Approximately four months and three weeks after the release of Hollow Knight: Silksong, the gaming community has beaten the game and formed their opinions. After all of the excitement that the game generated at release, it became clear that the community behind Silksong’s predecessor, Hollow Knight, had very high hopes.
Silksong is a Metroidvania game based in Pharloom, a kingdom in disrepair though not completely abandoned. You meet pilgrims making their way to the citadel at the top of this kingdom, though most don’t survive to make it there. Hornet, our protagonist, gets captured and is brought to Pharloom. When she escapes her captors, your main objective becomes reaching the citadel. You go through difficult boss battles and arenas, meet many characters like a caravan of flea characters and Shakra the map maker, and can complete quests for the towns you come across. In comparison to Hollow Knight, Silksong gives the player more choice, allowing Hornet to build bonds with characters and dictate what will happen in the acts of the game.
The game as a whole was received very well by both Hollow Knight community members and newcomers to the series. The positive aspects of the game being heavily related to its intricate and well thought out level/world design. There are 32 distinct areas on the map that the player gets to explore as they progress through the game, each feeling unique to one another. With the new movement of Silksong, these areas have their own ways to progress.
Great examples of this are in an area called the Hunters March, which utilizes the pogo mechanic so that you can avoid spikes that fill the area. Another example is in an area called Mount Fay that uses the claw line mechanic to have you scale the mountain while avoiding being frozen. Each area brings its own quirks to the game that makes it feel fleshed out and nicely done. Adding onto that each area has multiple bosses that complement their themes, sometimes catching the player off guard.
With every good game, there also comes issues that the players have with them. With Silksong, the biggest problem people have had was the backtracking. Because of the number of bosses that the game has, it makes sense that dying is very common, even for seasoned players. In Silksong, you can heal yourself and save when you sit on a bench, which also respawns enemies. Though these benches are riddled through Pharloom, they may not be close to the arena or boss that you are trying to fight, and having to backtrack through treacherous areas to collect your things and fight a boss can be daunting and quickly become an annoyance. In the boss fight for Groal the Great, the runback takes anywhere from three to five minutes, while you also risk dying again during it. While not every boss fight has this issue, it is still a mildly annoying part of the game. Though runbacks are very common in Metroidvanias and not just an issue within Silksong.
With the Hollow Knight: Silksong DLC Sea of Sorrow rapidly approaching in 2026, it’s clear that even with the difficult bosses and bad runback, Silksong is a well-crafted and good game. This holds true with Silksong receiving the title of 2025 game of the year during the Steam game awards.