The Difficult Review of Hollow Knight: Silksong

Our lives are filled with beliefs, facts we take for granted, and things that have always been done a certain way. Fixed points on which delicate aspects of our existence rest, which every now and then suddenly change and are no longer as we always believed. It happens at every level, even on a very large scale. Discoveries that revolutionize our conception of what exists, like feathered dinosaurs or a cosmic or subatomic event that forces us to adjust our theorization of physical laws. On a smaller scale, a few days ago in the world of video games, a similar event occurred with the release of Hollow Knight: Silksong.

The sequel to the cult indie Hollow Knight released in 2019, Silksong was for almost seven years a kind of urban legend, announced by Team Cherry, the small Australian studio behind the game, and then hidden from the world for a very long time, to the point where many had lost hope. Then, suddenly, its reappearance, the announcement of the official release date, and some clarifications: there would be no pre-orders, the game would be available to everyone at launch, including reviewers who would not receive early codes. A small revolution that changed for the public and the press the way a game is talked about: sales certainly proved Team Cherry right, and the crash of various online store servers where the game was available immediately became a source for memes about the difficulty of Hollow Knight: Silksong. 

The surprise effect with which Hollow Knight: Silksong appeared on millions of players' hard drives simultaneously worked not only on sales but also on how the game was perceived. Obviously, the peculiar strategy used by Team Cherry for the game's release was not a mere whim, but the best way to consciously guide players towards a game that makes discovery one of the most rewarding moments of the entire experience. Playing a title in 2025 of which virtually nothing has been seen, of which no rumors have leaked, is a rare event, and it becomes even rarer if we narrow the circle to games blessed with the same level of hype as Silksong. A week after launch, how much of this enormous enthusiasm remains? A lot. 

What is Hollow Knight: Silksong?

But let's go in order. Hollow Knight: Silksong is a metroidvania, an action-platformer set in a labyrinthine map where it is necessary to find items or gain abilities to access blocked parts of the scenario. In the case of Silksong, the classic progression of this type of game is contaminated with elements from other games and genres, most notably soulslike and roguelike. At the beginning of the game, little to nothing is told about Hornet, the protagonist of the game, her abilities, or her story. Hollow Knight: Silksong lets its setting tell what it can, or necessity force the player to intuit what they don't yet know. Team Cherry achieved this aspect with rare elegance: The world of Hollow Knight: Silksong is meticulously and coherently built, interconnected tunnels where every nook and cranny makes sense not only in the context of the action/platformer but also when conceived as a legacy of civilizations that once inhabited these now rather dark spaces. The management of the map undoubtedly contributes to the thrill; its basic version is a rather summary sketch of the environment and must still be purchased from an NPC, then enriched with details by giving more currency to said character for each upgrade. This currency, composed of rosaries, must be laboriously earned by reaching inaccessible map locations or defeating enemies and then spent before dying and losing everything, unless one manages to return to the cocoon containing all our belongings from the previous life; but everything, of course, depends on how far one is from the last save bench. Every new path taken in Hollow Knight: Silksong is a leap into the void into which one plunges with the joy of knowing that a minimum of disorientation in front of a new enemy (but also a familiar one, very often) means dying and starting over. Yet the reward in terms of satisfaction or wonder is always such as to push one to restart in the face of dozens of failures. And that's not something that can be said about many games. 

Among the many reasons why this happens, elegance plays a key role from every perspective. The scenario in which Hornet moves is woven with elegance, in the conceptual design of the spaces and in the animations of the drawings that compose them. Even the juxtaposition of infinitely repeated elements like bushes denotes immense attention to the placement of even the smallest, single detail. But it is Hornet who embodies the concept in its highest form: she moves like silk across the scenery, attacks with her needle, and is controlled with a smoothness capable of almost tactilely conveying all those sensations just described. Although different abilities are unlocked as the adventure progresses (which still need to be managed because the usable slots are limited), platforming remains central to the entire experience, and the level of precision required must quickly increase when jumps are no longer enough to proceed and other high-risk failure mechanics (without too many spoilers) must be used. 

It's a difficult job, but someone has to do it: Hollow Knight: Silksong

No matter how you look at it, difficulty is a theme, and yes, Hollow Knight: Silksong is a difficult game, not particularly more difficult than others, but difficult for its entire duration with a rising curve. Hollow Knight: Silksong, however, is never unfairly difficult, it doesn't set traps, it doesn't enjoy consuming the player's mask-lives, but it constantly challenges them to put the best version of themselves on the controller's buttons and sticks, the one with the quickest reflexes and fastest fingertips. It requires practice, or trial & error depending on how you prefer to call it, but often that's not enough. It requires effort and concentration, even in mere exploration to navigate with limited tools and scarce indications. Hollow Knight: Silksong demands a certain type of application from the player to fully grasp what it has to offer, and this is undeniable, but it also makes a pact of honesty with the player from which it does not budge. 

This does not, however, negate that the difficulty was initially a bit too high, to the point of prompting Team Cherry to tweak it with the first patch, but above all that some design choices proved a bit too extreme or inconvenient, especially the benches often positioned screens away, full of enemies, from the bosses. A few ill-advised design choices, however, only superficially scratch a work that is majestic overall, especially considering the extremely small size of the development team. What matters most is that the difficulty in Silksong is not perceived as a whim or a money-grabbing strategy, it is not the result of marketing research, it is simply how three Australian guys who worked on a game for seven years want it to be experienced. Faced with the few, very few remaining cases where similar decisions are the result of artistic or authorial visions and not extractions from an algorithm, perhaps it is more useful to use a different register without ceasing to ask questions, even about the effectiveness of Team Cherry's design choices. Perhaps, the small size of the team and the extended development times simply meant that Silksong's soulslike mechanics arrived a little too late, when the soulslike craze had somewhat faded. And while some of them may have been indigestible, overall Hollow Knight: Silksong is a majestic work, requiring the same dedication that was necessary to create it, and all its qualities are well worth taking a trip outside your comfort zone, even if metroidvanias and difficult games are not your daily bread.