Hollow Knight: Silksong | Review

Right on time!

Aarsal "Soulblazerz" Masoodi1 day agoLast Updated: December 17, 2025

0 1,402 13 minutes read

Silksong. Silksong. Silksong.

For years that was all you’d read on every chat for every gaming event out there. The fervor for this game reached a pitch rarely, if ever, seen before after the massive success of the first game in the series, Hollow Knight, and the promising glimpses drip-fed to us over the years for the sequel. Well, years have come and past and we now live in a post Silksong era.

So of course, the question is, was it worth the wait? The hype? The fervor? The sheer madness?

Short answer: yes. Long answer: Hell yes. Keep reading the Xbox Era Review to find out why I think Hollow Knight: Silksong is one for the ages.

Welcome to Pharloom

Hollow Knight: Silksong | Review | Image Credit: Team Cherry

Real quick before we start, yes this review is real. Yes it finally came out. Yes I know it’s very, very late. And also, before you play the game, go to options, audio, and turn down the “sound” metric a couple of notches. You’ll thank me later. And now back to our scheduled programming!

Made by Team Cherry, a small team still, Hollow Knight: Silksong was originally meant to be a dlc to the first Hollow Knight game. To the extent that backers of the first game who were promised that dlc were given a code to Silksong for no extra charge. Based out of Adelaide, South Australia, Team Cherry list only three people on their site staff list, though of course the amount of people who put work into Silksong is a fair bit larger. Nonetheless, they’re a small team that took their time to release their product when it was ready, and not before.

Diving into the game itself, Silksong takes place in the same overall world as the first one, but in a brand-new area. Welcome to Pharloom, another kingdom facing peril and tragedy. Or rather, welcome being taken prisoner to Pharloom as the game opens up with Hornet, the central player character, trapped in a cage being taken somewhere by hooded figures. She’s able to escape and drops into a large crevice, with her trusty needle falling right next to her. And so our journey begins as she tries to find out exactly why she was taken prisoner, where she was being taken to, and most importantly, who to beat up for some well-deserved revenge.

That’s how the tale begins anyway, and as with the first game, the storytelling in Silksong is often obtuse and obscure, forcing the player to rely on their mystery solving skills to piece together exactly what’s going on based on a few lines of dialogue here, some environmental storytelling there, and of course the numerous secrets you uncover. I won’t say more about the story, just that Hornet stumbles into a land where many people are on a pilgrimage to climb higher and higher and that something sinister seems afoot. If you’ve played Hollow Knight, you’ll know what to expect in terms of tone and style, including sometimes tragic endings to the bugs of Pharloom.

The land of Pharloom isn’t this dead waste. There are denizens living everywhere and not all of them want to kill you on sight. Meaning, Silksong has a diverse cast of characters of all types and most are pretty memorable. You interact with them constantly throughout your journey, seeing their stories progress in a way that feels natural, even if you’re sure they aren’t going to have particularly happy conclusions. Such is the storytelling style of Team Cherry, and while Silksong does take place after Hollow Knight chronologically, I’ll leave any connections between the two games for you to figure out. One last thing I’ll mention is that Hornet being her own character before the game even begins added a nice change of pace, where she interacts with others and has a personality, rather than just being a blank slate.

No sludging start this time!

But most of us aren’t here for the story, we’re here for the fast-paced, super clean combat and gameplay expected in the series. And Silksong doesn’t disappoint here, for the most part anyway. Similar to the first game, Silksong’s gameplay initially revolves around short range melee attacks while you jump, dodge, dash, and maneuver around enemies. You’ll need to learn (or re-learn) patience as you slowly make your way through the world and the numerous creatures that stand in your way. Replacing the “Soul” mechanic of the first game is “Silk”, which works similarly in that you obtain it by attacking enemies and you use it to heal (by binding) or use your “Weaver Technique”. While there were 6 skills in total, I found myself mostly using the same one or two throughout my journey.

Thankfully one of the major ways in which Silksong improves upon the first Hollow Knight is in the initial hours. While I very much enjoyed the first game, it did have a dreadfully slow start, something I was hoping Team Cherry would fix. And fix they did, as Silksong picks up right away, and more importantly, you get access to maps, the compass, and fast travel all within the first few hours. The dash/sprint upgrade is obtained soon after, allowing the game to keep up its momentum and avoid the lethargic start the first game was plagued with. This all felt pretty natural, though there were a few bumps on the road around the middle point, but I’ll get to that later.

As with the first game, Silksong can be quite unforgiving if you try rushing your way through, especially at the start before you become more versatile. You also drop your “beads”, one of two currencies in the game, if you perish, losing them forever if you die again before reclaiming them from your body. Beads are used throughout the game to upgrade your equipment, obtain hints, or purchase items from shopkeepers, such as new tools.

