A long time coming, Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight follow-up evolved from DLC into an entire game. Silksong is a bigger and arguably better game, where you control Hornet (who battled the titular Hollow Knight in the last game). The new character is faster and slicker than the short knight, though, with a fighting system that rewards high-risk attacks and careful healing as you cut your way through bugs, zombie bugs, and meticulously designed boss battles.
Part of this hinges on a different healing system: Hornet uses silk to heal, which you accumulate through attacks. Once you have enough, you can convert it into three distinct health benefits. The more interesting wrinkle is that once you die (and this will happen often), you’ll leave a bounty of silk behind, making for a tempting health top-up you can grab mid-boss fight. But if you die again, you’ll lose a significant part of your hard-earned currency: risk and reward.
Silksong seems more playful; boss fights are more varied, and that extensive development time makes everything seem just right. Like its predecessor, the world unfurls as you gain new skills and secondary weapons, and you will have to get used to getting lost, stuck and annoyed at times. You might lack the jumping height to reach the tempting bauble on that platform up there; face a floor of spikes that instantly kill you, with no way forward; confront an ominous door that deflects your attacks but looks like it should open – once you have the right key or skill. Impasses in the Metroidvania might frustrate, but the game feels like it leads you in the right direction better than Hollow Knight. It’s a bigger adventure, too, with roughly twice as much ground to cover and an extra transport system in addition to the giant bug “stations” featured in the first game. — Mat Smith, UK Bureau Chief