Hollow Knight: Silksong Reviews
Silksong can be ruthless, but it's hard to pry yourself away from its haunted little world that never seems to end.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is packed full of sharp platforming, enticing exploration, and nail-biting combat that's all unapologetically challenging in just the right way.
Pretty and charmingly mean-spirited, this is a game filled with revelations and genuine personality.
Its boss fights are exhilarating and challenging, its world is a gorgeous marvel to explore, its unpredictable art design is impeccable, and everything else about it looks and sounds stunning. There’s not much more you can ask for from the genre, and Silksong cements itself as a high watermark others will be trying to meet for years to come.
Enemies also feel much more aggressive in general, rising to meet the increased skill ceiling of Hornet's more acrobatic moves.
Musicians know the feeling of a piece that is woven with complexity, which takes longer to learn than most, but brings commensurate satisfaction upon mastery; Silksong is the video game equivalent, sitting ready to be played and adored, but only after appropriate levels of devotion and persistence.
Hollow Knight Silksong takes all the best parts of its predecessor and somehow makes them even better.
The long awaited arrival of Silksong is over five years in the making and it's even better than we had hoped.
Hollow Knight: Silksong's beauty is beguiling, hiding an interior that's deliberately harsh but endlessly rewarding. Everything feels deliberate, pushing you to learn, improve, and perfect, or simply just explore a little more. And what a world it is to dig into.Somehow, Team Cherry has surpassed my expectations tenfold and delivered a mesmeric blend of balletic combat and movement with persistence, joy, and an incredibly invigorating map at the centre. I've never felt better surmounting the challenges put in front of me, and I'm already raring to do it a second time.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is an incredible game, only held back by a couple questionable decisions. When the game is at its best, it's far beyond any game I've ever played, near-perfect in its design, and a masterpiece that I can't put down. The combat feels incredible, the visuals are stunning, the story is engaging, and the soundtrack is lovely. At its worst, though, it is extremely punishing, forces you into repetitive segments, and feels occasionally purposefully irritating. I love it with all my heart, but if you aren't willing to put up with intense difficulty, it may not be for you.
I could have done without the numerous hours I spent on farming and other padded elements, but Silksong is still an enormously packed journey, and a tremendous payoff on a nearly decade-long wait. Just mind the challenge and don’t rush it. True endings won’t come easy, but that’s part of what makes victory feel beautiful in Hollow Knight: Silksong.
A hallmark of excellence. There may be flaws, but they are negligible and won't cause massive damage.
For many years, Hollow Knight held the crown of the indie scene, but its successor has arrived to improve on what was already unbeatable. Hollow Knight: Silksong stands as one of the most refined, creative, profound, and elevated works in the history of video games, presenting itself as a leading candidate for Best Game of the Year and clinging to its predecessor's scepter to establish itself as, if we can still define it that way, the best indie game in history. Team Cherry has created an adventure for posterity that excels in everything and languishes in nothing, ultimately making a statement in an industry whose blockbusters could only dream of achieving such a level of divinity.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Silksong is the perfection of its predecessor's masterpiece. Hollow Knight Silksong is an absolute milestone, an unforgettable and undeniable work born from an unparalleled creative conglomeration.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
A beautifully executed and immaculately polished continuation of Hollow Knight’s Metroidvania artistry, with a similarly lugubrious art style and occasionally rage-inducing difficulty.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is caught in a web of trying to bind two conflicting genres together, with the expectations and norms of each half damaging the other. The beauty of its art design and precise, joyful feel of its movement are inarguable wonders, but the tiring and demotivating nature of its sadistic approach to challenge ripples throughout the entire experience of exploration and combat. It's more of what was good about Hollow Knight, but it failed to avoid some very clear pitfalls in design on its long path to release.
The love, care, and attention that's gone into making Hollow Knight: Silksong is already very evident in its vast array of gorgeous environments, earworm audio, and tough but fair platforming challenges. Pharloom is a land we just can't get enough of, and we can't wait to see where Team Cherry will take us as we work towards the conclusion of the campaign.
Hollow Knight: Silksong elevates the Metroidvania experience with a vast and intricate world, filled with unique biomes, hidden secrets, and clever backtracking that turns every step into discovery.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Silksong is a technical feat. So densely packed is its world that maintaining a laser focus on forward momentum is borderline impossible. At every opportunity, I found myself pausing the main campaign just to prolong my time in Pharloom. Little did I know that pacing myself wasn’t necessary. Mechanically, Silksong is just as expansive. Superior fluidity of movement and a less obtuse approach to building the perfect bug warrior made traversal and combat feel like a treat to be savored at every opportunity. Ultimately, games like these live and die based on how well their worlds are built, and Pharloom is one of the best from an architectural and visual perspective. It’s a shame that its fierce difficulty spike and pacing issues in the early game will absolutely turn less hardcore audiences away, because it’s clear that Silksong is seven years of love, care, and dedication splashed on a screen. Equal parts breathtaking and brutal, Hollow Knight: Silksong proves it was worth the wait but won’t go easy on anyone.
Hollow Knight: Silksong manages to live up to the daunting expectations surrounding the sequel. It carries the spirit of the original while introducing fresh mechanics that shape a remarkable adventure, one worthy of standing alongside its predecessor.