I Didn’t Like Silksong – My Review

I played “Hollow Knight” a few years ago, well after its initial release. I remember it being quite tough but I embraced the challenge and fell in love with its quirky world and its tight combat. I even ranked the Charms and the Bosses on this blog after my second playthrough.

When “Silksong” was finally announced, the long-awaited sequel, I eagerly anticipated the release date and bought it as soon as it was available. After sinking almost twenty hours into it over the last couple of weeks, I finally decided to stop.

But how can a sequel to one of my favourite games of the last decade be so disappointing? I’ll try to spell out my thoughts and feelings in this review / critique.

Before we begin, you can check out some of my related blog posts below:

What I Liked

The World of Pharloom

By far and away the best part of “Silksong”, and the reason I sunk twenty hours into the game, was the sprawling world of Pharloom. It’s so vast and varied, full of quirky characters to fall in love with – I’m pretty sure it’s twice as big and three times as populated as Hallownest.

I’ll talk about traversal in later categories, but navigating the world could be a blast (at times). Sometimes the parkour was really cool, and I especially liked the sections where you float up streams of gushing air.

And the secrets! It felt like every room you entered had a second, hidden room tucked away in the corner, which either led to a new series of rooms or a reward of some kind. I love when games have tons of secrets – it encourages the player to explore and spend more time in the world.

The final, slightly random aspect of the world I enjoyed was the fast travel systems. The Bellways are a fun unlock (and the Bell Beast is an adorable creature), and I loved how it switched to the vacuum-tube things in the Citadel. It wouldn’t have made sense to have Bellways across the Citadel so I’m happy with the compromise the developers took.

Soundtrack

This one’s a no-brainer.

Christopher Larkin knocked the “Hollow Knight” soundtrack out of the park, and he’s worked his wonders yet again for “Silksong”. Every area has its own unique theme to enjoy during traversal.

One of the drawbacks of “Hollow Knight” was that some zones were silent or the soundtrack was purely ambient. Not in “Silksong”. They spared no expense making the soundtrack as rich and dense as the world itself.

New Abilities

I touched on it briefly when talking about traversal and how you can ride the gusts of air, but Hornet’s abilities feel unique in this sequel. It would’ve been boring to have the same sort of movement and powers, but “Silksong” excels in its innovation.

The Silk abilities can turn the tide in combat. Hornet runs and leaps like a gazelle. She can float gracefully in the air, riding on air currents. She can climb walls and double jump and throw her needle to dart across the air. Her Needolin is a gorgeous take on the Dream Nail abilities from the previous game.

Mechanically, “Silksong” is a better game than “Hollow Knight”.

The Price

This doesn’t have anything to do with the gameplay, but I was very impressed when “Silksong” released and it was under £20. There’s a lot of game here, and it’s an anticipated sequel. Other companies would charge upwards of £40 so I was stunned by Team Cherry’s business ethic.

Not much more to say beyond that. This is one of the quicker points in this critique.

Side Quests & Town Hubs

One of the biggest new changes in “Silksong” is the addition of three separate towns – Bone Bottom, Bellhart and the First Shrine settlement in the Citadel. “Hollow Knight” had the morose town of Dirtmouth with a few shops and nothing else, whereas these towns have shops as well as characters and boards that give quests.

Speaking of these quests, I love the addition of side quests. “Wishes” give the player even more reason to explore the vast world, and it can act as a helpful pointer towards where you’re supposed to be going. If nothing else, these quests made Pharloom feel more lived-in.

The only downside to this system was the “donation” quests for each town. I never really saw the point in them. Bellhart’s donations eventually lead to your own Bellhome but that’s about it. My mixed feelings on these particular side quests leads nicely into my next topic …

What I’m Mixed On

Side Quest Content

As much as I enjoyed the addition of side quests … I’m not gonna lie, there wasn’t a single side quest that wowed me.

The best one was probably the one in Wormways where you had to extract some blue juice from glowing pods. It was different enough to keep me invested.

Other than that, the quests were all “Hunt 25 of these birds” or “Find 6 purple pods scattered around Shellwood” or “Follow this trail that leads to an NPC and maybe a fight“. These are the kinds of side quests that would be clowned on in a triple-A RPG released today so I don’t know how “Silksong” has gotten away with it.

