The very long awaited sequel to Team Cherry's Indie darling Hollow knight, has finally arrived after 6 years of active development! It is actually an understatement for how much people have been clamoring for this game. Almost every Nintendo Direct after its original announcement, there were always a dozen of people hoping that "this has to be the one that announces its release date!" Anytime there was a stage show or other press conference news concerning indie games, people were actively speculating when the game finally come out.
It became a bit a of a yearly meme to talk about its release date because Team Cherry kept their silence and cards close to their heart. It came as a big surprise at the reveal of Nintendo Switch 2 showcase direct that Silksong got confirmed to get released this year. It wasn't until near the end of August that Team Cherry themselves, through a special trailer, finally revealed the release date.
I am gonna be honest reader. I never beat the original Hollow Knight. It wasn't for any particular reason. I knew I was playing a good game and I was enjoying it fine, but at some point I started to really get lost as the world expanded and you were expected to remember a lot more than I personally could really handle. That being said, I was still so intrigued by Silksong that I wanted to give it a proper chance. I am glad I did. Silksong has not only improved on nearly every aspect from the original but also made a statement to the Industry at large what a truly passionate team of developers can achieve.
Lets finally dive right into it, shall we.
Story:
At the very start, we see that our heroine Hornet has been captured and brought to a mysterious place. A lone butterfly lands on her cage, releasing the runes keep her imprisoned, and she unleashes her silk threads all around her to free herself. However, she destroys the bridge and falls far down into the caverns.
She wakes up barely alive from the fall and starts finding her way upwards to seek the truth of her situation.
In fact, unless you read the description of the game's page on steam or are familiar with the previous game, you don't actually learn who you're controlling until she interacts with a friendly bug for the first time. Compared to the knight from the first game, Hornet is talkative and not afraid to state her opinions boldly. Shortly after leaving the starting cavern, you learn that you have arrived at the fallen kingdom of Pharloom ,where droves of pilgrims are on a holy journey to get to the upper part of the kingdom. However, you learn quickly that this kingdom is haunted and a lot of the pilgrims have lost their senses fully and become hostile. Hornet is convinced she will find her answers at the top of this Kingdom and starts her long journey.
Most of this games story is told by you interacting with the different friendly, or rather, unhostile bugs you find around Pharloom. In fact, it is a good idea to talk to most of them several times not only for context but to also find side quests that can reward you with powerful tools (more on that in a bit). Silksong doesn't only use these interactions to tell the story; the whole world has been handcrafted to give you an eerie sense that something has gone terrible wrong with this kingdom, and this is a very dangerous journey for any of the pilgrims to make.
I would love to go into more detail, but honestly, reader, I shouldn't say more because a lot of the enjoyment from this game comes from exploring and finding all the different areas and different NPC interactions by yourself. There are so many hidden details you can fully miss out on that you would have never known before. Let me give you one example: at a later part of the game you get the ability to open special doors in a particular way. This same ability you can use in several places and even on other NPC's. More then that I wont spoil, ha ha.
However, the more you interact with bugs, the more you learn about Hornet herself. I got the impression that she isn't only stoic, noble, and kind but also very blunt and a "no-nonsense" type of character. She also doesn't fight unnecessarily against opponents unless they are hostile first. The story has been, in my humble opinion, perfectly blended with the gameplay and world-building itself. Not only does the world feel hostile and natural, but also very alive.
Now comes the burning question: "Do I have to have played Hollow Knight to understand and enjoy Silksong?" Simple answer: No. The longer answer: Maybe? Obviously there are a lot of homage and different callbacks to the first game, but not to the point that you NEED to play it to understand any of it. However, some of Hornet's characterization did happen in the first release, but in my humble opinion, they reintroduce her well in the game. However, the game does imagine you having picked up some skills from the first game, and that is mostly showcased in the difficulty.
She wakes up barely alive from the fall and starts finding her way upwards to seek the truth of her situation.
