Hollow Knight: Silksong (2025) Review

Developer: Team Cherry

Platform: PS5

Length: 35-60+ hours

The wait for Silksong is finally over! For several years it has been one of the most anticipated titles in gaming after the huge success of indie hit Hollow Knight. I can't imagine the pressure the developer must have felt trying to meet expectations after such a long wait, but somehow Team Cherry managed to pull it off. Silksong is incredible.

One of many interesting NPCs you'll encounter.

Firstly I have to address two questions I've seen a lot since it came out:

• If I didn't enjoy Hollow Knight, should I play Silksong? Probably not. This is a sequel that improves and changes things in subtle ways, but it's still a really tough Metroidvania with challenging combat and tight platforming. There are no difficulty settings.

• If I haven't played Hollow Knight, can I start with Silksong? Yes, but I'd still recommend playing Hollow Knight first as some characters make an appearance in both games and you'll understand more about what's going on.

So what's new? This time you play as Hornet, a former princess of Hallownest that you encounter and fight in the original. In the opening sequence you escape captivity, only to fall a great distance to the bottom of a new location, Pharloom. Right away Hornet felt a bit different to control, more nimble, and it takes awhile to get used to. This is especially true when using an attack to bounce off of things in the environment, requiring a diagonal stab to reach new heights. I really struggled with these parts, but over time I managed to get it right. As more skills are obtained, getting around becomes zippy and quite fun (for the most part).

Some areas are barely lit and require careful steps.

Silksong is a massive game. By the time I'd started Hollow Knight, it had already received four post launch DLC. By comparison, the base Silksong experience has already taken me a lot longer to complete, with my save file a bit over 70 hours to get 100% and beat all bosses. There are some trophies attached to speed running (5 hours!), but I think most people will take at least 35 hours to reach the end, and 60+ to collect everything.

I'm quite proud of this!

Exploration is of course a highlight and if you want to find every secret, you'll need to double check every wall, ceiling and floor to uncover all the paths and optional areas. Some are so well hidden I wouldn't have been able to find them without consulting a guide! I also appreciated how you're given multiple viable routes early on allowing for a real sense of agency and discovery.

This whole area is stunning.

Once again Christopher Larkin worked on the soundtrack and his work here is really special, creating a lot of atmosphere. It's something I would put on to listen to outside of gaming, so hopefully this will be added to streaming and get a vinyl release at some point in the near future.

Overall there's very little I didn't enjoy, with some checkpoint benches being too far away from key fights and the currency often requiring some grinding, but this is still a strong contender for game of the year.