What do you mean I can’t equip only blue?

One of the primary ways Silksong sets itself apart from Hollow Knight is in the new Crest and Tool system. Rather than sticking with the same “charm” mechanic so many games in this genre have been using, Team Cherry decided to shake things up a bit. They did so by splitting up the typical charms you’d find, into different classes of Tools. Each tool has a certain coloured slot in which it can be equipped and the different colours dictate the type of effect/usage.

On top of this, each crest you equip has different coloured slots, forcing you to pick between them to match your playstyle. Oh, and they don’t only affect your tools, each crest also changes Hornet’s basic attacks, from her sprint attack to her downwards slash and more. Some Crests also change your binding effect, such as giving you life steal instead of just healing you, or extracting more silk from enemies until you get hit. In practice, I experimented with all of them but mostly stuck with one or two, switching every so often. So good news for those of you who don’t want to stick with the diagonal down attack! These changes in the Crests do provide a large variety of playstyles though, another area in which SIlksong differentiates itself. Pick the style you want to play with and go wild, especially once you throw Tools into the mix.

As mentioned earlier, the Tools are coloured. Here’s a quick overview of them: blue Tools are ones you can never have enough of as they boost or enhance Hornet in pretty integral ways. Such as increasing her attack range, speeding up your “binding” (mostly used as your heal) and more. Yellow tools are more utility centric, such as a magnet for beads, or a compass to see your position on the map. And finally, the real meat and potatoes, are the red tools. These are the offensive tools that can change one person’s playstyle drastically from another. From knives, to drills, to a little robot that follows you around, how you build and use your red tools are a big part of how much you’ll struggle or succeed in the game, especially with the numerous bosses.

Behold! Giant Enemies! Well, sometimes not so giant too.

Would it be a Hollow Knight game if it didn’t have a bunch of giant bugs or creatures out to kill you? Silksong starts off quite strong here, ramping up the boss difficulty naturally as you unlock more upgrades and equipment. From grounded bosses who are small and nimble, to giant flying creatures, to beasts jumping all around the boss room, there’s a great amount of variety at display here, and for the most part the bosses are fair. For the most part. There is a point around halfway through the game where certain bosses are clearly more frustrating then they are fair, looking at you Moorwing, and during this time I was convinced they would sour my experience with the game. Thankfully, the game simply kept going.

I’ll talk about my issues with the midpoint of the game soon, but I have to say that some of the best boss encounters I’ve fought are in this game, particularly towards the end of it. Throw in some epic music hyping you up as you dodge, weave, and attack your way through, well, everything, and Silksong ends off on a very, very strong note. Though still quite difficult, as the last two bosses in the game took me a combined 5 or so hours to defeat. Yet neither felt particularly unfair, which is a very difficult balance to strike. All in all, the various boss encounters were certainly one of the major highlights of the game, midpoint frustrations and all.

Wait, you got to Act 2 how?

I talked earlier about how Silksong doesn’t share the same slow start issues that the first game did, and a big part of this was due to the map and level design. Like most Metroidvanias, Silksong’s world is sprawling and full of diverse areas to explore, and then re-explore once you move further into the game. This is not a small game by any means. The map continues to expand with new areas to explore, some dense, some spacious, but always with more to do and more to discover.

Yet Team Cherry’s level design never left me feeling bored. There’s a point around halfway through where the game focuses in on one central area and the change in aesthetic and level design kept everything feeling fresh. There are even alternate pathways to major areas or progression points of the game, something I didn’t discover until I talked to someone who took a completely different route as me. So yeah, Silksong is a vast game that doesn’t suffer from open world bloat or other issues that games with similar playtimes do. Speaking of, the game took me a solid 60+ hours to finish with a 90% completion rating, and I was hooked for almost all of it.

I’ve talked about how smooth the combat feels and it’s the exact same thing with the movement and platforming, maybe even more so. Even with only the diagonal down attack at the start of the game, successfully bouncing off enemies, spikes, or little floating plants feels great every single time. While the game doesn’t have something as extremely punishing as the “Path of Pain”, there’s more than enough platforming in Silksong to keep you engaged and feeling triumphant. There’s one platforming-centric area in particular that I had a great time mastering, as it was both difficult but also fair in its checkpoints. It also gave quite the worthwhile reward at the end!

