Hollow Knight: Silksong – Continuing the story

As I write this, I have spent fifty hours playing Hollow Knight: Silksong. That’s how long it took me to complete the main storyline, all the side quests, and achieve a 100% completion rate. At the end of this adventure, I feel exhausted, but also fascinated by the game that Team Cherry has brought us after six years of near-total silence. Sharing many similarities with its predecessor, Hollow Knight, this long-awaited work gives access to a new kingdom, Pharloom, under the command of the mysterious Hornet, who has just been freed from the cage that led her to these inhospitable lands. Very quickly, the differences become apparent in the more aerial movements, a heroine who speaks, and double damage. There is a lot to say about Silksong and surely even more to discover in the weeks and months to come. In the meantime, here is my take on this sequel.

After letting my experience settle, I asked myself a question that will ultimately be the common thread of this review: is it really a good idea to make a sequel to a game that has been so successful? Let me explain. Obviously, the growing community of Hollow Knight fans always wants more content. You only have to look at the theories and speculation surrounding the story of Hallownest to understand that a new game will find its audience and reignite the hype. We also know that Team Cherry had to cut a lot of content from the game, not only from the Kickstarter goals, but also entire sections that were born in their overly prolific minds. In this sense, extending the world of Hollow Knight makes perfect sense. The flip side is that we expect a sequel to be even more generous in terms of content, gameplay and technical mastery. When I say “we”, I’m referring more to a social phenomenon than to the expectations of players per se. In my opinion, everyone had high expectations, whether they were players, video game professionals or even the creators themselves. And perhaps that’s the game’s flaw: wanting to give us what we expect, which is more. Like a telescope at the top of the City of Tears, I invite you to examine Hollow Knight: Silksong through this lens.

Let’s get the controversy out of the way quickly: the game is difficult, much more so than its big brother. As I said, I came out of it feeling exhausted, because moments of calm are rare for our spider. The obstacles to overcome are felt from the very first hour, in both aspects of the gameplay. The combat is demanding, with enemies that are quick and agile both horizontally and vertically. Not to mention the large number of flying insects in the gigantic bestiary. You’ll need to be responsive and patient. Especially since each hit often causes two points of damage to the five starting masks that make up your health bar. Although you are given a healing item that regenerates three masks, at the cost of all your silk, mana or soul in the game, you are limited to taking no more than three hits most of the time. To compensate for this, the masks, of which you must collect four fragments to gain one health point, are only really useful in pairs. Speaking of our antagonists, the first ones we encounter, once the tutorial area is complete, are already aggressive, jumping, throwing projectiles and dashing. From the very first bosses, you’ll need to be alert and master your character. The second point that infuriates many players concerns the platforming. The areas feature entire screens in which you have to bounce off elements of the scenery to avoid sharp spikes that will cause damage, but also send you back to the starting point of that same screen. This mastery of the “pogo”, which was reserved for side content or the final hours of the first game’s adventure, gets in the way of the main route right from the start of the adventure for the most exploratory among us. To top it all off, this vertical animation, well known to fans, is replaced by a dive kick, an oblique downward trajectory, forcing you to anticipate the landing point before pressing the button. Although it is possible to change this set of movements via an emblem system after progressing through the first biomes, it will have annoyed many players, even at Point’n Think. Added to this is a major change in this sequel. The adventure does not take you into the depths of Hallownest; our weaver’s goal is to find her captors in a citadel perched at the top of the new kingdom. Our adventure therefore takes the form of an ascent. This change of perspective brings with it a whole new “penalty”: the dizzying fall! Combine the demanding pogo with a fall (or spikes) and you’ll understand why so many players are screaming in rage.

While we’re on the subject of reversing the path to be taken, let’s talk about level design. This path to the heights is actually a pilgrimage to the citadel, our destination. And that’s pretty much the form our journey takes, alternating between regions to be crossed and a few stages that will be places of rest and trade. Each region is divided between combat arenas, boss rooms and platforming phases. Even though there are secret areas and shortcuts, backtracking is less enjoyable due to the sections that require as much agility on the way back as on the way there. Another point to note is the distribution of benches. As a reminder, this furniture serves as a save and restore point, like FromSoftware’s bonfires. Their placement does not make the player’s experience any easier, as they are often very far from complicated passages, which requires caution on the journey in order to tackle the numerous attempts resulting from the difficulty in the best possible conditions. Some passages are even devoid of these strategic points, leading to several minutes of travel. It is important to note that the sections I am referring to are on the main road and not in side areas as found in Hollow Knight. I would also note a few attempts at new features, sometimes unclear or even foggy, which perhaps deserved to be highlighted more.

We now come to what I consider to be the strong point of the saga: the artistic direction. Team Cherry has not been stingy in this regard. They have delivered meticulous and inspired work. Each environment has its own identity, as in the first episode, but with the sliders pushed to the max. Still hand-drawn, the vegetation is lush and teeming with life. All players will remember the end of the tutorial area, with Hornet running while a group of “butterflies” fly away. The more arid or civilised climates are not to be outdone, with a whole host of details to satisfy those who love to contemplate. This variety does not come at the expense of consistency. Once the entirety of Pharloom has been discovered, a whole civilisation is revealed to us, a whole world. Every element makes sense and offers an environmental narrative for anyone eager for lore. The mastery of parallax, a technique that creates the illusion of depth, is such that we feel the world coming to life, with all its dangers, as we explore it. Even insects of the same species reflect the social stratum in which they live. The inhabitants of Bonebottom do not mix with those of the citadel. In this way, we feel the progression of what also becomes our pilgrimage, whether we like it or not. Where the knight responds to a mysterious call in a visceral way, Hornet sets himself the goal of understanding what is happening instead of leaving Pharloom. Our character is driven by a genuine will of his own, a desire to fight no matter what the cost.