In fact, unless you read the description of the game's page on steam or are familiar with the previous game, you don't actually learn who you're controlling until she interacts with a friendly bug for the first time. Compared to the knight from the first game, Hornet is talkative and not afraid to state her opinions boldly. Shortly after leaving the starting cavern, you learn that you have arrived at the fallen kingdom of Pharloom ,where droves of pilgrims are on a holy journey to get to the upper part of the kingdom. However, you learn quickly that this kingdom is haunted and a lot of the pilgrims have lost their senses fully and become hostile. Hornet is convinced she will find her answers at the top of this Kingdom and starts her long journey.
Most of this games story is told by you interacting with the different friendly, or rather, unhostile bugs you find around Pharloom. In fact, it is a good idea to talk to most of them several times not only for context but to also find side quests that can reward you with powerful tools (more on that in a bit). Silksong doesn't only use these interactions to tell the story; the whole world has been handcrafted to give you an eerie sense that something has gone terrible wrong with this kingdom, and this is a very dangerous journey for any of the pilgrims to make.
I would love to go into more detail, but honestly, reader, I shouldn't say more because a lot of the enjoyment from this game comes from exploring and finding all the different areas and different NPC interactions by yourself. There are so many hidden details you can fully miss out on that you would have never known before. Let me give you one example: at a later part of the game you get the ability to open special doors in a particular way. This same ability you can use in several places and even on other NPC's. More then that I wont spoil, ha ha.
However, the more you interact with bugs, the more you learn about Hornet herself. I got the impression that she isn't only stoic, noble, and kind but also very blunt and a "no-nonsense" type of character. She also doesn't fight unnecessarily against opponents unless they are hostile first. The story has been, in my humble opinion, perfectly blended with the gameplay and world-building itself. Not only does the world feel hostile and natural, but also very alive.
Now comes the burning question: "Do I have to have played Hollow Knight to understand and enjoy Silksong?" Simple answer: No. The longer answer: Maybe? Obviously there are a lot of homage and different callbacks to the first game, but not to the point that you NEED to play it to understand any of it. However, some of Hornet's characterization did happen in the first release, but in my humble opinion, they reintroduce her well in the game. However, the game does imagine you having picked up some skills from the first game, and that is mostly showcased in the difficulty.
Gameplay:
How I would describe Silksong for those that haven't played the original Hollow Knight is a Metroid meets Dark Souls exploration action platformer. The game is brutally difficult for those not prepared for platforming, and enemies that will test your reaction time, and pattern recognition.
Silksong starts out simple enough by teaching you all the controls in the starting area. As Hornet you have a plethora of moves you can do both against enemies, and platforming. You can attack on all directions and, while in the air, do a downward strike that bounces of both enemies, and obstacles like spikes. As you progress, you'll unlock the ability to dash and run fairly early on. This ability heavily changes your approach to not only combat but also platforming, since now you have the ability to air dash similar to the first Hollow Knight.
Also different from the first game is how you heal yourself. As you keep hitting enemies, your Silk gauge will fill up overtime, and after getting it to halfway point, you can do a healing animation that will give you back three masks worth of health. However, be careful of your timing! If you get hit while healing, you wont only loose out on the heal and waste silk, but you will take the full damage from the attack! Also, as you kill enemies, they will usually drop both shards and rosaries, which are both needed for upgrades and the various shops in the game.
I could go into detail how many different movement tools you'll get throughout the playthrough, but in my humble opinion, I don't want to spoil the fun of exploration and learning these tools yourself. What I will say, though, is that the more tools you unlock, the more fluid and fun exploration becomes. As you learn, and improve your skills controlling Hornet, it will feel amazing when you start to pull off those harder platforming challenges in a fluid motion! It's hard to explain in words, but, it just "feels right" when you control Hornet. So when you inevitably die to either enemies or the world itself, it doesn't feel unfair because of how smooth the controls are.
