I've got about 60 hrs into Silksong and am probably only about two-thirds through the game. Silksong is the sequel to Hollow Knight, a game you might know from Game Pass. The series falls into the metroidvania genre, meaning it’s a 2D Dark Souls–platformer hybrid with lots of shortcuts, a maze-like world, enemy ambushes, and the occasional tough boss.
The premise of the story is that you play as Hornet, an antagonist from the first game, with the simple goal of reaching the top of the citadel, a huge structure that takes up a massive part of the open world.
Difficulty
The feedback about the game being too hard is accurate. Silksong is drastically harder than the first Hollow Knight, and much harder than similar titles like Ender Lilies or Bloodstained, in my opinion. You should try one of those games, or better yet the first Hollow Knight, before attempting this game. The early game is very unforgiving, though the difficulty actually gets easier as your health, damage, and move set expand slowly in the mid-to-late game. There was a recent patch that nerfed some difficult early-game bosses, so some of my criticisms may not be fully accurate anymore, but regardless, it’s still a very hard game.
Most of the difficulty is a result of a lack of health or damage upgrades. You can't increase your damage at all until beating the first major boss, and health upgrades are very rare. Bosses deal 2 damage with most attacks, which is a ton considering you’ll only have 5 or 6 HP in the early game.
World & Atmosphere
Silksong's world is surprisingly diverse, at least compared to the first game in the series. There's every biome you can think of, as well as a decent range of ambiences. Atmospherically, exploration is a bit tense due to your small health pool and the abundance of traps and strong enemies.
Finding shortcuts and hidden items is really fun once you get past the early game, where upgrades and useful items are rare. A big criticism I have of Silksong, and this genre as a whole, is that there’s no way to determine when you’ve found all the items in a particular area. This forces you to either look up a guide or waste your free time exploring old areas. This game is particularly bad in that regard due to how well-hidden health upgrades (you need four items to upgrade your health once) and essential shortcuts are.
The world is massive, and after 60 hrs, I’m still seeing new locations.
Mechanics
Silksong plays similarly to the first game. It’s a souls-like platformer with a heavy emphasis on parkour, exploration, and memorizing boss attack patterns. Where it changes things up is it’s a very fast-paced game if you want it to be. I actually found playing cautiously to be much harder than opting for a quicker play style.
You can change your play style by swapping out various crests (a minimalist class system) and tools (things like throwing weapons/buffs).
One upside of this game only having four total damage upgrades that apply to all your classes is you can switch freely without having to resource grind too much.
Unfortunately, buying all the items from every shop requires a ton of currency farming due to how steep prices are and how little money enemies drop. Silksong is a game where every item sold by a vendor has a purpose, so you’ll actually need to buy at least most of them. I only found one viable farming spot in the entire game, and it wasn’t fun to use.
Bosses
Silksong bosses will generally kill you within a few seconds of seeing them before you make the runback to their arena and figure out that it only has a few moves (usually 3–5), then take it out. I never got stuck on a boss beyond the early game, outside of random side bosses that I was probably under-equipped for. If you stick to the main path, you likely won’t get stuck on anything too unfair.
Something you’ll find annoying is that for several main story bosses, you’ll have to make a long runback to their arena past various enemies or traps.
Final Take
Overall, Silksong is a solid 8/10 game. It’s far from perfect, but if you want a game with a world that feels endless with dozens of hours of story content, it’s a great game. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game where I’m still doing new stuff 60 hrs in. I’m not trying to 100% complete it either; I’m just doing main story stuff.
