unlock an additional hit point. A majority of these fragments cannot be obtained unless you have a good handful of your traversal abilities, and ten hours in I unlocked one additional hitpoint. It wasn’t hour twenty that I had at least eight hit points. The early game of Silksong is rough, because the bosses that deal two health points worth of damage kick in really on. I don’t fully remember how it was in the original Hollow Knight because I hadn’t touched it since 2020, but I feel like bosses like this didn’t kick in until the mid to late game. Here it’s seven or so hours in and it’s not just the bosses who can do this. Basic enemies and environmental hazards at times can do this too, and this leads to a rapid difficulty spike one fiercer than the original game. What’s also more noticeable now is how many benches require you to pay money to use them. Hollow Knight had these as well, but it wasn’t more than fifty percent of the checkpoints in the game. I spent more currency on stuff in Silksong than Hollow Knight and to some who are struggling with corpse running or finding currency stashes this will be something difficult to manage.

You’re gonna die a lot. That is expected from Hollow Knight at this point, but there are some bosses in this game that require you to run long distances before you can face them again. It’s not as bad as say Dark Souls 1 or Dark Souls 2, but again unlike the original it’s more noticeable. It does help also that some of these bosses have you fight a wave of enemies before you can fight the actual boss. The thing you’re to practice and get good at. Only to die a few minutes in and have to redo the whole process again. My piece of advice is to use skill arts to quickly kill the enemies like the one that attacks multiple times within a small area. Kills them quickly although it uses Silk, but you’ll get it back quickly. The point I’m making is that Silksong is hard. It is a very hard game that requires you to play quickly, utilizes combos and tricks, and think out a chosen build carefully. Which there is enough room for. Despite preferring the charm system of Hollow Knight more, I like what they system here here in Silksong. Crests with different fighting styles, and c slots dictated by color. Each color is a different category, and you understand them as you unlock different charms. One for tools, one for combat charms, and the third for more minor charms like ones for navigation or collecting goods. I’d say there’s less charm now that feels kinda useless. They all feel well worth using as well as the different tools you can use. 

In fact, I encourage you to use tools accordingly as they can make a lot of things easier. I like to rock on with the javelins and buzzsaw. Javelin for dealing with flawing enemies or foes I don’t want to deal with at a distance. Buzzsaw for grounded enemies or enemies in a large group. The bosses that are challenging can become more manageable if you bring the right stuff. Silksong at times reminded me of Sekiro in that it has a playstyle and difficulty curve that is hard to get to terms with, but you do it’s oh so addicting. Using everything you have to cut down a boss more efficiently and quickly. Landing that last blow and standing victorious over the several minutes of endurance and suffering you just embraced. Silksong is harder than Hollow Knight, but Team Cherry has managed to push what the mechanics and movement of their games can handle. It makes me kinda afraid if they ever decide to make a third game, because it’s either they make a character who is too fast or they slow things down which to some people might be a step back in terms of movement and abilities. I hope they make a game about Quirrel. This has nothing to do with the review and he might be canonically dead (in my heart), but I think it be cool.

The last thing I want to touch upon is the story. Soulslikes are often known for how cryptic world building and storytelling is. Often being minimal and told through item descriptions or the logs you come across. Hollow Knight does have those things, but the story and world building is more direct at times. Giving you a better idea of what happened rather than leaving it all to you. I like the approach Dark Souls and Bloodborne have, but I’m starting to develop the opinion not every soulslike needs to do this. In recent memory we’ve been getting more soulslikes with less cryptic lore and storytelling. The Blasphemous games, Nine Sols, Another Crab’s Treasure, Lies of P, Ender Lilies, and Hollow Knight. Games that not only forge identities of their own but prove you don’t always have to be dark or cryptic to build a world. Hollow Knight has a world building that gives you a good idea of what’s going on and does not dump loads of information onto you at once. It’s well paced and presented, and I always loved the themes of Hollow Knight. A long time ago in my essay for the first game I discussed how Hollow Knight delves into theocracy, monarchy, and free will. How the role of a king or god is to offer guidance, principles and advice for people to follow. How their attempt to bring order and give purpose is not always good. That they remove the free will a person has. Blinds them to the truth and reality they live under. Remove all sense of purpose and control to turn them into puppets. Mindless souls, and from this comes the chaos. Corruption and dismay until a society built upon kings or religion crumbles like a cracker. I always thought Hollow Knight was deep and here it is too.

Re-exploring the same themes the original game did. Of rulers who tried to do the best for their people, but make terrible sacrifices that bring upon more harm than good. Going mad with power and developing a literal god complex. Watching society fall apart and you know the drill. I can see some people being upset that Silksong doesn’t try to explore anything new, but I don’t care! This stuff is f*cking awesome and I will forever see this stuff is awesome. It’s deep, analytical, and above all artistic. Games should leave thinking about things. Not throw us into the fire, pat us on the back, and say “Good job, do more of it.” Hollow Knight is art and Silksong is art. As bad as the low points are in this game there was always good Silksong had to offer. A new area, a new discovery, and wondering how much bigger this game can get. I won’t spoil it storywise, but the third act is amazing. It contains the hardest stuff I’ve ever dealt with in a game, but what it changes and adds is jawdropping. Altering how you traverse the world, giving enemies all new attacks, adding new bosses, new questlines, and much more. And it all leads to a true final boss and segment which is the most satisfying trial I’ve ever overcome. Hollow Knight: Silksong is a masterpiece. I don’t love it as much as the original as the original will always have a place in my heart, but it is a tremendous sequel. It is my Game of The Year for 2025, but as I was writing this Supergiant Games announced the 1.0 version of Hades 2 is coming out in a few weeks. Looks like the competition continues to rise near by. I very strongly recommend this game. In the end I am going to give Hollow Knight: Silksong a 10/10 for being incredible.

10/10, Incredible