After seven long years of development, Hollow Knight fans finally get to feel the satisfaction of the awaited release of Hollow Knight: Silksong. The most hyped up indie developed game of the past five years, Silksong landed in stores on Thursday, September 4th with a price of only $20 USD, and rocked servers so hard that the online storefronts were down for hours after its 10:00 AM release. Was the excitement generated over the wait worth it?
For most, the answer is yes. With a world, story, and music that matches – if not surpasses – the incredible standard set by the first game in the series, Silksong continues the trend for Team Cherry providing their fans with some of the most polished gaming experiences on the market.
In the game, you control Hornet, the elder sister to the last game’s player character, The Knight. This changes things drastically, as Hornet has the ability to speak, with a distinct personality that drives the story forward. That drive and Hornet’s character changes a lot of things about the game, with deeper NPC interactions, more characters to forge bonds with, a more complex story, and many, many sidequests.
Hornet’s abilities are also entirely different from The Knight of the original, with an emphasis on fast, agile, high risk high reward playstyles with lots of room for customization. Instead of the charm system introduced in the first game, Silksong takes a simpler approach with the multicolored tools instead, having three separate categories with multiple slots for each. Red for active tools that mainly provide bonuses for combat; yellow for traversal tools that make Hornet’s agility even more impressive; and blue for almost everything that doesn’t fall under those other categories.
There have been complaints made about Silksong’s difficulty, with a couple of truly mean moments or horrendous boss runbacks (looking at you, Bilewater) but those are few and far between. I find the difficulty to be similar to the first game, in that it’s designed around understanding your limits, learning your enemies, and improving your skill as a player along the journey.
The world of Pharloom is harsh, dangerous, and constantly falling apart. If the Hallownest of the first game was a sick, dying animal, Pharloom is hungry and cornered, lashing out at anything that takes a step towards it. The home of the mysterious Weavers finally being revealed to players makes it much easier to understand why Herrah, Hornet’s mother, earned her title of “The Beast” from Hallownest’s royalty.
I haven’t even truly touched the story or the music, both of which are phenomenal, but are absolutely better experienced than described. I recommend Hollow Knight: Silksong to anyone willing to try it, given they play the first game beforehand.