While the story that leads us to these hostile lands is much more accessible in this second instalment, the lore remains cryptic. Secret areas, large and small, reveal information to those who know how to see it, which, when pieced together, opens the door to new theories about the universe created by Team Cherry. We find the theme of belief and corruption so dear to the 2017 game. Even though the orange hue is not present in this region, you quickly sense that the insect population that inhabits it is divided into two groups. On the one hand, there are those you can talk to, and it’s worth noting that Hornet is quite articulate. On the other hand, there are those who seem devoid of reason and jump on you as soon as they see you. While the same species can belong to both camps, the bestiary remains enormous, with many more flying creatures in this iteration, forcing a more aerial gameplay style. The world is more civilised, more inhabited, less in decline, and life is abundant, with several individuals moving around, such as Sherma, who will charm many of us. We’ll find real beasts, pilgrims, workers and explorers with strong and endearing identities. Each creature adapts to its environment, ranging from the heat of molten rock to the gilded citadel, a symbol of superiority, and has its own set of movements. Hornet will therefore have to adapt to each of them with his needle and tools. These tools are the big new feature of the game, offering a wide range of possibilities and combinations. Combined with the different emblems and new “charms”, it is possible to build a real build to face the many challenges that stand in the way of the end credits. The most curious players will also find some formidable synergies. And they won’t be superfluous, as we saw above. So there’s a whole arsenal to master if you want to take full advantage of the gameplay developed by the developers. Like any good Metroid-like game, it also offers a range of skills that increase your striking power, as well as your mobility in and out of combat. In short, it takes the Hollow Knight formula and revisits it in an attempt to improve upon it. The only slight downside is that some improvements come late in the adventure, which prevents a truly fluid sense of progression.

To integrate all this into the game’s narrative, Team Cherry offers another innovation: the quest system, or, as they are called, wishes. NPCs can entrust you with theirs directly or via panels placed for this purpose at strategic points. There’s something for everyone: farming, hunting, delivery… The quality is rather uneven, ranging from uninteresting to fascinating lore elements, to simple tutorials. Personally, I miss the unexpected encounters during exploration, which are still present but more anecdotal. You lose that immersion, that need to remember every insect in order to complete the task at hand. The rewards are often just pearls, the game’s currency, which loses its appeal when you’ve found a farming spot or unlocked endless quests that distribute these meticulously engraved spheres. It would have been better to reduce their number to give them a much more important place and a real narrative.

The last point I will address in this article, which is not intended to be exhaustive, because in the end, the real opinion is the one that everyone forms with the controller in their hands, is the music. Once again, Christopher Larkin has done it again, giving Silksong a high-quality OST. In the first part of the adventure, we find a composition that combines a whole host of instruments, but above all creates an atmosphere that perfectly matches what we see before us, from the depths of a cave to an icy mountain, passing through lush greenery. As the pilgrimage progresses, more clerical sounds enter the scene, such as the large bells which, once rung, chime with the first notes of Dies Irae or Prose des morts. This sequence, which has found its place in Requiem masses, will warn all those who know its message. The arrival at the citadel marks the appearance of almost monastic chants, setting the tone for the domain we are entering, a kind of announcement that we are far from having seen everything. You immediately sense that here, the music (of silk) does more than accompany the images; without it, the places would lose their function, their spirituality, their grandeur. For me, this results in a feeling of an uneven soundtrack, less memorable than that of Hollow Knight.

To sum it all up, I would say that the two friends who make up Team Cherry, Ari Gibson and William Pellen, have done much more than they did for their first game. While the work on the artistic direction adds real value, the rest perhaps lacks boundaries. As they said in their interview with my friend Jason Schreier for Bloomberg, it was important to them that players didn’t feel frustrated. So much so that Silksong is perhaps too much of a sequel to Hollow Knight. I wouldn’t recommend anyone play this game without having played the first one, as certain mechanics must be mastered to avoid rage quitting when controlling Hornet. Frustration due to “lack” gives way to frustration due to “too much”. Make no mistake, this is an excellent game with a lot of quality, but I feel like they didn’t know when to stop. At a time when accessibility is becoming a criterion for quality, the Australians don’t seem to have even thought about it. Perhaps this is also due to the fact that they work behind closed doors, especially when you see the small number of playtesters scrolling by during the end credits. I would note too many challenges, too many quests, too many collectables. We could mention the shell fragments, resources needed to recharge tools, which run out as soon as you consume a lot by having to restart difficult fights. It’s a very good title that borders on excellence without quite reaching it, because it tries to do too much. It fully deserves its years of anticipation and all the praise it has received. Good scope management is important in a production, as are solid and regular playtests. Let’s hope that the team members, who managed to crash all the platforms selling Hollow Knight: Silksong, even though they only have two games to their credit, take the comments made to them into account. What is certain is that this is a studio with great capabilities, excellent ideas and boundless motivation. We know they are already working on future DLC. We eagerly await their next disappearance, which may well herald a new project.