Controlling Hornet is half the fun; the other is the world design itself. Silksong is a Metroidvania game, with a huge world to explore. However, unlike it's inspirations, you can get to areas very early in the game by just finding hidden shortcuts or performing a fairly hard platforming trick before you have the ability to make the challenge easy. In fact, you could get to the very end of the game in a few hours with just a few abilities; there is even a whole achievement for it!
The world allows you to go pretty much anywhere you want just by exploring and finding hidden walls (which there are a lot of in the game). For me personally, this feel genuinely like an adventure, and no two players will have the same approach on their first playthrough. For example, my fellow writer Ben, who has also been playing the game (and shared his first impressions here), and in his first few hours he got so sidetracked that he got the dashing ability far later than I did, ha ha.
If an area feels too hard to tackle now, the game incentivizes you to make a choice: tackling the challenge head-on, or going elsewhere to figure out a better approach later. Personally I went "gunz blazing," so to speak, and tackled anything I could as soon as I saw it. . . . Even though some areas could have definitely been easier if I got other abilities or powers first.
Speaking of difficulty, Silksong has gotten a lot of praise and criticism for it's challenging combat and platforming. What do I think about it? I would say it is more complicated than what most say. Don't get me wrong, this is a challenging game, and there will be certain challenges or bosses that will most likely make you pull your hair out.
However, Silksong doesn't leave you in the dust so to speak. One of Hornets other main tools is her crest(s) that she can find throughout the world and tools to go alongside it. What Crests do is change her needle attacks and how many tools or equipment she can carry at once. The Hunter crest, which you start with can be a bit difficult to get used to due to the diagonally downward air strike. However, you can find a crest called The Wanderers early on, which feels similar to the knight's move set from the first game and even has the same kind of downward strike! Or you could find my personal favorite called The Reaper, which sacrifices speed for a lot more reach, which in turn allows you to "poke and run," so to speak ha ha.
Not only do these Crests add a lot of variety to your playstyle(s), but they change how you approach combat, and platforming. In each crest, there is a certain amount of slots you can equip defensive, utility tools and offensive sub-weapons. For example: Do you think the healing takes too long? You can get a tool that speeds that up. Are you poor? You can get a tool that increases the amount of rosaries or shards the enemies drop, or makes you into a magnet so it is easier to collect them. Want to be faster? There is a tool that allows you to spend silk to sprint even faster. There is a lot of ways you can change your playstyle to make up for your own weaknesses as a player. As said, I personally went with a defensive playstyle with Reaper that allowed safer poking, while another friend of mine went aggressive style with Wanderer.
And that's not to mention the sub-weapons themselves! You start fairly early on with simple throwing knives that don't do much damage, but you get a lot of them, and they are cheap to make more of. As you progress in the game, you'll unlock a plethora of different sub-weapons! You can even unlock a tool that even makes them poisoned! Or a Crest fully dedicated to use a lot of sub-weapons! My personal favorite is a sub-weapon you can find in an earlier and harder area in the game, called the "Curve Claw." It works like a boomerang and hits enemies multiple times when it is about to come back!
Silksong wants you to experiment with all of these and find not only your preferred playstyle but also different setups for different challenges. More often than not, there is a tool that can help you either with combat or with platforming. It is honestly what makes the game a lot of fun, especially when you find seemingly hard challenges, and with only some thinking with your noggin, can trivialize them.
Quite a lot to take in, aye? I haven't even scratched the surface of all the hidden details of this game. There is so much depth, secret interactions, and so many ways to get around, that it would take me several pages to explain it all. So I won't. Finding these secrets by yourself is another layer of fun with Silksong, and I wouldn't want to rob you, dear reader, from discovering them yourself.
Silksong starts out simple enough by teaching you all the controls in the starting area. As Hornet you have a plethora of moves you can do both against enemies, and platforming. You can attack on all directions and, while in the air, do a downward strike that bounces of both enemies, and obstacles like spikes. As you progress, you'll unlock the ability to dash and run fairly early on. This ability heavily changes your approach to not only combat but also platforming, since now you have the ability to air dash similar to the first Hollow Knight.
