As the lethal hunter Hornet, adventure through a kingdom ruled by silk and song! Captured and taken to this unfamiliar world, prepare to battle mighty foes and solve ancient mysteries as you ascend on a deadly pilgrimage to the kingdom’s peak.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is the epic sequel to Hollow Knight, the award winning action-adventure. Journey to all-new lands, discover new powers, battle vast hordes of bugs and beasts and uncover secrets tied to your nature and your past.
Hollow Knight is © Copyright Team Cherry 2025
Game length provided by HowLongToBeat
Posted on: September 20, 2025
webhead11
Verified ownerGames: 96 Reviews: 1
worth the wait
Having so much fun exploring the world. Hornet is such a swifty fast character to play as. 10/10
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Posted on: September 20, 2025
SyntheticC
Verified ownerGames: 200 Reviews: 8
Well Made but Lacks the Same Spark
At time of writing I am perhaps halfway through Act 2 and this is subject to change. The game is incredibly well made production wise, same great art style from the first game and smooth animations, great music, great performance, and controls rather well. There are also significantly more options in terms of your overall loadout compared to HK1 in the form of Crests that change your weapon movesets slightly; you can only change crests at benches but this does give some versatility and variety to the combat which was a small flaw during replays of HK1. The characters so far have quite a bit of personality and it is interesting that even the main character Hornet is not a silent protagonist; while the Igarashi Castlevania games had protagonists that conversed with other characters, it seems most Metroidvanias in the indie sphere go for the silent route ala Metroid, so it is refreshing to have a protagonist that is able to voice out their thoughts and goals. The story itself is not necessarily a pull but TBF HK1's story felt very endloaded as well so I don't hold that against Silksong for this first half. For most of Act 1 I would say I was having a lot of fun; it was certainly slightly more challenging than the beginning of HK1 but not in a way that felt unearned. However, towards the end of Act 1 and throughout all of Act 2, this has been a rather frustrating experience. The difficulty certainly ramps up, but I think part of that problem also extends to how the ways in which you improve yourself don't have nearly as much of an impact as it would seem, which also means the work needed to get upgrades feels like putting too much in relative to what you get out of it. Take health as an example; you start the game with 5 masks but a significant number of enemies will often deal 2 masks worth of damage, so even by the time you get a 6th mask (which is quite a ways in) this doesn't change your damage allowances by that much. It isn't until you get a 7th mask that technically your damage allowances increase, but by this point almost all bosses by default will deal 2 masks worth of damage for about 3/4's of their moveset, made worse too by how small your invulnerability window is; it's not unusual to get hit by one attack that knocks you into another projectile that knocks you into a hazard and all of which deal damage. This isn't also accounting for how for some bosses just simple contact damage will also sometimes deal increased damage, which is especially problematic for some animations that are not obviously going to clip the player until it has already happened. In short, in most battles in spite of how the health appears to work, you really can take maybe 1 or 2 hits before dying. While your healing is slightly stronger in that a) you heal 3 masks as opposed to 1 per charge, and b) you don't have to hold the charge button or be on the ground but can instead press the button once even in the air, this is also curtailed in that you effectively need the equivalent of a full Soul gauge to do one heal instance. Also on the topic of damage, most enemies and bosses have significantly higher health pools and are much closer to their amounts from endgame HK1; while there is a means to increase the damage your nail does much like in the first game, much like the health upgrades the nail upgrades are very sparse (though TBF they weren't super common either in the first game). The higher health pools are only noteworthy by virtue of the higher player damage and that this in turn just leads to longer and longer fights; you could be doing quite well for most of the fight, but because of the high player damage and much smaller invulnerability window can just lose the fight in a second, which can be especially frustrating in these fights as the bosses take that much longer to kill now. Enemy design however follows very similar patterns, and is arguably even more frustrating than the bosses in this regard; the healthpools for enemies are not as large but the player damage they deal is about the same. What's especially obnoxious however is the abundance of flying enemies with pinpoint projectile attacks; they all follow a very similar pattern of flying just enough out of your range and will always back away as you draw closer and will only really stop in the middle of their attack animation, which basically means you have to repeat this song and dance of "wait for attack, jump but not too high to get hit and then attack" 3 or 4 times, for a single enemy, in a group of enemies, that also all are throwing pinpoint projectiles. Now here's the thing, I'm not necessarily saying that the game being difficult is itself a problem; one thing HK1 is known for especially in its end game is its particularly challenging gauntlet of bosses. The only reason though I am focusing on the combat that has been made more difficult with it's system changes is because Silksong is SIGNIFICANTLY more combat focused than HK1; as a Metroidvania, HK1 was pretty balanced in terms of combat, explortation, and puzzles. While there is definitely still quite a bit of exploration and puzzles in Silksong, much more time is definitely spent in combat at most points. Rooms will have higher density of enemies, more often than not many of these enemies will be in groups of 2 or 3 other enemies, but worse yet are the significantly higher number of forced gauntlet fights where you will be locked into a room and be forced to fight a gauntlet of enemies. This hyper focus on combat unfortunately means that the sticking points with the combat difficulty are that much more felt, which is a shame because the game itself is otherwise well made. This review is subject to change depending on the end and I do plan to continue with it, but in conclusion I would say this; so far, although this game is well made and is a very fair price, I'm not sure if I would say I am having fun with it. Rather than feeling accomplished or relieved after getting through a particularly tough hurdle, I feel more annoyed knowing "It's only going to get more frustrating from here".
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Posted on: September 20, 2025
Novogel
Verified ownerGames: 2 Reviews: 1
Amazing sequel for a great game
If you want to really get into it play the first Hollow Knight. This game manages to be a fantastic sequel better than an already good first game
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Posted on: September 20, 2025
Ghostominus
Verified ownerGames: 71 Reviews: 1
masterclass
we were waiting for masterclass and masterclass it is
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Posted on: September 21, 2025
Anlepplaid
Verified ownerGames: 5 Reviews: 1
For patience and fun
It is highly recomended to play the first Hollow Knight game before this one. Not so much for the story, but the first game is the tutorial for the mechanics for this one. It can be too frustrating if this is your first Metroidvania
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