On the finish of August, followers of Hollow Knight had been surprised to find that its long-awaited sequel would drop in a matter of weeks.
After an extended wait, Staff Cherry launched Hollow Knight: Silksong on September 4, 2025 to a lot fanfare that it broke digital storefronts globally.
The sport surpassed half 1,000,000 concurrent gamers on Steam a day after its launch, and bought over three million copies in three days on the platform, in line with Alinea Analytics.
No assessment codes had been despatched out forward of launch, therefore impressions coming in slowly. However all in all, it is secure to say that Silksong has rapidly turn into considered one of 2025’s largest titles, at present sitting at a rating of 92 on Metacritic for the PC model.
However how are critics faring within the fantastical (and unforgiving) world of Pharloom?
Taking part in as Hornet
Gamers had been first launched to Silksong’s protagonist Hornet within the authentic Hollow Knight, wherein she was a recurring boss.
For PC Gamer‘s Tyler Colp, who rated the sport 90 out of 100, “the fun of enjoying as Hornet is what actually anchors Silksong as a superb motion recreation above all else.”
Accessing a boss’s highly effective skillset was the important thing attraction.
“[Silksong] improved on each core situation I ever had with Hollow Knight, then continued to enhance on each situation I did not know I had”
Monica Phillips, Dualshockers
“After I wasn’t being clobbered, it felt just like the desk had turned,” Colp wrote. “Silksong units the bar for mastery so excessive that you would be able to solely attain it for brief bursts, but it surely’s a carrot value chasing when pulling it off is so unbelievably satisfying.”
VGC‘s Ashley Schofield, ranking the sport 3 out of 5, was notably amazed by the “swish motion” and “attractive movement” Hornet has in Silksong.
“Each enter flows cleanly into each other,” Schofield wrote. “The enjoyment of motion solely heightens with the gradual unlocks of her sprint, float, and wall leap skills, giving a way of freedom and precision to maneuvering round Pharloom.”
DualShockers’ Monica Phillips, who scored Silksong 9 out of 10, recommended the enhancements to Hornet’s moveset and the sport’s total gameplay.
“Silksong primarily has the identical base gameplay as Hollow Knight, but it surely takes each mechanic and part that stems from that base and reworks, improves, and reimplements it in a approach I’ve seen few sequels attempt to do earlier than,” Phillips famous. “It feels prefer it improved on each core situation I ever had with Hollow Knight, then continued to enhance on each situation I did not know I had.”
Elevated problem
The problem of the sequel has been elevated to match with Hornet’s extra highly effective fight skills, however Rock Paper Shotgun‘s James Archer felt the best way Staff Cherry implements this “is a bit blunt” – noting how enemies have a bigger pool of well being and managers hit twice as onerous.
However Dualshockers’ Phillips reveled in Silksong’s elevated problem.
“As the sport progresses, you will probably discover that it tends to kick your ass far faster and more durable than the unique did,” they famous. “The message is obvious: Be taught the mechanics, grasp the dance, or die.”
“It is sometimes a check of ability, information, and endurance. Each struggle looks like a dance with loss of life the place you are studying the steps on the spot, and the sensation is unbelievable. Mastering a boss’ sample, getting a reward, and ending up feeling glad due to the battle is a continuing right here.”
Nonetheless, VGC’s Schofield discovered that whereas some bosses “really feel like truthful challenges of mechanical ability and memorisation”, Staff Cherry’s “insistence” on rising “participant struggling” in Silksong assessments the endurance of gamers moderately than their expertise.
“Only a few of the fight challenges are quick frenetic engagements; as a substitute, they’re drawn-out battles of attrition as a result of extremely excessive well being of bosses and elite enemies alike,” she wrote. “There’s nothing inherently fallacious with designing a recreation to make the participant undergo, however there needs to be extra participating approaches than empty time-wasting and pace-damaging sadism.”
Schofield complained that the intense problem is “hardly ever fascinating or rewarding,” and as a substitute fills the participant with a “drained, hole aid that it is over.”
PC Gamer’s Colp, nevertheless, discovered leisure within the problem. “The diabolical dedication to knocking you in your ass in a world the place everybody’s been knocked on their ass is what impresses me most about Silksong,” he stated. “Not even a recreation as punishing as Elden Ring outright refuses to loosen its grip round your neck.”
Whereas he felt the problem had objective when he was in a position to step again and recognize “how inventive [its] boss fights could be,” he was conscious that Silksong “would not at all times get the steadiness between effort and reward proper.”
“You are not assured to get something after defeating a boss,” Colp famous. “For the primary half, you will be fortunate to discover a bench to relaxation on that is not attempting to kill you or take your cash.”
Respawn factors and runbacks
In Silksong, benches are spawn factors that permit gamers to vary Hornet’s fight tools in addition to to get well well being. When she is defeated in fight, she’s going to return to the final bench she sat on.
