Thoughts on Hollow Knight: Silksong

It finally came out! I played it. And I had thoughts about it. (Spoilers: mostly good ones)

Well. I’m a bit late to commenting on the game, because … well, life has sure been life this year.

For context: I have not completely finished True Ending, but I have done a lot of everything else. I’m not going to try to spoil too much but if the notion that there is a true ending immediately makes you cringe to find out, well, that’s your sign to probably not read the rest of this.

It’s hard to comment on a game this long in development and this hyped. At some point in the last two years, I started slightly dreading Silksong’s eventual release – on some level, how do you actually follow up Hollow Knight? Especially with something that was going to be a DLC and ended up developing into a full game?

Apparently, Team Cherry is just built different. Hearing about the development side of things, where they had no idea what a Jira was and just spent the entire time having a blast working on the game, heads down? It shows. I do not expect almost any other studio to replicate this. I don’t know if I expect Team Cherry to do so again, if they even choose to try.

Silksong is great. I wouldn’t say it entirely expects you to be someone who just came off true ending Hollow Knight, but the difficulty is ramped up at the start thanks to the differences in mechanics between Hornet and the Knight. I’ve seen some complaints boiling it down to a game for people who thought the Path of Pain / Pantheon 5 was too easy, and I don’t like that criticism. Path of Pain is a platforming challenge that has ample opportunity for breaks and, for the most part, can be practiced without too much trouble – it’s at least short, and the platforming builds on itself so that earlier practice absolutely prepares you for later. Silksong absolutely has some Path of Pain moments, earlier than the Path appeared in Hollow Knight, and that can be a lot. I would not say that, in the path of the normal ending, there is any boss that is on the level of even Nightmare King Grimm, much less Pantheon 5. Hornet has fewer iframes, but heals more than the Knight on each attempt. The balance there is tricky, I do think sometimes the numbers weren’t right, but for the most part, Hornet can survive and recover fights that there was no chance of ever continuing with the Knight’s mechanics.

Let’s go through some highlights. Little guy design? Top notch. Sherma and Shakra both, instant delights, I’d love to see more of them. Music? It’s everywhere, and Christopher Larkin provided yet another fantastic soundtrack. Classic Metroidvania backtracking with new traversal and unlock options, including the ability to do some skips or alternate pathways? Yep, that’s here too. Boss design? Some of my favorite bosses in the genre – First Sinner was a notable standout for me, but I can’t argue with some of the other top choices people list like Lace or the Cogwork Dancers.

If I had any complaints, they’re slight numbers tweaks (Moorwing, for one, which happened) in a few places. A few adds that deal two damage that probably shouldn’t here and there. One truly, truly awful runback in Groal the Great.

Runbacks are the biggest “flaw” most people point to in Silksong, and I don’t entirely agree. The runback to the Last Judge in particular gets a lot of hate, but I liked it. I think Elden Ring went slightly too far in the direction of “no runbacks” – a good runback should be short, but have just enough friction to keep you right next to “the zone” instead of fully in it. In a game without runbacks, I find it entirely too easy to bash my head against a wall past the point of fun. Attempts blur together and instead of being practice, each attempt instead starts to just build up resentment. It happened on a few fights in Armored Core 6, it happened on a few fights in Elden Ring, and the end result is always frustration when the next day with just a little bit of extra sleep the boss gets cleared on the first fresh try. The Last Judge runback, at its core, has only two enemies that are guaranteed to see you. There are a few jumps, a few basic pogos, and some weather conditions that prevent every single run looking the exact same. Combined with being able to run out of shards to fuel your tools, there’s just enough friction to (for the most part) get a gentle reminder from the game itself that you need to try something else. Take a break for a minute, breathe, and then try again.

Honestly, it’s meant that I don’t think I’ve truly ragequit on any boss (or other challenge) except for Groal the Great.

That runback? It’s slow – both from length and mechanics, where you have to wait on cycles and sometimes float for extended time periods. It has inconsistent enemy placement (fine in a shorter runback to keep you on your toes!), status effects that prevent healing (punishing attempts to get to the boss), the place the runback starts from isn’t easily accessible for getting to other areas (increasing sunk cost feelings), and then the boss has a … ten? round arena before the fight even starts.

That aside, fantastic game. Cannot believe it even started to live up to the hype.