It’s been a really long wait, but Hollow Knight: Silksong, Team Cherry’s sequel to the beloved side-scrolling search-action game Hollow Knight is finally here. The game introduces a whole lot of changes and additions to what made Hollow Knight great, expanding on both the formula of a classic and some key elements of the side-scrolling exploration-action genre in general.
Here’s a semi-spoilery look at what I’ve seen in Pharloom so far — we won’t talk about the story or any major developments, but if you want to discover all the new mechanics and touches yourself, dig into the game before reading on.
Spoiler warning: If you’d like to avoid light spoilers for Hollow Knight and Hollow Knight: Silksong, do not continue.
Silksong makes healing a whole new tactical decision
Hollow Knight’s healing system is one of its essential features, setting the pace of combat and creating an intense risk-reward calculus within every fight. As long as you’ve got enough Soul stored up from hitting enemies, you can hold Circle to heal a single point of health at any time — but you need to stand still for about three seconds to do it.
Silksong gives you a faster, more versatile heal. You still charge it by hitting enemies — gathering Silk rather than Soul — but hitting Circle once activates Bind, a healing move you can use anywhere, even in mid-air. Instead of getting one point of health back, you get three, but you can only heal when your Silk is full and healing always costs all your Silk. And like in Hollow Knight, Silk powers some of your strongest abilities.
Those adjustments to healing completely change the calculus of when and where to heal, setting a faster tempo for combat in Silksong that’s just as tactical.
Enemies are smarter and more defensive
You’ll often find your opponents feinting, backstepping, and guarding against your attacks and trying to counter. Many opponents are aggressive, but also defensively minded, forcing you to think about your moves and fight carefully.
This feels like a story choice as well as a gameplay one; in Hollow Knight, most enemies were almost like zombies due to a strange infection. The enemies of Silksong are aggressive and dangerous, but often still have their wits about them, and it shows in how they fight.
Leaping to ledges is quick, agile, and easy
Hornet is more acrobatic than Hollow Knight’s protagonist, with the ability to grab the edges of platforms and pull herself up. You can also jump straight from the edge of a platform to your next ledge, which speeds up platforming significantly. Mantling also seems to provide a few invincibility frames — great if you’re on the run from a pesky flying enemy.
The world is full of other characters (and more straightforward side quests)
Unlike in Hollow Knight, which took place in a ruined kingdom, Silksong’s setting of Pharloom is very much alive. You’ll meet plenty of people on your journey, many of whom will give you side quests. Those quests are now tracked in your menu, a marked departure from the minimalist, Souls-like approach in Hollow Knight. It’s worth checking back in at settlements you find and with characters you meet, too, as their stories unfold.
You can set traps for your enemies…
You’ll eventually unlock all the abilities that Hornet used against you in boss fights in Hollow Knight. These include the thread traps she can set that are activated if enemies walk into them or hit them with an object, throwing knives, and a whole lot of other options. There’s a large variety of tools to unlock, giving you a lot of options for how to approach a fight.
…and they’ll set them for you
Pharloom is full of deadly traps, and certain locations have some particularly devious ones. Hollow Knight had the occasional breakaway floor, but in Silksong, you need to keep your wits about you, lest you break a tripwire and get skewered by spikes.
You’ve got a huge number of character build options
Alongside tools and traps are Hornet’s Crests, which you can unlock throughout your adventure. Crests change your whole combat style — the Wanderer crest gives you speedy attacks with a shorter range, for instance, while the Beast crest’s strikes are more like raking claws over your enemies and cover a larger area.
Crests all have different layouts for charms, affecting your loadout, and some come with different takes on your Bind ability. When you Bind while wearing the Reaper crest, for instance, you get a short period where your attacks will generate more Silk — great for boss fights where you need to heal often.
The game is full of gorgeous little touches
With such a long development, Team Cherry has had time to put in a lot of great little extras. Watch for tiny ants to carry the pieces of your defeated foes back to their homes for dinner. And once you unlock the musical Needolin, try playing it for different characters to see what happens.
This only scratches the surface of what there is to discover in Hollow Knight: Silksong. You can start your journey up Pharloom’s pilgrim trail right now — grab it at PlayStation Store.
