In 2017, Hollow Knight quickly became a standout in indie gaming and gained a large, devoted following. Originally planned as DLC, Hollow Knight: Silksong gradually grew beyond the scope of an expansion, and Team Cherry announced it as a full-fledged game in 2019. With each passing month, fans grew increasingly eager to sink their teeth into another epic Metroidvania, but the wait proved longer than anyone expected, finally releasing in 2025.
Silksong focuses on an early-game adversary from Hollow Knight: Hornet, captured by cloaked bugs and thrown in a cage before escaping after a lengthy fall, now lost in the enigmatic world of Pharloom. Story sequences are relatively few and far between, with much of the lore shown in items and mysterious monuments. Making a return from Hollow Knight is an invented language, further adding to the mysterious vibe.
The opening scenes of Pharloom are filled with lush greens that could lull you to sleep, but a certain reality soon sets in: Silksong is tough as nails and won’t hesitate to punish sloppiness. There are over 40 bosses; if you attempt the true ending, some are very well hidden.
Many of these fights might seem unfair and downright impossible in the first few attempts, but there are plenty of customisation options, and with patience and perseverance, patterns can be learned and overcome. At the forefront of player options are crests, which offer Hornet different combat styles. The default starting one is the well-rounded Hunter crest, which rewards successful combos.
With careful exploration and some ingenuity, six others can be found scattered around Pharloom, which prioritise anything from all-out offensive builds to defensive to a heavy focus on tool usage. Tools add an extra layer of versatility to combat, especially versus some of the hardest bosses, as they can often be used to do some damage from afar and are strewn across the gigantic map.
The sheer number of things to find is astonishing, in fact, and includes mask shards that expand Hornet’s durability for every four found, spool fragments that expand her silk meter, quintessential for healing, and memory lockets which improve the capability of crests by unlocking more slots to equip tools. Slots are colour-coded according to three different types of tools: red for offensive weapons like darts or bombs, blue focusing more on passive and defensive, and yellow focused on resource collection and navigation.
Don’t overlook yellow, as they are worth their weight in gold in aiding you to move around Pharloom. Unfortunately, the compass doesn’t automatically show on the map, but the most advanced explorers will have this equipped for the duration, as it always places Hornet at her exact location, and thus automatically takes up a yellow slot.
Rosaries serve as the game’s currency and can be used to purchase mask shards, tools, and many other useful items throughout the game. What could prove to be vexing is that, upon dying, Hornet loses all rosaries and must return to the spot of death to retrieve the cocoon with all of the rosaries, but dying before reaching the cocoon means losing everything. There are ways to mitigate this, the easiest being to simply purchase something whenever available, or, once 80 rosaries are collected, for a small fee, they can be strung together and never lost. There are a small number of silk eaters that can be found to immediately retrieve Hornet’s cocoon if truly in a bind.
Each new area comes with some headaches: tracking down Shakra to buy area maps. Before that, it’s a guessing game as far as finding the best, most efficient route and may lead to going to much more difficult areas accidentally; granted, that does tend to be a hallmark of the genre, but Hollow Knight: Silksong really goes beyond most in that respect.
One of the most common complaints about Silksong is the runbacks to certain bosses. While it’s tough to find every breakable wall and secret entry, a runback should never be more than a minute, especially once a route is well trodden. There are 82 benches, and most bosses are fairly close to one, even if it’s not immediately apparent. The best example of this is a hidden bench cutting significant time off a runback in Bile Water. Therefore, no, the runbacks are not an issue, but there are a few player-unfriendly design choices.
Imagine coming across a bench with one mask of health left, only for a trap to hit Hornet as soon as she sits down, or another bench hidden behind a demanding platforming section, made worse when low on health. Mileage may vary on tolerance for these types of design choices, but for those who depend on accessibility options, there aren’t a lot of in-game tweaks that can be made in the menu. Stopping screen shake is essential for some of the hardest moments, as some of the most challenging ones rely on visual noise. That or summoning a seemingly endless supply of minions. By themselves, boss movesets aren’t complicated but can easily be lost in visual clutter. One of the most vexing, and yet, at the same time, simple omissions is the lack of an enemy meter. If nothing more, it helps to track progress after each loss.
There is a sizable modding scene for Silksong, and though mods are rarely used in games personally, it was an obvious choice after repeated losses versus a required Act 3 boss to download a mod that shows HP, which should be a built-in default, or at least something to toggle on and off.
Regardless of some pitfalls, Hornet is a lot more versatile than the Knight, and even with a steep learning curve, movement soon becomes second nature with Hornet zipping around the screen with ease well before Act 1 comes to a close. The controls are tight, though some might take issue with the default Hunter crest and her diagonal down dash, which can be rectified by switching to another crest with a proper down dash.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is jam-packed with content, including dozens of sidequests that task Hornet with anything from delivering items to distant locations while avoiding hits, to obtaining rare items from foes, to races. The most daunting is trying to set records in three different flea games. Just be aware that all 30 fleas need to be found before taking part in those minigames, but for all the effort, the reward is highly worth it. In fact, completing a good number of optional quests is required to eventually reach the best ending.
As her hunter’s journal shows, there are a plethora of enemies, and even with combing through the map carefully on the way to 100%, there were still a handful that remained elusive. Those used to the old-school Metroid or Castlevania games that served as the foundation for the genre shouldn’t expect a quick jaunt here. This rivals and even surpasses many RPGs as far as length, which could easily surpass 60 hours. It might feel slightly tedious to trek over the same paths in the last Act towards the true ending, but there are enough fast travel points and shortcuts, as well as improved movement upgrades to lessen the blow.
