Hollow Knight: Silksong released in September following six years of anxiety-inducing silence from the team behind Hollow Knight, one of the best-selling independently developed games of all time.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is the long-awaited sequel to Team Cherry’s 2017 action-adventure platformer Hollow Knight. In that game, players take on the role of a bug called “The Knight” as he descends into the forgotten bug kingdom of Hallownest.
Hollow Knight: Silksong follows Hornet, a recurring character and boss fight from the original game, as she is kidnapped and taken to the distant land of Pharloom. Weakened, she must regain her strength, learn her true origins and destroy the higher being whose grip the people of Pharloom are clenched tightly in.
Based on precedents set by other games with long development cycles, fans feared for the worst — that the game’s developers were in “development hell.” However, days before the game’s release, an interview revealed the truth — the developers were simply having too much fun. That made the one question in everyone’s minds burn brighter: would the game be worth the wait?
As someone who went in and did everything a standard playthrough of the game’s three acts has to offer, I would say it was.
The first thing I noticed as I was playing the game is that Hornet’s acrobatic movement felt just as good to play as it did to watch. Fights against savage beasts feel like hunting, while fights against skilled opponents feel like delicate life-or-death duels. Each new movement option also adds a new dimension to Hornet’s combat capabilities, constantly raising your upper limit as you progress.
The alteration of Hollow Knight’s charm system to the new system of crests and tools has more depth and customization options, allowing you to try near-infinite combinations of basic attacks with Hornet’s needle, special weapons and other tools. From longpins that Hornet wields like spears and tacks she throws on the ground to impale enemies to fantastical mechanical creatures and weapons, this game allows you to find your own way to fight.
This new dimensionality to the game makes it much harder to learn than Hollow Knight, with fans online joking that the first game feels like it could be a tutorial for this one. Still, many fans complained certain enemies and hazards did double damage when attacking Hornet. I found the game’s difficulty to scale at a reasonable pace. In particular, certain boss fights forced me to step up my game or lose, especially each fight with recurring villain Lace.
One of the most exciting parts of playing this game was the sudden announcement of its release just two weeks beforehand. As the most wishlisted game ever on video game storefront Steam, millions of fans came out of the woodwork to play the game all at once. With no advance copies being handed out to content creators or journalists, the mystique grew until launch, when it crashed Steam.
I got to play the game in pace with what I saw online — mostly in the form of players complaining about the hardest areas. I remember playing through the challenging platforming of Hunter’s March just to see clips online of people failing the same tricks I was struggling with. Weeks later, I saw a heavy focus on the area of Bilewater as everyone reached and complained about the challenging late-game area all at once.
The character design behind this game lives up to the incredible capacity of Hollow Knight for creating memorable characters from Kickstarter backer rewards. Between the adorable bell-ringing Sherma, the battle-hardened Shakra and the cruel but tragic Lace, there’s something for everyone to appreciate in this game. The variety of enemies presented is revolutionary — I was left wondering how there were never any roaches, flies or fleas as enemies in the original game.
However, the most amazing experience came with one of the easiest bosses — the Cogwork Dancers from the game’s second act. The unique music and movement patterns of the mechanical leafbugs leave an impression nearly as strong as the one left by the Knight’s magical fight against the Mantis Lords in Hollow Knight.
Ultimately, I don’t know if any one moment in Hollow Knight: Silksong rises as high as the peaks of its predecessor, but the smooth movement, online community and unique characters make it worth the wait either way.
Oliver Gerharz is the arts editor and former podcast director for the Daily Cardinal. He is a journalism major and former host of the Cardinal Call. Follow him on Twitter @OliverGerharz.