I would rather have these side quests in the game than have them cut, but I can’t help but see them as a missed opportunity.

Parkour

Every now and again I came across a nifty room in Pharloom that required tight platforming and the use of skills, and when I finished these rooms I was satisfied by the game design and my personal ability.

… The other 80% of the time, however, I thought the level design was way too hard. Some of the platforming is Path of Pain-esque and you sometimes take two hearts of damage when failing, meaning you’re much more likely to die and start all over again.

The parkour is clearly doable, so I can’t complain much, but it slowed my progress – and my enjoyment – with the game.

Crests & “Charms”

When I first found a new Crest and realised it changed my moveset, I was so excited to try it out. It doesn’t make much of a difference. The various Crests don’t vary damage as far as I can tell, so all they do is change the range of your attack as well as the type of downward “pogo” attack.

These Crests can be equipped with “Charms” (or “Tools” as they’re called in “Silksong”), and I didn’t mind a lot of the Blue and Yellow Tools. The limit of the number of each colour you can use added a nice tactical challenge.

The only problem, however, was that most of these Tools were useless (a problem “Hollow Knight” shared). The best one I found after twenty hours let Hornet heal quicker but otherwise the Tools added miniscule gameplay upgrades or changes.

Healing

Healing, or “Binding”, is different in “Silksong”. In “Hollow Knight” you would Focus to earn a hit-point, but in the sequel you Bind (which takes a little longer) to heal three hit-points in one fell swoop. The best part about it is that you can Bind in mid-air.

While I don’t mind the developers switching up the healing mechanic to differentiate “Silksong” from its predecessor, I can’t help but miss the Focus from “Hollow Knight”. It was quick and tidy, and encouraged evasive maneuvers and exploiting gaps in enemy attacks.

Also, the fact that healing takes a bit longer means that of course it would be more rage-inducing. If you’re on three hit-points and start to heal but then a boss hits you, not only do you cancel the heal but you lose your Silk and you take two hit-points of damage, bringing you to one hit-point. That variation from a potential six hit-points down to one is soul-crushing.

That’s cruel game design … which yet again segues nicely into the next section.

What I Didn’t Like

Paying For Benches (and other such nonsense)

I think I can remember one or two benches in “Hollow Knight” that you had to pay for. They didn’t cost much, and sometimes they even unlocked a shortcut through an area.

“Silksong”, on the other hand, makes you use Rosaries for every goddamn thing under the sun. Benches mostly need Rosaries. Entering houses sometimes needs Rosaries. Bellways and maps cost an arm and a leg. Because everything is so much harder, and because Rosaries are harder to come by (more on that later), it meant that over half of the time I was short-changed and couldn’t buy a checkpoint or fast travel point. If (and when) I died shortly after, it undermined all of my fun and progress.

Another aspect of benches that might appeal to some but didn’t appeal to me was that they were sometimes modified. I hated the temporary benches in the Citadel that cost 15 Rosaries per use. I hated the broken bench where you needed to follow a tough parkour path to fix it. I hate hate hated the trapped bench in Hunter’s March, even if you could disarm the trap. The damage was already done.

Nowhere felt safe, and every “success” of finding a checkpoint felt undermined.

Shards & Rosaries

Within minutes of playing the game I was hit with the realisation that Geo had now been split into two categories – Shards and Rosaries. One to replenish Tools, the other for use as currency. A cool system … on paper.

Unfortunately, this ruined the “Silksong” economy. Some enemies only drop Shards, so you get no reward from killing them. The rest of the enemies drop Rosaries and Shards, meaning you get less currency than you should.

The lack of Rosaries meant I could never buy the benches or Bellways or cool Tools that were supposed to make the game more fun. The fact I died so often meant I lost all my Rosaries and went back to square one. You might cry “skill issue”, which is mostly true, but the game design should account for those who are struggling and reward those who are flourishing.

At least you could pay for Rosary Strings, which stay with you even after death. If it wasn’t for those I would’ve quit after two hours.

Tools (the “Red” ones)

The Blue and Yellow Tools acted as Charms, but the Red Tools you can equip were all extra damage-dealing abilities at the cost of Shards.

