Hollow Knight: Silksong - Should You Play?

Hollow Knight: Silksong Review: The definitive answer to whether you should play this new hot game.

The titular Hornet from Hollow Knight: Silksong

We've heard much about Hollow Knight throughout the years but never taken the plunge. The main reason being these type of games were never our jam in the past. After the much discussed sequel Hollow Knight: Silksong was released to many accolades and decided we must give it a try and determine, should you play it if it doesn't seem up your alley?

Getting to Know Hornet: First Impressions

Immediately the controls feel good in my hands, everything is tight, precise and correct. Hornet is slow to start but jumps, diagonal downward slashes and spacing are paramount. The online social arena has talked about how difficult it is but the game gently ramps up your play by introducing small but important ways that the game punishes you for not thinking before acting. All the while being incentivized to be aggressive as you heal by building up attacks to fill your silk gauge. I'm immediately hooked into the game, difficult but very worthwhile and challenging in a good way.

Power Fantasy: Showing RPGs who is Boss

The game's core loop is controlling your movement to avoid attacks and punish your enemies. The boss's introduced are always interesting and find ways to show you how you are interpreting the game incorrectly.

Throughout the game, the developers add movement skills and attacks that expand the way you think about the game. Some games add stats or tools that expand the game and power to make you feel ever more powerful to defeat the difficult enemies. Silksong provides similar items like increased damage, tools, health and silk but they never seem to break the enemy, if relying on them the game breaks you. A litany of bosses and enemies only can be beaten by getting good and the game teaches you to do it so it always feels progressing.

You do not beat this game by collecting or increasing stats, you beat it by learning when to run, when to jump, when to pogo (yes pogo), when to be fast and when to be slow.

Runbacks and Pain Points

The game isn't always sunshine and rainbows, in fact it's mostly an environment devoid of any rainbows. We found a few things to be detractors in the game, but not to the extent the online echo chamber would make you believe.

Some of the runbacks are painful and no I'm not talking about The Final Judge. Many have amazing runbacks which teach you important parts about the game and if you have explored you will find shortcuts or ways to string abilities to cut painful parts out. However, some are just plain rage quit worthy, Bilewater and Groal the Great are painful to the extreme which seemingly no shortcuts without pain, even though the boss is technically optional.

The other major pain point is contact damage. A boss can be down and stunned but you get too close and receive damage anyway. This in many instances created pain when it was not needed, especially when it came to the "secret" Act 3 final boss, which would give you 2 masks of damage per hit, let alone every other attack giving 2 masks. For reference, at the time we had 8 masks of health.

Hollow Knight: Silksong an Amazing Experience that You Should Play

We beat this entire game, including Act 3, and it nearly took us 60 hours to beat it. However, we did all the secrets and completionism route, just the base ending we think could be done closer to 30-40 hours depending on side content. Nearly every moment was amazing, Skarrsigner Karmelitar may be my favorite boss in any game.

To answer the premise of this review, every gamer should play this game, you don't need to play the first game, you don't have to be "good" at games, the game teaches you everything you need to know. It helps you with the ultimate power fantasy in games, where each difficult boss is not beaten by stats or equipment but the players skills.

We give Silksong an Amazing review of 9/10.