For many critics, the location of those benches turned a detriment as a consequence of how far aside they’re positioned between fight encounters.
Archer stated he can see the purpose of those “runbacks” as a approach of “penalising your carelessness” and so as to add “pressure of getting to struggle or parkour your approach again.”
“Besides this pressure factor would not work as a result of you may simply sprint over and beneath each non-boss enemy, and shedding to a boss themselves already carries the punishment of not permitting you to play the sport any additional. In different phrases, they’re boring busywork, a proven fact that trendy Souls and Soulslikes have more and more received smart to.”
If it weren’t for the runbacks, Phillips stated she’d have given Silksong an ideal rating.
“There are tons of challenges which might be extremely designed, then there’s runbacks from benches that take a number of minutes of extremely repetitive gameplay, enemies that may seize you and chink your whole well being bar in seconds. It is unforgiving, and whereas I like that, it will get to a restrict.”
For Schofield, worrying about respawn factors and Hornet’s well being makes “exploration really feel [more] terrifying than thrilling” – and never in a great way.
“Your mind [ends up] firmly greedy onto the reminiscence of how way back the final bench was moderately than questioning what new discovery may lie previous the following secretly breakable wall – a sense completely antithetical of the Metroidvania style.”
Schofield additionally stated that the concern of shedding rosaries (the sport’s forex) encourages gamers to quick journey to distributors, which “breaks the movement of exploration.”
“Grinding for forex and worrying a few stingy economic system feels alien to the adventurous spirit of a Metroidvania, and is one other instance of Soulslike style norms poisoning what may have been a releasing cycle of exploration.”
The great thing about Pharloom
Exploration was a serious spotlight amongst critics. Rock Paper Shotgun’s Archer reveled in getting “misplaced on objective” in Pharloom, and described Silksong’s worldbuilding for instance “of how nicely Staff Cherry can successfully beckon you to hazard.”
“Nearly each tunnel or silo is affected by offshoots and ledges, simply begging for a fast look, which regularly turns into an extended look, which could flip into two hours poking round a totally totally different space that you could be by no means have found when you did not take that one flip.”
“There’s at all times one thing […] lingering within the background that pulls your eye, and people particulars at all times saved me hungry for extra”
Tyler Colp, PC Gamer
As Colp traversed Pharloom, he appreciated how “each shortcut and secret space contextualised the horrors you face within the greater, sadder image.”
“There’s at all times one thing simply out of view or lingering within the background that pulls your eye, and people particulars at all times saved me hungry for extra,” he wrote. “By the top of the sport, I could not inform what was extra thrilling: the actual fact I one way or the other dug my approach into a complete zone I hadn’t explored but or the questions that new place raised about what’s actually happening with Pharloom’s largest mysteries.”
Silksong’s symbiotic pairing of worldbuilding and explorations additionally lends to its narrative, placing “that good steadiness between a forefront narrative and complicated lore,” as famous by Phillips.
“You possibly can undergo this recreation and barely know what is going on on, [but] when you dig just a little deeper, work together with the world, and browse by means of the flavour textual content on enemy logs, you will discover there’s a complete world crafted beneath your ft […] it is a degree of excellence you do not see from indie video games – hell, video video games normally.”
Total consensus
Whereas most critics had been sceptical of the problem spike in Silksong, some discovered it onerous to not reframe it as a constructive facet of the sport in some methods.
“I need to present Silksong a thrashing,” Archer wrote. “I need to verbally repay unto it each merciless loss of life, each pernickety leaping puzzle, each time-thieving runback it is inflicted on me […] However I am unable to. For each second of frustration, there are 5 of aid, of pleasure, of magnificence, even.”
Colp had the same expertise with Silksong total. “I could also be bruised and sore from the expertise, however I am joyful to say that it does, in reality, repay.
“Silksong is just too good to let the brutal problem maintain it again, or to carry me again from seeing all of it – even when I want there have been a minimum of some choices to tone down the nastiest of punishments.”
He continued: “Silksong will beat you, burn you, rub your face within the dust, after which dazzle you with one other piece of a haunted clockwork world, assured the sight will elicit a bloody, jagged-tooth grin.”
“Silksong is extra of what was good about Hollow Knight, but it surely did not keep away from some very clear pitfalls in design on its lengthy path to launch”
Ashley Schofield, VGC
Schofield, nevertheless, was vital of Staff Cherry’s strategy to merging two genres – Metroidvania and Soulslike – collectively for Silksong.
“[These genres] are basically at odds with one another, with the required staples of every actively damaging the opposite half to finish up with a lesser complete – Silksong finally ends up with a playable id disaster.”
She concluded: “The great thing about its artwork and design and the exact, joyful really feel of its motion are inarguable wonders, however the tiring and demotivating nature of its sadistic strategy to problem ripples all through all the expertise of exploration and fight.
“Silksong is extra of what was good about Hollow Knight, but it surely did not keep away from some very clear pitfalls in design on its lengthy path to launch.”