This will definitely be my hottest and most subjective take of them all, but I didn’t find a use for these Red Tools. I tried them once or twice in boss fights but they distracted me and did little damage. To add insult to injury, it’s these inane Tools that are using the Shards – the very same pseudo-currency that’s keeping my pockets empty of Rosaries.

If you were ever going to ignore a critique, it’s this one. I don’t mind that Team Cherry introduced an extra mechanic to the game. When I watch other people play “Silksong” I see them using a variety of Red Tools and enjoying the change in gameplay as a result – good for them, I say. The Red Tools just weren’t for me.

Enemies

The enemies that swarm the many areas of Pharloom are well-designed from a visual standpoint, I’ll give Team Cherry that. As base enemies in the game, however, I have many gripes.

Team Cherry seem to have perfected the annoying flying enemy types that float just out of reach and then swoop down at lightning speed to attack you. You’re lucky if they only do one hit-point of damage. And there’s about thirty different varieties of flying enemy in the game!

For some stupid, inane, bewildering reason, about half the enemies in Pharloom hit for two hit-points of damage. In “Hollow Knight” it was a select few bosses and huge enemies that did this, but in “Silksong” even the teeny-tiniest enemies can double-shot you. Better yet, you can get stuck in an animation of hit-point followed by another hit-point damage for two damage total. So basically a two hit-point attack with extra steps.

It made traversal across the map a nightmare at times. I just wanted to get from bench A to bench B without losing my Rosaries, but apparently that was too much to ask.

Bosses

The final big complaint about “Silksong”, arguably the source of all my agony, was the bosses.

I don’t know which genius in Team Cherry decided to have every single boss hit for two hit-points of damage, but that almost ruined the game entirely for me. It made every encounter way harder than it needed to be. It reeked of desperation – either they thought that returning players would find it too easy, or maybe the playtesters were beating bosses within the first few tries. It’s a cheap way to extend the playtime of your game.

Maybe this is recency bias, but I’m pretty sure the runbacks in “Hollow Knight” weren’t as egregious as this. Benches are few and far between (and there’s a chance you don’t buy them ’cause they’re expensive and hidden), and each boss is normally between five and ten rooms away from the nearest bench. By the time you fight through all the enemies along the way, you’ve wasted numerous hit-points and maybe five minutes of your time per attempt.

Lost Judge was the worst boss in terms of the runback. It’s such an awkward journey through the Blasted Steps, and then when you finally kill the Lost Judge he explodes and kills you if you’re not standing far away enough! A great big middle finger to the player. My only solace is that I didn’t get far enough to fight that boss in Bilewater. I hear he’s a right pain in the arse.

The best boss I played was by far the Cogwork Dancers. Their phases got increasingly challenging and any death was my fault rather than some game design BS since they telegraph every move. That’s one boss out of about fifteen or twenty that I actually enjoyed, despite dying to them a dozen times.

My favourite stretches of gameplay during “Silksong” usually came after a BS boss, when I knew I could enjoy exploring the world for an hour before coming across another boss I would hate to experience.

Conclusion

I don’t mind hard games. I don’t naturally flock to them, but they definitely have a place in the gaming ecosystem. People will always want a challenge – I have fond memories of the first “Hollow Knight”, or maybe other games like “Elden Ring” and “Celeste” that were tough but reasonable.

The difference is that, for those games, the player experience came first. There were multiple ways to approach “Elden Ring” bosses, and you could even level up elsewhere – and the Stakes of Marika put you right back into the action. In “Celeste”, each screen in so short that it’s easy to try again after a failed attempt. Even some of the toughest bosses in “Hollow Knight” didn’t have a runback because they were locked behind Dream Nail.

I cannot emphasize enough – “Silksong” is not a bad game. There were stretches of the game that I enjoyed a lot. It was clearly made with immense love and care, by people who respect the fans and want what’s best for the artistic vision. Which is why I’m so sad they didn’t prioritize player enjoyment.

Usually at the end of my reviews I give a rating out of ten, but an official rating feels inappropriate given I didn’t finish the game. I can understand why game reviewers are giving it 9’s and 10’s. Me personally, based on my individual enjoyment, it would be more like a 5 or 6.

And there you have it. I’m sure this will be an unpopular and controversial post … So if you want something less controversial, you can check out some of my latest blog posts below: