Few modern indies loom as large as Hollow Knight, a breakout that set a high bar for atmosphere, precision, and scope. Silksong steps into that shadow with a new lead, a new land, and a mandate to move faster and cut deeper. Hornet’s needle and silk promise a sharper, more vertical take on the formula, while the world beyond Hallownest carries its own rhythms, dangers, and secrets.
The question is no longer whether Team Cherry can recapture what worked, but what it chooses to reinvent. Does the momentum-heavy combat hold up under pressure? Can exploration keep its sense of discovery without drifting into sprawl? How do difficulty, pacing, and performance align with the sequel’s more agile ambitions?
In this review, we examine Silksong’s core pillars-combat, traversal, world design, boss encounters, audio-visual craft, and overall balance-to see whether this long-anticipated follow-up refines a modern classic or gets tangled in its own web.
Movement and Combat Depth, Tactics that Reward Patience and Precision
Hornet’s agility is more than spectacle; it’s a language of intent. Every hop, dart, and needle lunge demands measured inputs and awareness of spacing, turning traversal into a tactical prelude. Vertical layouts funnel you into choices-chase, perch, or peel away-while thread-based moves double as repositioning and offense. The result is momentum-driven traversal that feels liberating but never loose, with commitment on each strike making overextension a calculated risk rather than a happy accident.
- Wait out the tells: Enemies advertise danger; the safest punish often follows a full animation, not the first twitch.
- Own the diagonals: Angled approaches and retreats beat straight lines, opening whiff-punish routes on grounded foes.
- Spend Silk with purpose: Offensive bursts are tempting, but the smarter play is saving for a heal after you’ve created space.
- Climb to reset: Vertical disengages buy breath and bait leaps you can intercept on descent.
- Respect recovery: Let heavy tools breathe; reset footing instead of greedily chasing one more hit.
The combat loop prizes patience and precision under pressure. Windows are narrow, but legible; misreads sting, yet the game is generous to players who pace their offense, prioritize targets, and pivot between survival and damage with a cool head. It’s a design that rewards restraint as much as flair-stringing together tidy confirms, saving resources for the moment that matters, and turning clean movement into inevitability rather than improvisation.
World Structure and Exploration, How to Backtrack Smarter and Uncover Secrets
Silksong’s kingdom unfurls as a lattice of vertical chambers and crosswise arteries, a deliberate maze where speed and curiosity are rewarded with clean loops back to earlier crossroads. Each new traversal tool meaningfully redraws your mental map: narrow chimneys that once felt punitive become express shafts, while once-innocuous balconies reveal layered shortcuts that tether far-flung biomes. Environmental micro-cues-hairline cracks, suspicious alcoves, sound stingers, and enemy patrol patterns-double as subtle cartography, teaching you to read the stone as intently as the parchment. The design’s restraint is key: secrets are framed as one-screen riddles with readable logic, not pixel-hunt trivia, and the result is a world that respects your time without flattening discovery into routine.
- Catalog friction points: Note locked gates, one-way drops, and near-miss ledges; a single movement upgrade can flip all three at once.
- Chase audio and animation tells: Hollow thuds, faint chimes, and quivering props often mask breakables or hidden ladders.
- Cross-reference hubs: After major encounters, recheck central junctions-NPC routes, vendor stock, and shortcuts frequently reconfigure.
- Prioritize mobility loadouts: Equip perks that extend airtime, wall control, or map clarity when you intend to sweep for secrets.
- Triangulate with transport nodes: Leapfrog between fast-travel points to probe the “negative space” you’ve never approached from the opposite side.
- Validate patterns: If a decor motif hides a secret once, it likely does twice-scan for repeats across adjacent biomes.
Smart backtracking is less about retracing steps than reframing angles. Approach familiar rooms from new elevations, test diagonals you couldn’t sustain before, and sweep edges-floor seams, lintels, pillar crowns-rather than their centers. Build a personal shorthand on the map when available (question marks for puzzle rooms, arrows for suspected loops), then schedule bite-sized passes between rest points to amortize risk. The rhythm that emerges is decisively Silksong: brisk, legible, and punctuated by secrets that feel earned because you learned the world’s language-and then spoke it back.
