t isn’t very often that the cultural zeitgeist of video games just comes together on a subject like the friggin’ Planeteers summoning Captain Planet, right? I mean, thinking back, the last few times something like that happened were the releases of Pokémon GO or Grand Theft Auto V—video game releases that surpassed the typical grand-scale spectacle for their respective audiences and had instead exploded into being these larger-than-life experiences that invaded all of the water coolers out there.
Well, it happened again with the long-awaited sequel to the 2017 sleeper hit from indie studio Team Cherry—Hollow Knight: Silksong.
What was once ranked among the vaporware meme status of Half-Life 3 or, to a lesser extent, Banjo-Threeie (can’t really do Shenmue III or Zach Snyder’s Justice League, because well, those ended up coming out), the highly anticipated follow-up finally emerged from years of silence with a surprise launch date that was showcased in the 2025 Gamescom event. The sporadic appearance of the trailer not only showed everyone watching and in attendance that the game was alive and well, but it also steadily concluded with an eye-opening launch date that was just a mere two weeks away.
No advance press copies or influencer kits—a worldwide release for everyone to experience completely sealed from behind Team Cherry’s doors until its Sept. 4 launch date. The clandestine rollout couldn’t be more thematic for Silksong, as the crux of the game teased a quest that spanned a world far bigger and more daunting than Hollow Knight’s Hallownest ever was, and after spending hours of needling my way through the troubled lands of Pharloom, I can safely say that the hype is real.
Silksong is one of the finest Metroidvanias ever made—a true peak for the sub-genre of “search-action” gaming.
Like all fine manicured nails, there’s the occasional hangnail, so let’s rip that sucker out now and lay it out here—Hollow Knight: Silksong is a difficult, and oftentimes, cruel game. Underneath its assumedly simple 2D side-scrolling exterior is a complex combat system of hitboxes and hurtboxes, deceptive physics, erratically unpredictable enemy behavior, and a slew of other nuances that will constantly challenge most players’ understanding of “Game Feel.” In the same vein of control that the Mega Man X series where X offers a wholly different dynamic than playing as Zero, returning players of the previous Hollow Knight title will immediately notice the small yet significant differences between Hornet and the Knight of the original. The biggest difference is the knockback of her recoil and the openings she creates for enemies after attacks, as she doesn’t appear to have the ground power to stave foes away with her needle strikes. Even after equipping gear to compensate for this shortcoming, it still doesn’t completely alleviate the issue, and in turn, creates a situation where Hornet’s chance of survival all hinges on a constant game of footsies with every enemy she encounters—enemies, mind you, that primarily attack with rush-based tactics head-on.
These shortcomings to the insect heroine’s offense are even further compounded by her weak constitution—Hornet often can’t take more than one hit before she’s knocking at death’s door. The issue isn’t just an early-game nuisance, either; many of the hostile forces you’ll encounter in Silksong will inflict multiple hit points’ worth of damage, and the impacts only seem to escalate throughout the game, deflating a lot of the excitement that comes from expanding your health bar. The most significant change to combat and movement, however, is the new approach to pogo attacks. Hornet will have her trademark dive-thrust in the air in the form of a downward strike, and like the previous adventure, she can use the recoil of a landed hit to propel herself back in the air and juggle additional attacks against the enemy. The maneuver is vital to progress through the game, as much of the design of Silksong's world and enemies is engineered around the mechanic. So much so that it almost feels like a significant reaction from Team Cherry toward the players who broke the original Hollow Knight with pogo strike tactics, creating a new foundation of physics, momentum, and offensive strategy for the move that's seemingly supported by a giant totem of resentment. Throughout most of the quest, Hornet’s down-strike will automatically deploy at an angled trajectory, meaning that players will need to input the move from a 10-to-11 o’clock position from their opponent in order to ensure a successful mark against the target. The issue with the move, however, is that failing to make contact with an enemy (especially an airborne foe) can be quite punishing. A whiffed rush from above will leave Hornet wide open for a retaliatory attack, or worse, send her plummeting toward the precarious hazards of her immediate surroundings, as they take their pound of flesh while enemies line up for seconds. Although players will get the opportunity to modify the complexity and timing of their attacks with the equipment of Crests (more on that later), downward strikes from the air will never be as straightforward as they were with the Knight. More obnoxious yet—while there were only a handful of platforming sections that forced players to pogo jump their weapons off of dangerous obstacles like Scrooge McDuck in Hallownest, pogo-centric platforming sections are about as common as crosswalks in the world of Pharloom, and only get to be more challenging the higher you climb towards the nefarious Citadel.
