Hollow Knight: Silksong Review - Pharloom's Brutal Beauty

So here we are, after all the noise, after all the endless waiting, after all the cautious promises from Team Cherry that Silksong would one day emerge. It has emerged, and I can say with full confidence that it’s the kind of sequel that doesn’t play around. I rolled credits in roughly 30 hours, though I should admit I was in no hurry to rush; I lingered in dark corridors, chased down as many side quests as I could, poked into places I probably had no business being in, and lost myself in Pharloom’s towering vertical stretches. Someone else might blaze through in 15 hours and 16 minutes, someone else might take 35 before stumbling into the same areas I found early, and that’s the strange beauty of it: the routes splinter so wildly that no two playthroughs really align.

Right away, the game tells you it’s not interested in letting you breathe. Hornet, stripped of her normal strength, starts with little more than five masks of health and the most basic movements. Most enemies deal two damage per hit, bosses included, and that math gets ugly fast. Two hits and you’re gasping, one more mistake and you’re finished, even if you’ve healed, because Hornet restores three masks at a time rather than one. This is a very different rhythm compared to Hollow Knight’s slower, one-mask system. I found myself getting knocked out in three strikes within the first hour, and there’s nothing quite like realizing that early bosses here are built with the attack variety, speed, and aggression that felt like late-game material in the original. One of my first major encounters locked me into a tight arena with a foe who peppered the screen with omnidirectional dashes, and another forced me to read wide 300-degree swipes in close quarters where I had barely enough space to breathe.

But here’s where Silksong is clever—it doesn’t funnel you down a single path until you’re crushed. The game is structured with branching options everywhere, so even if a fight feels impossible, you can wander elsewhere and almost always find something that either equips you better or simply makes you stronger. My own path proves the point: I solved a puzzle earlier than expected, beat a boss that wasn’t meant for that stage, and as a result gained access to an entirely different part of The Citadel, Pharloom’s sprawling capital city, long before most players would even know it was there. I compared notes with a friend afterward. He had found one of the game’s big areas in under 10 hours, while I didn’t discover it until past the 35-hour mark. Silksong doesn’t punish you for straying; it practically encourages it, and that freedom shapes the whole journey.

Hornet herself is not the Knight, and that changes everything. She talks, first of all, and that alone gives the world a new texture. She isn’t chatty for the sake of it; she’s sharp, confident, and stoic, only speaking when she chooses, while still allowing most other characters to carry the dialogue. That means the atmosphere of mystery stays intact, but with a little more clarity woven in. She’s also agile in ways that make you rethink how you move: diagonal pogo strikes, the ability to float downward slowly, and tools that unlock a whole new rhythm to combat. Pharloom’s level design has clearly been built around her speed and verticality, with twisting caverns and multi-tiered areas that felt alive under her nimble jumps.

The systems that underpin progression are a mixed bag, though mostly for the better. Charms are now color-coded, which sounds small but forces real trade-offs. At one point early on, I had to choose between letting enemies drop more currency or collecting that currency automatically, both tied to the same yellow slot, and I couldn’t have both. Crests go further, transforming Hornet’s attacks completely, giving the sensation of switching weapons. Tools act like secondary Castlevania-style abilities, and together these systems meant I was tinkering with my loadout constantly. Every 30 minutes or so, the game dropped something new in my lap—another tool, a crest, an upgrade—and that constant refresh made progression addictive.

Then there’s the rosary bead economy. Beads are everywhere and nowhere, because, unlike geo in Hollow Knight, not every enemy drops them. Beads are the currency for benches, shops, and even fast travel, and that meant strategizing carefully. Dying stripped them away, forcing me into corpse runs, but consumables let me stash beads safely, and early upgrades gave me a chance to reduce my losses. It was tense without being crushing, but the constant sense of scarcity made every purchase feel weighty.

The quest system is where Silksong stumbles. It was a surprise to even see quests formalized in menus at all. On one hand, they can shine: saving villagers, hunting monsters, these gave me memorable character-driven detours. On the other hand, there were quests that felt like filler—collecting pelts from specific enemies, gathering eight Silver Bells from tunnels, busywork that sat strangely in a game so dedicated to imagination. They’re optional, infrequent, but I found myself rolling my eyes at their lack of spark.

By the time credits rolled, I felt both satisfied and unsettled. The ending I reached was… fine, but compared to the layers of depth elsewhere, it felt almost too easy, too plain. There was no obvious indicator that I had missed anything, but knowing Hollow Knight, I suspected the real ending lay deeper, behind tougher challenges and hidden routes. That barrier is deliberate, and while it makes the accessible ending feel lackluster, it also stokes the hunger to keep playing.

Silksong is larger than Hollow Knight in scope, and the numbers show it. The 100% completion speedrun target in Hollow Knight was 20 hours; in Silksong, it’s 30. My time was about 30 hours, but someone else finished in just over 15. The open design makes those differences inevitable, and that’s part of its strength. There’s simply too much in Pharloom to see on a single run, too many bosses, too many side paths, too many hidden challenges. Even after credits, I felt like another entire game was waiting for me, buried under optional content and secrets.

So what is Silksong, really? It’s a game that opens with three-hit defeats and enemies that punish recklessness with two-mask damage. It’s a world that splits into a dozen different paths, one friend finishing in 10 hours what took me 35 to even find. It’s Hornet herself, sharper, faster, more alive than the Knight ever was, moving with tools and crests that give you the freedom to shape your own playstyle. It’s the highs of discovering The Citadel early, the lows of grinding Silver Bells, the sweaty palms before a boss whose attacks cover the screen. It’s not neat or tidy, and it’s not kind, but it is a game that understands what made Hollow Knight special and builds something more ambitious on top of it. After all this time, I can say Silksong rules, challenging, inventive, and endlessly surprising, even when it lets you see the credits and still dares you to keep digging deeper.