Encounters and Progression, Suggested Upgrade Priorities for a Smoother Journey
Silksong’s most memorable moments come from the way its agile duels lock into the rhythm of traversal. Fights cascade through vertical arenas, asking you to read attack tells mid-leap while threading movement into offense. Enemies are telegraphed with clean silhouettes and distinct audio cues, yet encounters remain brisk and improvisational; healing requires nerve and spacing, and the world’s layered routes reward players who learn to cut through encounters rather than brute-force them. Progress unfolds through a lattice of optional challenges and resource sinks, with mobility tools opening shortcuts and crafting finds expanding your combat vocabulary. It’s a loop that privileges curiosity and adaptation over grind, and it’s at its best when you’re leveraging momentum to touch down, reassess, and launch again.
- Prioritize mobility: earlier dash refinements, snappier aerial control, and more forgiving wall interaction reduce attrition across every biome and boss arena.
- Stabilize your heal: upgrades that shorten Bind commitment or create safer windows to recover pay dividends in long routes and multi-phase encounters.
- Sustain needle uptime: modest boosts to reach, recovery, and stagger reliability yield more damage over time than raw power spikes you can’t consistently land.
- Expand tool economy: extra charges, quicker swaps, and cheaper crafting turn situational options into reliable solutions for crowds and armored threats.
- Invest in map intelligence: clearer cartography, markers, and breadcrumb aids reduce backtracking and keep you in the fight instead of lost between rest spots.
As the world widens, route planning becomes the real meta. Build for survival and positioning first; specialization can follow once you’ve banked enough resources to experiment without stalling progress. Tuning your loadout at rest spots before boss runs-leaner sustain for shorter duels, broader utility for new regions-keeps the learning curve steep but fair. For a smoother ascent, treat the following as luxuries until your fundamentals are locked:
- Delay pure damage spikes until you can consistently create safe openings to use them.
- Skip niche elemental counters unless a region or enemy family clearly demands them.
- Deprioritize vanity and low-impact trinkets early on; every slot should carry exploration or survival weight.
- Hold off on high-risk perks that trade defense for output until you’ve internalized enemy tempos and arena geometry.
Final Verdict and Value, Recommendations for Veterans and First Timers
Bottom line: this is a confident, meticulously crafted follow-up that turns mechanical finesse and world-building into a cohesive ascent. It offers hours of dense exploration and mastery-driven combat that feel meaningful rather than padded, with a presentation that consistently dazzles. For genre devotees, it’s a day-one recommendation; for the curious, it’s a rare case where difficulty sharpens the experience without smothering wonder. In sheer craft-to-cost, it’s an outstanding value that respects your time while rewarding curiosity.
- Best fit if: You enjoy exacting platforming, layered routes, and learning through repetition.
- Solid purchase if: You want a modern Metroidvania with striking art and a score that carries momentum.
- Consider waiting if: You prefer relaxed, guided progression over skill-forward encounters.
How to approach it: veterans should lean into experimentation and unlearning-treat every shortcut, route, and encounter as new problems to solve, and prioritize mobility options that complement your playstyle. First-timers will get the most out of a patient rhythm: scout, retreat, return stronger, and let the map and muscle memory co-evolve. Either way, embrace iteration-the game’s language clicks when you allow small losses to teach big lessons.
- Veterans: Push optional challenges after core milestones; diversify loadouts for bosses versus traversal; chase secrets when your toolkit broadens.
- First-timers: Tackle one region at a time; bank progress frequently at safe spots; practice enemy patterns before committing resources.
Silksong doesn’t feel like a simple sequel so much as a confident redefinition. It preserves the exacting combat, layered exploration, and quiet melancholy that made its predecessor resonate, while shifting the rhythm toward speed and momentum. When that tempo clicks, the game sings; when it stumbles, difficulty spikes and occasional pacing ruts remind you that refinement can still be unforgiving.
What endures is Team Cherry’s precision. The hand-crafted spaces, the clarity of its encounter design, and a score that underscores wonder as much as weariness create a world that rewards patience and curiosity. It is demanding, yes, but rarely careless about what it asks of you.
For devotees of the genre, this is essential work-an intricate tapestry threaded with new ideas that largely strengthen the weave. For players unmoved by Hollow Knight’s austere charms, Silksong won’t soften its edges to win you over. It sharpens them. In a field crowded with bigger and louder, Silksong argues for better: cleaner lines, tighter loops, and a vision executed with quiet conviction. The result is a game worth getting lost in-and one that earns the time it asks of you.