Hope y'all don't hate precision platforming because almost every other room is like this!
Thankfully, in a similar fashion to the Knight’s soul energy, Hornet has her own resource management in the form of, well, silk, and with each successive strike, will net players additional threads to complete their spool. After weaving a full spool of silk, Hornet will be able to “bind” her wounds, and heal back three hit-points at a time and in a fashion that’s mercifully faster and smoother than the incremental charge dynamic that the Knight had with his heal move. Likewise, collected silk will also serve as the energy for your special attacks or skills that can make or break the chance of victory, balancing a crucial risk/reward element to your resources that’s far more vital than it ever was to the nameless ghost of Hallownest. The biggest addition to the series, mechanic-wise, is the introduction of Tools and Crests. As players progress through the deadly lairs of hostile insects, they’ll encounter equipable crests that will not only act as a hub for Silksong’s take on “Charms”, but they’ll also vastly change the Hornet’s fighting style with her needle as well. After obtaining 
the initial Hunter’s crest, Silksong will open Hornet’s abilities with load-out options that’ll grant players access to equip different “Tools” that will drastically enhance the heroine’s combat prowess. The interchangeable tools not only cover the familiar “Charms” like system from the original game, like passive-active perks, but they also come in a variety of physical tools in the form of side-weapons that Hornet can deploy, like whoever your favorite Belmont, complete with their own form of heart-like currency to fuel their upkeep, a la “beast shards.” The tools are classified in color-coded categories, with yellow type being the passive perks or enhancements, blue type being support-related tools that can affect the way Hornet recovers, and the red type accounting for those previously mentioned sub-weapons. Unlike the nameless little Knight’s adventure in Hallownest, however, the loadout options for Hornet’s tools are all dependent on what specific crest she has equipped, as each crest will have limited slots of tool-types available to equip, and arranged in a way that complements the inherent abilities they offer in their own right. The ‘Reaper” Crest, for example, allows players to temporarily earn extra silk from fallen enemies in the form of collectable silk balls after using their recovery bind. Naturally, with this unique power, it makes total sense for the Reaper crest to offer more blue tool slots than any other tool type due to the crest’s focus on silk gathering, given that it’s a resource that’s essential for healing.
As deep and exciting as these new loadout options are for the Needle-armed protagonist, the lack of flexibility for optimal play can really suck the air out of this cool new system. Just like Hollow Knight before it, Silksong continues the baffling decision to lock all customization benches, the rest stop for players to recover in between treks through the kingdom. While I understand that this limitation is likely there by design under the argument of game balance, I can’t help but call bull on such a notion. Picking apart the Soulslike inspiration in Team Cherry’s sequel, it’s a bit difficult to understand their take on the setup when nearly every game in the Dark Souls lineage and beyond has given players the bare minimum agency to customize their character loadout on the fly. The ability to experiment with various loadouts in Silksong is simply too tedious an affair to really engage with because the density and variety of Pharloom’s level design is simply too expansive to experiment with multiple builds that specialize in one or two use-cases at a time. Still, it’s certainly a neat enhancement to the character-building foundation from the original—it’s just a shame that its narrow application makes it annoying to spec new play styles the further you advance through the campaign.
In spite of some of the bewildering yet impressive shake-ups to combat and movement, Team Cherry indemnifies that trade-off with an engrossing sense of pace behind its world-building that’s majestic enough to drive this unshakable urge to persevere further with that “one more run” feeling.
After waking up in a golden cage that’s being carted through a land she doesn’t recognize, Hornet makes swift work of the unfortunate captors who were escorting her, and sets off on a quest to learn more about the reason for her abduction and the masterminds behind it all. The paradigm of a world that’s being actively oppressed by a despotic regime versus one that’s cemented in the aftermath of a world-ending cataclysm, behind the lens of a “big fish in a, uhh, different pond” role, lends a great deal to the expectations of Silksong being a worthy follow-up to the epic scope of Hollow Knight’s grimdark fantasy world. All of that is made possible by a big factor, and that’s Hornet herself, a character with a fully fleshed-out personality that’s leagues apart from the enigmatic, cipher-like protagonist in the Knight—it ironically sets Hornet up to become a real element to the world around her instead of a simple tourist, despite being a foreign territory to her altogether. Without foreshadowing too much, this tone is steadily shown to be presented through the subtle story beats and the occasional flashback that pulls the curtain back on Hornet’s deific childhood. It also doesn’t hurt that Silksong’s ensemble cast of memorable characters all manage to share an impact sense of chemistry with the silken warrior, with every new interaction bringing out a little more out of Hornet’s personality at times. My favorite character and one who really good example for this new sense of gravity is Shakra. As players first engage her, she immediately jumps to her chakram blade and declares that she’s ready for a fight, but Hornet explains that she’s only interested in answers with a conviction that disarms Shakra’s steely exterior. The weary ring-user then offers you her cartography services similar to that of Cornifer, and as you interact with her throughout your adventure, the two swordswomen steadily form a warrior’s bond to deliver this sense of reward that’s arguably just as palpable as a new map.