Also different from the first game is how you heal yourself. As you keep hitting enemies, your Silk gauge will fill up overtime, and after getting it to halfway point, you can do a healing animation that will give you back three masks worth of health. However, be careful of your timing! If you get hit while healing, you wont only loose out on the heal and waste silk, but you will take the full damage from the attack! Also, as you kill enemies, they will usually drop both shards and rosaries, which are both needed for upgrades and the various shops in the game.
I could go into detail how many different movement tools you'll get throughout the playthrough, but in my humble opinion, I don't want to spoil the fun of exploration and learning these tools yourself. What I will say, though, is that the more tools you unlock, the more fluid and fun exploration becomes. As you learn, and improve your skills controlling Hornet, it will feel amazing when you start to pull off those harder platforming challenges in a fluid motion! It's hard to explain in words, but, it just "feels right" when you control Hornet. So when you inevitably die to either enemies or the world itself, it doesn't feel unfair because of how smooth the controls are.
Controlling Hornet is half the fun; the other is the world design itself. Silksong is a Metroidvania game, with a huge world to explore. However, unlike it's inspirations, you can get to areas very early in the game by just finding hidden shortcuts or performing a fairly hard platforming trick before you have the ability to make the challenge easy. In fact, you could get to the very end of the game in a few hours with just a few abilities; there is even a whole achievement for it!
The world allows you to go pretty much anywhere you want just by exploring and finding hidden walls (which there are a lot of in the game). For me personally, this feel genuinely like an adventure, and no two players will have the same approach on their first playthrough. For example, my fellow writer Ben, who has also been playing the game (and shared his first impressions here), and in his first few hours he got so sidetracked that he got the dashing ability far later than I did, ha ha.
If an area feels too hard to tackle now, the game incentivizes you to make a choice: tackling the challenge head-on, or going elsewhere to figure out a better approach later. Personally I went "gunz blazing," so to speak, and tackled anything I could as soon as I saw it. . . . Even though some areas could have definitely been easier if I got other abilities or powers first.
Speaking of difficulty, Silksong has gotten a lot of praise and criticism for it's challenging combat and platforming. What do I think about it? I would say it is more complicated than what most say. Don't get me wrong, this is a challenging game, and there will be certain challenges or bosses that will most likely make you pull your hair out.
However, Silksong doesn't leave you in the dust so to speak. One of Hornets other main tools is her crest(s) that she can find throughout the world and tools to go alongside it. What Crests do is change her needle attacks and how many tools or equipment she can carry at once. The Hunter crest, which you start with can be a bit difficult to get used to due to the diagonally downward air strike. However, you can find a crest called The Wanderers early on, which feels similar to the knight's move set from the first game and even has the same kind of downward strike! Or you could find my personal favorite called The Reaper, which sacrifices speed for a lot more reach, which in turn allows you to "poke and run," so to speak ha ha.
Not only do these Crests add a lot of variety to your playstyle(s), but they change how you approach combat, and platforming. In each crest, there is a certain amount of slots you can equip defensive, utility tools and offensive sub-weapons. For example: Do you think the healing takes too long? You can get a tool that speeds that up. Are you poor? You can get a tool that increases the amount of rosaries or shards the enemies drop, or makes you into a magnet so it is easier to collect them. Want to be faster? There is a tool that allows you to spend silk to sprint even faster. There is a lot of ways you can change your playstyle to make up for your own weaknesses as a player. As said, I personally went with a defensive playstyle with Reaper that allowed safer poking, while another friend of mine went aggressive style with Wanderer.
And that's not to mention the sub-weapons themselves! You start fairly early on with simple throwing knives that don't do much damage, but you get a lot of them, and they are cheap to make more of. As you progress in the game, you'll unlock a plethora of different sub-weapons! You can even unlock a tool that even makes them poisoned! Or a Crest fully dedicated to use a lot of sub-weapons! My personal favorite is a sub-weapon you can find in an earlier and harder area in the game, called the "Curve Claw." It works like a boomerang and hits enemies multiple times when it is about to come back!
