Hollow Knight: Silksong Review

An uncompromising vision, Hollow Knight: Silksong intends to surpass its predecessor in both gameplay and difficulty. A new array of tools, locations, and challenging enemies make for a compelling package at twenty dollars. But does Silksong stick the landing with spider grace or do controversial design decisions cut its thread short?

The original Hollow Knight is an indie darling. Praised for taking Dark Souls art design and marrying it to the metroidvania formula, it created a world that felt unbelievably lived in. Enchanting forests, crystal caves, and brooding fallen cities, each of them told a story before you ever saw your first boss. It gives me great happiness to say Silksong still has the same magic that took people’s breath away back in 2017.

Silksong begins with Hornet, fan favorite character and ally from the original Hollow Knight. She finds herself captured by bugs and far away from home, when a mysterious white butterfly frees her from magical bindings. Hornet quickly cracks open her cage, sending her tumbling all the way down this foreign kingdom’s deepest recesses. 
 

When she awakes, Hornet notices she has been greatly weakened by the fall, as is metroidvania tradition (Gotta get your powers back Samus). This is where your journey begins. You are introduced to a deceptively cute world, filled with bugs, some friend others foe. While you the player might be a stranger to this world, Hornet is a grizzled veteran. Despite being new to Pharloom she has seen combat and is determined to discover the meaning behind her capture. 

Silksong, much like the original Hollow Knight, tells its story the Fromsoft way. Which is to say more show, less tell. It asks you to read the room, sometimes even asks you to do actual reading and look into a lore tab or two in the hunter’s journal for juicy world building. You still interact with a sizable cast of characters, but they will only give you peeks into the great kingdom of Pharloom’s storied past. The rest is up to you to discover. 
 

As you fill in the blanks you’ll notice Silksong is ultimately a story about family and heritage. The responsibility and expectations that come from those before you. How their will can impose on the next generation, for better or for worse. Yet it is ultimately one of choice as well. A freedom to decide and not be defined by your roots, but instead by your beliefs. Whether that's the dogmatic faith of the Citadel or Hornet’s desire for a better world, free from oppressive gods. 

Silksong’s environments ooze personality and sometimes ooze poison. They range from everything between forests, deserts, swamps, and gilded cities. A personal favorite is the Citadel. A golden castle found in Act 2 which appears to trace its lineage to Lyndell from Elden Ring and a Hive City from Warhammer 40k. The environmental story telling in these areas are rich, each subtly informing you of a vast ecosystem and the kinds of denizens calling these places home. Careful to not be lulled into a false sense of security by the beauty of these levels and their equally impactful tracks. 

You will become well acquainted with these songs throughout your journey and there is a solid amount of variety. Orchestral choirs fit for a Souls boss will fill your ears as you desperately try to dodge a boss’s swing. The bench theme will offer a somber respite after a recent crushing death, while others may fall in love with the calming themes of Moss Grotto or the Sands of Karak. No matter where you are in your journey, the music is hand crafted to immerse you in these worlds. It also has a delightful amount of string instruments, fitting considering the game's main themes.

Combat is where Silksong truly shines.
 

The original Hollow Knight followed a simple formula for power progression -Explore the world and find power in the form of new abilities and items. Silksong follows the same rules, but power progression has more choice than ever before. For starters, you are not stuck with a single moveset, but instead provided multiple in the form of “crests”. Each crest comes with a different moveset to master and a special ability. Reaper crest for instance lets you harvest more “soul” from your enemies, the major resource that powers your abilities and healing. 
 

Tools are a new addition to the series. These gadgets come in red, blue, and yellow. Red is where you’ll see things like autonomous seeking drones, throwing knives, and placeable spikes like something out of Home Alone. Blue is about the defensive, where trinkets may protect you while healing or give you a higher level of fire resistance. Yellow is all about utility. Items can increase the speed of your sprint, allow for higher amounts of currency drops from enemies, or simply allow you to wall latch indefinitely. 

Don’t let the straight forward nature of these items fool you. They can save you in a pinch and be the difference between a boss clear or a return to the bench. Once you’ve mastered their strengths and weaknesses, you’ll be left feeling like a monstrous hybrid between Batman and Spiderman. 

Silksong is not afraid to provide power to those who seek it, but the same hand that feeds will be the one to strike you down. Some boss fights will be barely a challenge, while others contain difficulty spikes forcing you to adapt or suffer a quick death. It is exhilarating to defeat a challenging boss, but strain can be sensed in how certain fights are designed. 
    

As you progress through the game you will find frustrating encounters whose challenge is intertwined with artificial difficulty sliders. Some bosses are fashionably late, choosing to let their minions wear you down before they ever show their face (Looking at you Groal). Others will summon minions mid battle as another variable to juggle in an otherwise fun fight. This is all before you even take into account boss runbacks. Some will argue a runback is a fair punishment and provides a way to ponder on your mistakes, maybe even come up with a new strategy to take on the boss. To those people I say this: A runback might as well be a tedious, playable loading screen. 

Silksong is a game that at times can feel mean. Enemies do multiple hearts of damage and may make your newly unlocked mask feel useless. A bench may fill your eyes with hope, only for it to require rosaries you don’t have or worse -not be a real bench at all. But it would be unfair to assume Silksong’s challenge is purely mean spirited with no fun factor at all. Many bossfights are genuine treats when they don’t rely on artificial difficulty to bulk up their fights. Bosses like Trobbio and Cogwork Dancers for instance are as much beautiful presentations as they are duels to the death. Later bosses, such as those in Act 3, are heart pounding encounters in more ways than one. 

By this point it is no secret Silksong contains three acts, the final one being unlocked through a series of required tasks. 

Wishes are another new addition to the series and while some may compare them to quests, they are more akin to bounties in an MMO. Instead of being multi step journeys telling you something about the world or a character, they give you the equivalent of killing X enemy Y times for Z drop. These are quite frankly boring. Some are especially guilty of lazy design, such as the silver bell quest -a quest which requires you to find 8 bells in a hidden area. An area I might mention, where the drop is completely RNG based and has very little player input. It almost feels designed to waste your time. 

At times Silksong feels unconfident in itself. It pads the time between Act 2 and Act 3 with wishes that feel at best bearable and at their worst unfun. It's as if Team Cherry was worried about not providing enough content and believed force feeding you vegetables before dessert (Act 3) was a good way to alleviate this fear. A strange decision considering the sheer size of the playable map compared to the first game. 

This combined with a lack of guidance can lead many to simply look up a guide on how to unlock act 3, rather than submitting themselves to doing every single fetch quest.

Silksong is ultimately a complete package. Brimming with content at a twenty dollar price tag it takes its seat among other metroidvania greats, but does not quite take the crown. Nonetheless it is a masterclass in environmental story telling with music you will find yourself remembering far after and blood pumping combat. Held back only by aged design decisions, it is a game that will be looked fondly upon in the future despite its flaws. 
    

 Hollow Knight: Silksong is an 8/10. 
 

A game for those who love metroidvanias and perhaps a bit of masochism.