silksong!
06/10/2025
kind of insane this game is real right? as someone who was submerged in the swampy mud of silksanity for the majority of the wait, it really did stop feeling like a game at one point. more like some exotic treasure pirates look for, all fountain of youth or holy grail esque. when i got my hands on it, and began to be able to appreciate it as a real-ass videogame which was designed by people and not ordained by sailors, it was an unreal experience.
on the first day, i played it for 17 hours straight. i fell into a dissociative fugue where i barely ate or slept as i Just played silksong. this is a thing i do with videogames that are good. the doctors call it Gamer Syndrome (autism). regardless, i got the first ending in two days and was probably among some of the first people to ever finish it. like. look at this exchange i had with a friend
if only i could carry this motivation into other parts of my life...
anyway, i had replayed hollow knight in preparation about 6 months prior to release. with that still fresh in my mind, it became pretty clear the design philosophy between these two games were very different. RTGame, in his critique of silksong, referenced hk as "cozy exploration". i think thats pretty on the mark. its certainly an extremely rewarding game. you'll get shit from going just about anywhere, it very much feels like you're robbing a house thats been abandoned. which, in hallownest, is exactly what you're doing.
environmental differences: abandonded house vs closed museum
hallownest is like a house thats been abandoned for years. the tenants are gone, and all thats left are some of the bugs and rusty locks. there are some rooms with like. a dog. but it really scrapes the barrel for whats left to fight in this place. the first boss is literally a bunch of maggots in the suit a dead knight used to wear. another one is just a second robber that already died, and got resurrected by the mold in the walls (lost vessel). you fight a bug who throws balls of shit at you like this place is Dead.
pharloom is more like a museum thats closed up for the night. fuck, it might just be the last night it ever opened, but the guards still roam the hallways. the cameras are still up, mostly, and theres a couple pressure sensors around. the point here is that there are still people, and most of them want you out. as such, the game is far less rewarding- the shit's still guarded! pharloom is simply made to be a more dangerous place than the rotting corpse that is hallownest. additionally, hornet is not a fighter, she's a warrior. rather than the knight with their charm system that rly just invokes number-go-up, hornet is all about skill. as the game goes on its more about getting new tools that benefit your playstyle more. like, i loved shakras rings and the snare setter but i know people who spammed buzzsaws like theres no tomorrow (i may be friends with the pale king).
in general, hollow knight's design is "explore this dead world, become more powerful and come to own it" whereas silksong is more like "explore this dying world thats using its last strength to get you to fuck off". alot of team cherrys design choices make even more sense when you consider damage racing. in hk you could reliably make builds so strong you'd just tear apart bosses while barely thinking. in silksong, this simply doesn't work. team cherry really wants you to put your all into these fights, they want you to think! this is also why the runbacks are a thing. bilewater aside, all the runbacks in silksong really aren't that long. they exist to avoid the mentality of mindlessly throwing yourself at the bosses- you shouldn't have any attempts that are like "i wasn't paying attention, oops". now there's a measurable time impact you *have* to face, and i guarentee that makes you want to die alot less.
i mean shit, even in bilewater! if you find a hidden bench, the runback to groal is still half of the entire area- it takes like 3 minutes. and i kind of love it? after beating groal (took me 9 attempts, 30 mins of just running back) i sat there thinking " i want to be mad at this ridiculously long runback, but also i feel so gratified right now? ". it feels like the perfect capstone to bilewater, an area that is inaccessible on purpose. whether thats something a developer should be putting into a game is up for debate, but its not really *bad* design is it? the fact everyone hates bilewater is proof they did it right. they wanted to design an area that fucks with you and makes you mad, and they did exactly that. i cant say thats bad! especially when you consider the story purposes. bilewater is like that because the citadel dumped all their waste into what used to be a beautiful and serene cave system. this is the sewage. if it feels like shit, thats because it literally is.
before i go into the very few things i'd change about this game, let me just actually gush about some of the honestly perfect points of this game i wouldn't bring up otherwise. god the red memory is so fucking peak. mount fay? amazing. give me 6 more mountains please. HIGH HALLS. i LOVE high halls. and the second sentinel is hot. really alot of this game is for robofuckers, there's the fourth chorus, twelth architect, second sentinel, i mean the list rly goes on. and boss-wise? karmelita and phantom are AMAZING boss fights. i'd put them just short of pure vessel and nightmare king grimm from hk. i really hope the dlcs bring us something like that. im sitting and waiting patiently for 4 more years of radio silence.
is there even anything i dislike about this game
fuck, not much. i'd completely change up the silk skills. they should vary much like the tools do, instead of just being 6 flavors of offensive damage (except cross stitch. i love you parry mechanic). especially rune rage, which is just so ass. it wouldve been nice to have some defensive silk skills, or ones that lean more to that on the spectrum. currently its like
it should not be like this!
speaking of, a couple of the crests need balancing. you might be thinking im talking about beast but no! i love beast! i actually used it alot during my steel soul run! im talking about witch, a damn shame because i really wanted to love it. the moveset is really fun but it is simply impossible to heal properly. its trying to sit somewhere inbetween hunter and beast in terms of aggression but it sort of fails on both worlds. the healing just needs a minor buff to work (bigger range or homing for example) and then it'll be my favourite crest. furthermore, wanderer should have a different healing style too- if you're going for the hollow knight set, just complete it! give it the single heal! this would serve to balance an overpowered crest and hit it further to what its clearly going for.
i also think locking the final melee upgrade behind a bunch of minigames is. a little silly. like they're fun i do love fleatopia but i think there should be an alternative method. like maybe you just rob them and get to see a smidge of hornet's darker side instead of the starman she's painted as throughout the story.
you may notice these are pretty minor and Yeah. i really did not have many issues with silksong! im giving them the benefit of the doubt knowing there's dlc coming (such as a lack of memory lockets and hard bosses), but looking at HK, all the hard bosses are packed into optional dlc, a good design choice.
overall
this game takes a starkly different angle to hollow knight, a choice im very glad they made. it seems many people wanted hk2, but this is Silksong. its not for everyone- i don't believe a game thats for everyone would be good. im so amazed by how well they've pulled off this direction, and im looking forward to where it goes next.
overall, 9.6/10.