Review - Hollow Knight: Silksong
"I remain a daughter of Hallownest"
September 4, 2025 - Team Cherry
Metroidvania / Soulslike - Ari Gibson, William Pellen
PC, maCOS, Switch, Switch 2, Xbox One, Xbox Series Consoles, PS4, PS5
Following the events of Hollow Knight, Hornet is mysteriously kidnapped. After breaking free of her captors, she sets out to climb to the top of the Citadel and find out why she was abducted, leading to her learning more about the secrets of her past and family.
Characters, World, and Presentation
The wait is over, and I finally got to play and finish Hollow Knight: Silksong, the highly anticipated sequel to one of my favorite games of the 2010s. Anyone who follows me on social media has seen my rollercoaster of emotions regarding it. So, now that I’ve finished it, I can write down all my thoughts.
First of all, Silksong absolutely nails it in many of the world building and character departments. We have one of the best character ensembles of the year, with memorable encounters and moments. We have a world that is as beautiful and as yet unexplored as its predecessor. Hornet is a great protagonist, adding more depth after we got to know her in Hollow Knight. There’s a Clint Eastwood silent badass personality to her, and now and then she’ll drop some bangers during conversations that show she’s not one to mess with. I also feel that she has an arc where she transitions from a pessimistic type to an optimistic, badass character willing to do what needs to be done to prevent further sacrifices by the time we reach Act 3.
Other memorable characters include Lace, a rival of sorts, who has a carefree attitude no matter the situation. The flea circus has some amusing encounters, including one that becomes a bit of a Peeping Tom and pays for it. Shakra, who provides maps for a price, gives you a sigh of relief for the help every time you find her in a new area. Grindle, a thief who quickly becomes a nuisance. Sir Garmond and his steed Zaza are always fun to run into. Lastly, but not least, is the MVP of the game, Sherma, whose chant has become infamous already, but also has a really interesting character arc that is similar to someone going through the stages of a test of her faith.
The presentation of Silksong is gorgeous. Everything is hand drawn, and the small animations, even ones you have to pay attention to or squint, are out of this world. There are areas with small ants that are just passing, and if you drop thumbtacks or enemy shells, they’ll actually start to take them away. When you get the ability to play music, playing it around characters or even enemies can trigger sequences and songs. It’s all wrapped up in a beautiful world, that gives you the feeling of moving through an animated film. It’s a world with charm, danger, and various areas to explore.
Gameplay, Design, and Sound
The Silksong gameplay experience is similar to Hollow Knight, a mix of soulslike difficulty in a metroidvania genre. The metroidvania exploration is my favorite thing about the game. The sense of discovery and unlocking new abilities that help you during those explorations is as good as I found them to be in Hollow Knight. The world design is easier to navigate, as Team Cherry seems to have taken to heart some gamers’ complaints about getting lost easily in its predecessor. As for the runbacks and backtracking that tend to annoy even some fans of the genre? Well, they have the Bell Beast, a boss that becomes a pet-like ally that can help transport you around the map at certain stations in each area. Put simply, this game gets the exploration part of the metroidvania formula in the best way possible, and that’s going to be the major driver in keeping you playing.
The combat is more mixed in my opinion. For the most part, it’s going to be similar to the combat employed by the Knight, but there are subtle differences. Until you get a crest to change it, you’ll have a downward slash in a side angle, which I quickly changed once I had the chance because I didn’t like it one bit. You’ll have silk that you slowly regenerate every time you slash at an enemy, and can either use to do a special attack or heal. During more challenging encounters, you’ll have to balance whether it makes more sense to save silk to heal or use your special. You also have access to tools, which became a lifesaver in many of the hardest fights for me. Unfortunately, they don’t last long, and you have to farm shards to use them. Outside of that, you’ll focus on learning enemy attack patterns and dodging, similar to soulslike combat, just in a 2D space. You also do have the chance to parry, but I did not like the parry system, as it doesn’t really let you do damage back.
The sound design for Silksong is awards winning type stuff. The soundtrack joins the already impressive list of amazing soundtracks of the year, alongside South of Midnight and Expedition 33. The characters’ grunts and voices have a charm that adds to their personality, and the sounds of the world and enemies enhance the experience as well. The music for the bosses is the best part of the sound design, which I’m always a sucker for. You can see the careful planning and thought that have gone into every detail and interaction with the sound. Christopher Larkin and the entire sound team should be proud of the work they did.