Like, the point in Hornet’s character development where she expresses deep gratitude for having a friend is something that could simply never be done in the first title. As cheesy as it may sound, the effort of enhancing Hornet’s characterization has a similar depth of passion that Saul Goodman got in the Breaking Bad prequel/sequel, Better Call Saul. Hear me out, we have a larger-than-life character that makes their presence known and is an integral part to the story at hand, but also has this untapped wealth of character depth just WAITING to be unleashed in the right way and the right time—and that’s what makes the world-building so much better in Silksong. Hornet being a real character that can mutually affect AND be affected by the world instead of some vehicle that tours the scenery is what makes the world-building so damn magical in this game.
You can already hear this screenshot can't you?
The presentation of the environments are far less gothic in both in the Victorian sense, and the Jhonen Vasquez sense; the production value of the scenery’s art style sets the visuals leagues ahead from its humble “Newgrounds” beginnings. The most noticeable improvement is the enhanced animation complexity, with dozens upon dozens of more unique frames of animation applied to the characters and environment on screen that vastly outpaces the “flash cartoon” look of the previous entry. All of those bespoke qualities that I alluded to earlier in locales like the savage terrain of blades and thorns in Hunter’s March or the cacophonous bronze palette of Bellhart, each unique area will shine with a level of detail and effect that will easily imprint their settings into your mind. This is especially the case with Silksong’s cut scenes, whereas the cinema work in Hollow Knight had the pedigree of being an advanced motion comic, the cinematography of Silksong’s cut scenes has the pomp and circumstance of a friggin’ Bruce Timm production. What’s even more impressive is that the jump in the animation quality of Silksong doesn’t hurt its performance in the slightest, as gameplay is firmly locked at a buttery smooth 60FPS, no matter how much is on the screen at any given time. Similarly, the musical composition reaches for the same epic heights with sweeping orchestral swells that sound as if the string quartet is locked into a shifting waltz with the piano keys, distending and descending the score, and elegantly invoking the right vibe out of whatever conveyance that given region could ever hope to achieve with its players. I cannot impress upon how hard I came to a standstill the moment Bone Bottom’s track started rolling out of my speakers—as lame as this may sound, for a few seconds, I had completely forgotten that I was playing a video game. I just wanted to soak it in without the stress of trying to fight for my life to a heart-wrenchingly beautiful soundtrack, and dammit, this quote-unquote “issue” only persisted throughout my entire play-through.
So did Team Cherry do it? Did they deliver on the hype of a sequel that arguably was more anticipated than a localization of Mother 3? This humble liker of video games and video game-adjacent things is happy to tell you yes—yes it was. For as much as the game is a sequel, I found myself enjoying it far more when I gave into the conceit of it being a wholly different chapter that could independently stand on its own merit. The difficulty can often be cruel when it gets the best of players, and there weren’t any real moments where I settled into a state of unstoppable hubris—every fight had the potential to push me against the ropes, no matter how much my skills or development had grown. The instant moments of gratification that flooded my skull with serotonin every time I managed to surpass an obstacle, or conquer the endless tug-of-war I waged against the big bad that was in my way, was the carrot that kept me coming back for more. The beauty is that the string that was tugging me along had the luxury of stringing me through one of the most gorgeously envisioned worlds that I’ve experienced in such a long time. Somewhere in my run through Silksong’s campaign, it became less about chasing that carrot and more about chasing after wherever the carrot was planning to lead me next in my journey. It was a sensation that I haven’t really felt from a Metroidvania game in literal years.
So yeah—Hollow Knight: Silksong is one of the best video games to have graced the tumultuous year of 2025. It’s not only a testament to the enormous potential that video game design still has yet to reach, but it’s also a magnificent example in proving that the aim to deliver the next big game doesn’t have to bend to the pressure of the capitalist-driven rat race that is the modern-day video game market. Some rides really ARE worth the wait, and Hollow Knight: Silksong is most certainly one of those rides.