Don’t love Hollow Knight? Silksong probably won’t win you over either
The long wait paid off. After years filled with memes and despair, Hollow Knight: Silksong is out now and already picking up rave reviews from those who spent a weekend cramming it. It’s already clear that it’s going to dominate Game of the Year discourse in the same way Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has for months. That’s great news if you love Team Cherry’s stylish Metroidvania, but much less so if you never fully clicked with the original Hollow Knight.
I should know, because I’ve long held some unpopular (though fairly tepid) opinions about the 2017 game. I loved Hollow Knight‘s art and general vibe, but took issue with the way its inspirations meshed with one another. If you’re in the same boat, I imagine you may be wondering if it’s worth giving the series a second try with Silksong. I certainly was when I reluctantly started my playthrough. Will the sequel totally win you over, converting you into a repentant believer?
Probably not, but it may at least help you finally pin down what you don’t love about it.
In my first few hours, it felt like Silksong was going to change my perspective. I was even more in love with its art this time around thanks to an expanded color palette that brought more diversity to its mysterious biomes. The bigger change, though, was that it initially felt like more of a straightforward Metroidvania than its predecessor. Its Dark Souls inspiration felt less pronounced early on, with boss fights that felt closer to Metroid Dread. That helped me better appreciate the series’ minimalist approach to combat, which is less about high skill execution and more about learning to dance around very telegraphed attack patterns. (My most unpopular Silksong take right now might be that I don’t think any of its bosses are all that hard.)
It was only once I got around 10 hours in that some simmering pet peeves that bugged me in Hollow Knight once again turned to a boil. Silksong’s use of a “corpse run” system was my first annoyance. As is the case in your average Soulslike, Hornet drops any rosaries she’s carrying on death, which must be retrieved before her next death, or they disappear forever. It’s a quirk that turned me off to the original game, as it often disincentivized me from exploring since death is frequent — even when walking through a corridor you’ve passed a dozen times. Considering that exploration is my favorite part of the genre, the risk/reward system felt at odds with the joys of getting lost.
Silksong still has that dynamic, even though there are a few good ways to mitigate rosary loss. I especially felt the pain every time I’d enter a new biome that I didn’t have a map for yet. I’d start exploring in one direction in search of a map seller, amassing rosaries while praying a bench was nearby. When I’d inevitably die deep in the level, far from a checkpoint, I’d have no choice but to run back to grab my body. But, of course, I had no idea how to get back without a map – and going in another direction to find that map wasn’t an option because then I wouldn’t have my rosaries. That constant catch-22 left me locked into a route until I could escape with my corpse.
I eventually learned to live with that as I sharpened my spatial reasoning skills, but I’ve stumbled over a few roadblocks since then. While no boss has given me trouble, the platforming has been a frequent sticking point due to Hornet’s polarizing diagonal dash technique. I still have a hard time consistently bouncing off of flowers and bells, especially as hard-hitting enemies hover around me while I try to do it. (If you’re in the same boat, I recommend playing around with your crest to change how that pogo movement works.) That annoyance only compounds with the corpse run woes, as there are a few platforming choke points that can halt your momentum for a long time if you die midway through them.
The worst example of that comes in the trek to Act 1’s big boss, the Last Judge. The fight itself is totally reasonable, with only a few attack patterns to learn and ample time to heal between strikes. It just takes practice, but getting more reps in is a hassle. The walkup from the nearest bench to the boss forces you through a platforming gauntlet that’s full of pesky enemies. It isn’t an interesting challenge; it’s just a monotonous pain. And each subsequent run only exacerbates that monotony.
That breaking point helped me better understand my gripes with the series beyond any one pet peeve. Both games contain a lot of ideas pulled from other games that don’t always feel purposeful. Corpse runs fall into that category, but boss runbacks are a more fitting example of that. In a traditional Soulslike, that time spent returning to a boss doesn’t go to waste. Not only is it a moment of calm to cool off after dying in a rage, but it also leaves you time to reconsider your build as you trek back to the fight. Since something like Elden Ring is a deep action-RPG, there are tons of ways that you can adjust your build to tackle a hard fight in a new way. That’s not the case in Silksong, where your tools are very limited, and each fight has clearly defined strategies and timing. Those arduous walks lose their value and just become an extra time sink that sometimes raises your blood pressure even more.
I feel similarly about arena battles, which never quite fit into the formula. It’s fairly common these days for a 2D action game — Metroidvania or otherwise — to include rooms that task you with clearing out a few waves of enemies. Those encounters are a great fit for something like Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, a game that gives you a lot of ways to attack enemies. Arenas become improv challenges that test how well you can mix and match all your tools to clear out rooms as fast as possible. Silksong’s arenas, by comparison, lack that creative appeal since you only have access to a few basic attack and movement options. They’re more so endurance tests designed to see how long you can dodge attacks and plink away at enemies without screwing up. Late game ones tend to drag on and on, well past their climactic moments to create artificial challenge escalations that Elden Ring’s Godskin Duo would be proud of.
The reward for doing that successfully is the same as what you get for defeating a boss: a familiar rush of serotonin that fuels every Soulslike. Silksong is filled with those moments and I can understand why that makes it, and its predecessor, so appealing. Beating a hard fight is a great confidence booster, no doubt, but it’s one of the only emotional responses Silksong has triggered in me 20 hours in. Considering how many games now chase the exact same “fight a tough boss, see a cool world” experience, a distinct vibe only takes me so far these days.
Even with these critiques, I’m still enjoying my time with Silksong a bit more than I did with Hollow Knight. Every new boss is a delight to master and there’s plenty of mystery to keep me digging around, even if backtracking to find it is a pain. But it has yet to stick with me in the same way that Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist or Blade Chimera have this year, two excellent Metroidvanias that didn’t have a hype engine to elevate them to mainstream relevance.
Maybe that’s why there’s a subset of players out there who don’t quite get the hype; the deeper you are in the currently booming genre, the less surprising Silksong feels. It’s a very polished version of what it is compared to the boldly experimental nature of Animal Well, Laika: Aged Through Blood, or even Bandai Namco’s fascinatingly strange Shadow Labyrinth. If the Silksong formula still just doesn’t give you what you crave out of a Metroidvania, you’re not alone. There are dozens of us, and we’ve got plenty of great games to scratch that itch.