Okay, so about those midpoint frustrations

So far, I’ve been waxing poetic about the game, but as mentioned before, I did indeed have moments of frustration. At around the midpoint, near the end of Act 1, the game threw enemies at me that often didn’t feel fair. Particularly flying enemies at a time where I clearly didn’t have all of my aerial mobility, such as double jump. This lead to increasingly frustrating encounters where an enemy would just barely be out of my range when I went in to attack, moving only slightly in sporadic ways to avoid my strike.

This was never more apparent as it was with Moorwing, a flying boss I battled near the end of Act 2 (as I ended up skipping him normally). This fight in particular almost had me putting my controller down several times. Part of it was the flying nature of the boss but another was in how the camera worked during the encounter. In many games of this genre, the camera will often zoom out when going against larger enemies, letting you get a clear view of any incoming attacks. Moorwing, on the other hand, regularly attacked me off-screen as I’d dodge to one side or the other. I can handle difficult bosses, even if I’m losing against them for hours at a time, as long as the encounter is fair. Moorwing and some other mid-game encounters did not feel fair to me at all. Throw in contact damage and oh boy, some terse words were had.

Aha, but what falls down must always, uh, go up?

Thankfully this is a problem mostly isolated to the mid-point of the game. As I continued through Act 2 and beyond, both the level design and the boss encounters continued to impress. There were still moments of struggle, such as a seemingly never-ending gauntlet of enemies, but the open nature of the game let me explore other areas instead and come back stronger and more versatile. For anyone who maybe dropped the game in frustration, I highly encourage you to go back and keep pushing until you hit credits. Then you need to go back and hit the credits again. But if you truly want to fight some of the best bosses in the game, you’ll need to go back one last time and hit credits for the third and final time. Trust me, it’s worth it.

So many bugs, bugs everywhere

There were indeed plenty of bugs during my adventure in Pharloom. Bugs of all shapes and sizes really. Some were huge, some were soft, some had hard shells, and some could sing quite well. All jokes aside, Silksong ran, ahem, silky smooth pretty much the entire time. I played mostly on my Xbox Series X, but I also switched at times to both my beefy PC and my Asus ROG Ally, the original. I had no issues at all on any of those devices and was able to play well on my Ally, especially if I was just exploring.

Turn The Music Up. Seriously, go to the options and do it now.

So if you listened to my advice at the start of this review, you’ll actually be able to hear the bombastic tracks littered throughout the game, especially during bosses. The game is called Silksong after all, and music does play a somewhat central role throughout. You’ll interact with numerous NPCs or locations by strumming your instrument, especially if you want more context or lore.

On top of all of that though, Team Cherry created a triumphant soundtrack to accompany Hornet on her journey, from string only tracks for certain bosses to full on orchestral swells for others. A core part of why I had so much fun with many of the bosses in this game was the music during the encounters, hyping me up and providing me the energy I needed to yell at the screen once I took them down.

And yes the game is very pretty too.

Did the hiatus affect my thoughts?

And so we reach the closing of the review. Now as many of you may have noticed, this isn’t exactly the most timely review out there. I started Silksong right at release and played it non-stop for a couple of weeks, putting in 60 hours in as quick as I could, making it close to the very end. Though then, for various reasons, I had to take a little break.

Some, amongst the team, encouraged me to look at this review from another angle. Is Silksong really such a great game if it couldn’t grab a hold of me until I rolled the credits for the third time? Maybe this hiatus of mine was enough to tell me that the game wasn’t quite as good as so many claim.

All of that, all of it, was complete and utter bogus. Hollow Knight: Silksong, is a fantastic game, regardless of how long it took me to play and complete it. I didn’t stop playing because of the game itself, though yes, I did get stuck on a difficulty spike. But when I came back to it earlier this week, after a short readjustment period, it was like I never left.

Best in Class

The game isn’t perfect, yes, specifically the midpoint or so where it stumbles a little, but, at least personally, I’ve always judged a game significantly based on how I’m feeling as I sit watching the credits roll. Am I glad the game is over? Am I sad, am I bittersweet? Am I skipping through the credits, am I quickly closing the game out? Or am I sitting there, letting the credits roll through, and just absorbing the game I played.

The end of something is a core part of how good that something is. I firmly believe that. And I’m very glad to say, that Hollow Knight: Silksong, ends strong. When I rolled credits for the first time, I felt pretty unfulfilled, which makes sense as there was still a ton to do. When I rolled it for the second time, I felt better but was still eager to keep going.

When I rolled credits for the third and final time, I put my controller down and let my thoughts and feelings carry me. The last third had some of the best moments in the title, and I can confidently say that Hollow Knight: Silksong is better than the first game in almost every single way. More agile, more expressive, more fun, more… everything.

Hollow Knight ran so that Silksong could sprint.