Silksong wants you to experiment with all of these and find not only your preferred playstyle but also different setups for different challenges. More often than not, there is a tool that can help you either with combat or with platforming. It is honestly what makes the game a lot of fun, especially when you find seemingly hard challenges, and with only some thinking with your noggin, can trivialize them.
Quite a lot to take in, aye? I haven't even scratched the surface of all the hidden details of this game. There is so much depth, secret interactions, and so many ways to get around, that it would take me several pages to explain it all. So I won't. Finding these secrets by yourself is another layer of fun with Silksong, and I wouldn't want to rob you, dear reader, from discovering them yourself.
Pros and Cons:
To be honest, reader, there aren't that many, if any, cons to speak about. Silksong is a game that knows exactly what it wants to be, and has been polished to a very high standard that many games wont be able to meet. Of course, there is a few caveats I will mention since no game is perfect, but before that, lets start with the pros, shall we.
Silksong is one of the most polished games I have played in years. Awesome hand drawn 2D art (which sadly is a niche these days), a very lovely music score made by Christopher Larkin, a lot of variety in each area you gain access to and bosses (no two bosses are the same in this game), and most important of all, controlling Hornet not only is really fun but it is rewarding to master. The game may beat you to a pulp, but every time you fall, you will have that itch on your back saying, "just one more try! This time I will succeed!" (I have lost sleep because of that itch haha).
It is hard to know what more I can say without going into spoiler territory, to be honest. Just know this reader: Silksong isn't a small game, but it never feels like it overstays it's welcome either. It is a game that not only wants to challenge you, but also awaken a hunger to explore and improve yourself!
Silksong is one of the most polished games I have played in years. Awesome hand drawn 2D art (which sadly is a niche these days), a very lovely music score made by Christopher Larkin, a lot of variety in each area you gain access to and bosses (no two bosses are the same in this game), and most important of all, controlling Hornet not only is really fun but it is rewarding to master. The game may beat you to a pulp, but every time you fall, you will have that itch on your back saying, "just one more try! This time I will succeed!" (I have lost sleep because of that itch haha).
It is hard to know what more I can say without going into spoiler territory, to be honest. Just know this reader: Silksong isn't a small game, but it never feels like it overstays it's welcome either. It is a game that not only wants to challenge you, but also awaken a hunger to explore and improve yourself!
I make it sound like it is a perfect game, but there are a few caveats to consider, if you want to give this game a chance yourself. As stated earlier, Silksong is a brutal game. Compared to the Knight from the first game, Hornet more often than not, takes two whole masks worth of damage from almost every source in the game, even floor traps! It is one thing if the bosses do this, but even regular enemies hit hard. This isn't a con per se, because it wont affect my rating of the game negatively. However, it feels like an odd design choice; even the developers themselves feel like they knew it was a bit odd.
For example, I did say that some floor traps will take away two whole masks' worth of health, but in some cases, they suddenly don't do that. In particular, in fairly hard platforming sections. Don't get me wrong, I am happy that is the case! It would have been more than frustrating of an experience if it wasn't so, but that begs the question: why the inconsistency? Again, it is not really a con, just why couldn't this have been the case in most places?
Then we come to the most frustrating part of the experience, which has both it's defenders and critics: the Death run. What is a death run? Simply put, when you die in Silksong, you lose all of your rosaries, and leave behind a silk cocoon that is holding them. If you die again before getting that cocoon back, you will lose all rosaries in it forever. There are ways to mitigate that, but that isn't the frustrating part. What makes it frustrating is that you respawn at the last bench where you rested. Usually, you can find shortcuts and benches nearer a boss, which helps you get around the death run. However, there are quite a few instances in Silksong where the whole run back to the boss can take several minutes depending on your skill, sometimes with hard to dodge enemies, too.
