>>FULL REVIEW
Silksong had almost no chance of meeting expectations.
People waited years.
Every Nintendo Direct became a joke about it.
Every vague Team Cherry update created another wave of speculation.
By the time the game finally released people were expecting something close to perfection from a tiny studio because the internet had spent nearly a decade building the sequel into a mythical object.
Then it came out and was actually great.
Hornet is the reason Silksong immediately feels different from Hollow Knight instead of simply looking like more of it.
She is faster and more aggressive. Movement has a stronger vertical feel and combat rewards staying active instead of waiting safely for every opening.
The needle gives fights a different rhythm and Hornet's tools expand that further without turning the game into an inventory full of useless junk.
Pharloom is enormous and rarely feels empty.
Every time I think a path is probably just leading toward another dead end there is some weird character shortcut hidden room or completely unnecessary side area waiting there.
That is the same exploration magic Hollow Knight had but Team Cherry became much more ambitious about how quests and NPCs fit into it.
The world feels busier.
Not happier.
Definitely busier.
Silksong is also hard.
Really hard in places.
That became one of the biggest arguments around the game after launch because certain bosses can delete a huge portion of Hornet's health with one mistake. Some regular enemies are more dangerous than bosses from other games.
There are times where difficulty feels perfectly tuned and beating something after several failures is incredibly satisfying.
There are also times where I understand why somebody would call it bullshit.
The difference is that exploration usually gives you another option.
Go somewhere else.
Find another upgrade.
Learn a different tool.
Come back later.
Trying to force your way through the same wall repeatedly is often the worst way to play.
Visually this might be one of the prettiest hand-drawn games around.
Animations have ridiculous personality and almost every region has its own color palette architecture and creatures.
Christopher Larkin's music somehow keeps pace with all of it.
There are quiet tracks that make exploring feel lonely and huge boss themes that immediately tell you the next few minutes are about to suck.
Performance is generally excellent too which matters because timing is everything in this game. A difficult platforming section would become unbearable if the controls did not feel responsive.
The value is honestly ridiculous.
Team Cherry could have charged far more than twenty dollars and nobody would have been surprised. Instead it launched at a price lower than games offering a fraction of the content.
A year later the initial hype has settled enough to see the game more clearly.
It is not flawless.
Some difficulty choices still annoy people.
Certain areas drag.
Not every system is automatically better than Hollow Knight just because it is newer.
None of that changes how impressive the whole package is.
Silksong spent years becoming a gaming punchline because everyone assumed it could never live up to what people had imagined.
It mostly did.
WHO THIS IS FOR
Players who love difficult exploration-heavy games and are willing to get lost die repeatedly and slowly learn how the world works.
SKIP IT IF
The idea of repeating difficult bosses or platforming sections until you finally get them sounds miserable.
