Review: Hollow Knight: Silksong | Houston Press

Hollow Knight: Silksong
Rating: 10 out of 10

For the past three years, I’ve been putting indie Metroidvanias in my Games of the Year articles with the caveat of “If Silksong had come out this year like it was supposed to, this game would probably not be in this article.” Part of it was frustration at the long-delayed sequel, but I also treated it like a talisman.

Following up a genre-defining, near-perfect game like Hollow Knight is no easy task. Only a handful of sequels to games like that live up to their predecessor. For every release like Portal 2 there are a dozen like Last of Us Part 2. Better, almost, to let Silksong live in my head where it could remain an immaculate possibility.

Then, out of nowhere, developer Team Cherry announces that Silksong is coming out in a week and that there will be no pre-release or review codes. The game drops like a bomb, crashing digital storefronts across the world (it was four hours after the actual release before I could actually buy it on PlayStation 5). Visions of Cyberpunk‘s terrible, haphazard, and ultimately broken launch danced in my head as I waiting for the download. Please don’t suck. Pretty please, don’t suck.

It doesn’t suck. Whatever the platonic  antithesis to sucking is, Silksong does it right down to the bone.

Set some indeterminate time after Hollow Knight, the Knight’s half-sister Hornet is captured by religious fanatics from the land of Pharloom. She manages to escape before she is taken to their headquarters, the Citadel, but stays in Pharloom to look for answers. As she travels, she meets pilgrim bugs who climb to the Citadel for revelation, but some of them are turned into “haunted” murderers by an unseen manipulator.

Storywise, Silksong owes a lot to the narrative evolution of the genre that its predecessor launched. There’s more than a touch of Blasphemous and Ender Lilies added to the already-present Hollow Knight formula. The bugs in Pharloom use rosary beads for currency, church bells are everywhere, and the whole experience is just a lot more Catholic than the vaguely Lovecraftian god-system in the first game.

Silksong has a lot to say about religious mania, faith, and what it costs people in the long run. This isn’t bad by any means. In fact, I would would say Silksong addresses themes better than any other Metroidvania, if not as overtly.

Hornet is also, frankly, a better main protagonist than the Knight. She is verbose and considerate to everyone who doesn’t attack her. Her complicated history as the child of a king/god, but also an orphan, but also the chosen warrior of the Weaver tribe, make her a unique hero navigating a strange world as best she can. Hornet is a good person trying to do the right thing at all times, despite how quick she is to use her needle. When she finds a town ensnared in twisted threads, she rescues them because it’s the right thing to do. She also brutally kills their oppressor because that’s also the right thing to do. Morally, Hornet is just fun to navigate.

Mechanically, even more so. Hollow Knight was a master class in how to make a Metroidvania character move. It felt like a fighting game perfectly integrated into a side-scroller. Boss fights were truly duels. I would have bet that no one would ever top the way the Knight felt to control.

Hornet does in every way. While she initially feels a little slow and cumbersome (her sprite is twice the size of the Knight), once you upgrade a bit and get used to her style, she is magic. There is nothing like the feeling of sprinting toward an enemy, spearing them, bouncing off, hitting a dive attack on the rebound, tossing a throwing weapon, and then hitting one more dive attack for good measure. During boss fights like Lace or Widow, I felt like a dancer, moving with blinding speed in and out of attacks with languid ease. When Silksong is on, it is ON.

I’ve seen buzz on Reddit about how the game is harder than Hollow Knight. I disagree, but I see how people come to that conclusion. There are some deeply unfair parts like the Hunter’s March where long gauntlets have no checkpoints. In that same area, when you do finally get to a save point, it’s booby trapped, which may be the single biggest piece of bullshit a video game has ever thrown at me.

However, it’s not harder, just different. Hornet gets fewer charms, so she has fewer build options. No more cheesy poison cloud strategies. Her needle levels up slower and less than the Knight’s nail. To compensate, she has a variety of throwing weapons, some of which really shine once you can infuse them poison. The downside is that you have to craft new ones at save points, and if you’re losing consistently to a boss while using them, you might have to go material hunting.

On the other hand, Silksong will let you keep your rosaries when you die as long as you have a merchant or terminal string them together. This will cost you about a quarter of your rosaries, but it’s worth it when you have a lot of money and are venturing into unknown territory. Sure, you can get everything back by finding your stuff at the place you died, but if you die again on the way there your rosaries are lost forever. The stringing system is definitely there to make the game easier.

Getting used to Hornet’s dive attack contributes to the difficulty. It lacks the simplicity of the Knight’s downward slash, especially when bouncing off objects to climb dangerous terrain. Once you develop the muscle memory for the angle, though, it outclasses the original.

In every way, Silksong is just so much more. More beautiful setting, more zones to explore, more mechanics to master, more narrative to follow, more lore to uncover. I don’t think any game has ever looked more gorgeous than Silksong, and its level design is so perfect that I keep finding myself drawn back to the game in the middle of the night to uncover one more piece of the map.

Hollow Knight redefined the Metroidvania genre to the point that every subsequent entry is compared to it. Now, they will be compared to Silksong. It’s just that good, and definitely worth the six years we’ve been waiting for it.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4/5, and X Box Series X/S. $19.99.