Personally, I would have wanted it to be a fairly consistent thing with benches closer to the bosses, but that doesn't diminish my enjoyment of the game or what kind of rating I want to give it. That being said, I am not a big fan of not having a checkpoint before a boss because it is not fun to run through a gauntlet of enemies or challenges you have already cleared before several times in a row.
For example, I did say that some floor traps will take away two whole masks' worth of health, but in some cases, they suddenly don't do that. In particular, in fairly hard platforming sections. Don't get me wrong, I am happy that is the case! It would have been more than frustrating of an experience if it wasn't so, but that begs the question: why the inconsistency? Again, it is not really a con, just why couldn't this have been the case in most places?
Then we come to the most frustrating part of the experience, which has both it's defenders and critics: the Death run. What is a death run? Simply put, when you die in Silksong, you lose all of your rosaries, and leave behind a silk cocoon that is holding them. If you die again before getting that cocoon back, you will lose all rosaries in it forever. There are ways to mitigate that, but that isn't the frustrating part. What makes it frustrating is that you respawn at the last bench where you rested. Usually, you can find shortcuts and benches nearer a boss, which helps you get around the death run. However, there are quite a few instances in Silksong where the whole run back to the boss can take several minutes depending on your skill, sometimes with hard to dodge enemies, too.
Personally, I would have wanted it to be a fairly consistent thing with benches closer to the bosses, but that doesn't diminish my enjoyment of the game or what kind of rating I want to give it. That being said, I am not a big fan of not having a checkpoint before a boss because it is not fun to run through a gauntlet of enemies or challenges you have already cleared before several times in a row.
Closing Thoughts:
At the end of the day, Hollow Knight: Silksong is a heavily polished game made by passionate developers that not only love games, but also love the players of their games. Silksong was made with that in mind as a love letter to the fans of Hollow Knight.
However, even as someone who had a harder time with the first game, the sequel has improved in pretty much every single area compared to the predecessor and managed to convert me into a fan of the series. I love the story, I love the gameplay, I love the music, and I love the characters. What I don't love is those few frustrating moments of really difficult platforming or bosses where I ask the developers, "what masochist designed this gauntlet!?" But I digress, ha ha, I still give it another shot and eventually beat it.
Honestly, for how criminally low price Team Cherry is asking for the game ($20 or 19.99 Euros), it is clear that the developers have made a statement with this game to the whole industry. Gaming is art and gaming shouldn't be a premium only, and should be a fully functioning, well polished experience from start to finish. You reader, might not enjoy the game for its difficulty, but for me, it respects my time, and wants me to improve. It doesn't hold my hand but rather guides me to seek mastery. Isn't that what makes games fun? Silksong reminds me and many others how much fun a game used to be. . . I am glad that there exists developers who also remembers those time.
If it wasn't clear enough, I do believe this is an essential experience for all kinds of gamers to give a chance at least once.
However, even as someone who had a harder time with the first game, the sequel has improved in pretty much every single area compared to the predecessor and managed to convert me into a fan of the series. I love the story, I love the gameplay, I love the music, and I love the characters. What I don't love is those few frustrating moments of really difficult platforming or bosses where I ask the developers, "what masochist designed this gauntlet!?" But I digress, ha ha, I still give it another shot and eventually beat it.
Honestly, for how criminally low price Team Cherry is asking for the game ($20 or 19.99 Euros), it is clear that the developers have made a statement with this game to the whole industry. Gaming is art and gaming shouldn't be a premium only, and should be a fully functioning, well polished experience from start to finish. You reader, might not enjoy the game for its difficulty, but for me, it respects my time, and wants me to improve. It doesn't hold my hand but rather guides me to seek mastery. Isn't that what makes games fun? Silksong reminds me and many others how much fun a game used to be. . . I am glad that there exists developers who also remembers those time.
If it wasn't clear enough, I do believe this is an essential experience for all kinds of gamers to give a chance at least once.
VERDICT: Essential
Reviewed on PC
Reviewed on PC
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