Negatives
Well… we come to what is going to be a bit of a rant, and in my opinion, an unfortunate one as it does bog down what is a game that should be a contender for my favorite game of the year. The reason I have a love-hate relationship with this game is that it’s one of the most inaccessibl games I have ever played. Don’t get me wrong, soulslike games have accessibility problems in getting new gamers because it takes a specific type of person to play those games. You need to be patient, attentive to enemy patterns, and understand you are going to die a lot. However, if you really want to push yourself and you’re okay overleveling yourself, you can move past it and finish those games. I’m not going to call myself the greatest gamer ever. I tend to struggle with soulslikes, but I love the world, lore, and exploring so much that I push myself to beat them. I have nearly 100% completed Sekiro, a game many use as a feather in their cap for beating challenging games. So, I’m not against a good challenge, but there is such a thing as cheap, no matter what the “get good” toxic part of the community may tell you. Quite frankly, I think this game is a little cheaper than just about challenge.
Where do I start? Well, let’s start with the runback. Worse than dealing with a tough boss, Team Cherry thought it would be fun to make you do ridiculous runbacks back to the boss by placing your resting bench far away. Some of these runbacks are admittedly not too bad, but some are god awful and suck away all the motivation you have to deal with the already hard boss you’re trying to take down. Let’s talk about the flying enemies, who I would argue are just a straight up broken design, as they fly away from you and barely give you any chance to hit them, while they throw a bunch of attacks at you. I refuse to debate here with this, they are broken. What about the fact that when you take damage, it’s two health skulls that get taken away… so why did they even do health skulls if the enemies do that much damage? How about the environmental damage, which is fantastic when you’re trying to do a god awful platforming challenge that feels like the developers are laughing at the idea of you being in pain.
Now I know what you’re saying. Team Cherry said in an interview that you can skip or come back to bosses and focus on upgrading. The problem is that those upgrades help with exploration, but outside of finding an awesome tool or a needle damage upgrade, those upgrades barely help in dealing with the bosses. Oh yes… the bosses… the ones who tend to be challenging but fair, but always seem to add at least one cheap thing that does nothing to make it a fun experience at all. For every Cogwork Dancers or Lace, you’ll deal with the cheapness of Savage Beastfly or Sister Splitter, who warp other enemies constantly at you while dropping other environmental dangers to attack you, and remember every hit takes two skulls out of you. Got a sensory problem? Don’t worry, because Team Cherry wants to make you dizzy by spamming the screen with so much that your eyes can’t keep up to dodge and study attack patterns.
Lastly, but definitely not least, let’s talk about the gotcha moments. I see a bench in an area that practically has no benches and poisons you and has a bunch of f***** flying enemies, but let’s laugh as the player falls down to the poison to get wrapped in maggots that prevent you from healing now. It feels like Team Cherry is sitting there enjoying you in torture, laughing at you. Needlessly difficult is the term I’ve come up with for this game. It’s not that the game is hard, I’m okay with that (pause for those with certain humor). It’s that the developers are making it just to be hard for hard’s sake (again a pause). It really is a shame, because I came close many times to giving up, straight up uninstalling the game once. But, I know this is an important game, and I’ll admit I let FOMO get in my head so I can say I was part of it on social media. Quite frankly, I’m so mad at how ridiculous it got that I most likely will not be playing Team Cherry’s next game unless I hear it’s not similar to this.
You read that recommendation right, I both recommend and do not recommend this game. I think this is the most conflicted I have ever felt about a video game, possibly in my entire life so far. If I had a happiness meter, it would be at mind-blowing times, generally at happy or really happy, and then just straight up angry or a meh feeling at other times. Can I recommend this game? Ultimately, if you played Hollow Knight, which I admit is a challenging game in itself, and you liked harder games like Sekiro or Nioh, I would recommend it. If you did not want those games, or stay away from soulslikes? Stay as far away as possible from this one.
What bothers me the most, however, is that it’s a real shame I feel as angry as I do about it. In any other world, this would be a leading contender to be my game of the year. It’s my genre, my type of world, my type of characters, my type of gameplay. Yet, I can’t sit here and not admit that, in the end, this felt more like an accomplishment than a great experience or something I truly enjoyed. It really is the most love-hate relationship I’ve had with any piece of media or art. I’ll remember it for its exploration and characters, but to the fights and runbacks, I say go to Hell and stay there.
Your review is probably the most balanced I've read of Silksong. I have not played it and have decided I'm fine with that - I've heard too much about the difficulty. But too many reviews I've read have always tried to brush past the difficulty and aggravating choices the game makes, whereas you make it clear that some people with love it, but not everyone. It was a great read.