I woke up far too early this morning, to stand in a queue for far too long, all to play fan-vexing (and newly release-dated) soulsvania Hollow Knight: Silksong on the Gamescom show floor. No pre-release review codes? Pah – I couldn’t even get a demo appointment at the most demo appointment-centric games event of the year. How’s that for rejection.
Anyway, Team Cherry might just not be that into me, but I might well be into Silksong. It’s a little quicker, a little more dynamic, and to these fingers, a little more difficult than the first Hollow Knight. But it entirely preserves that tight-as-a-drum feel of the original’s sword swishing, and deploys it against insectoid baddies that challenge and frustrate in practically identical ways.
Minions, for instance, still start off as wriggling fodder before new varieties start surprising you with unexpectedly rapid strikes, or ranged attacks that seem almost psychically aware of where you’re going to be moving to in 0.02 seconds’ time. And, once again, their greatest weakness is trial and error. My deepest struggle came not against any boss, but a room full of flying bastards with infinite buckets of preternaturally accurate magma bombs. It took a couple of doomed attempts at 900°c dodgeball before discovering I could deflect the burning orbs with well-timed swings, drastically easing my stress.
I only took on one true boss, a dive-bombing queen wasp, but she too fought by familiar rules: a mix of attack patterns to watch and exploit, compounded by environmental hazards and summoned henchbugs. Dodge the nasty stuff, wait for an opening, stick ‘em. It’s more Hollow Knight, basically.
Still, Silksong does aim for subtle shifts in its battle flow. New protag Hornet is both a slightly more vocal and a slightly more agile hero than the Knight, her default moves incorporating plunging diagonal strikes that both deal damage and reposition her quickly back on the ground after a floaty jump. Binding – Hornet’s equivalent of focus healing, with ‘thread’ replacing gathered soul – is quicker as well, ostensibly to get her back in the fight as fast as possible, and can even be performed in mid-air.
If this sounds like it makes Silksong any less punishing of sloppiness than Hollow Knight, it does not. If anything, I found the new healing system a whole lot harsher, pretty much entirely because it makes life gain less readily available: whereas you could save previously yourself in a pinch by converting a relatively small fraction of soul into one or two precious pips, in Silksong, you’ll need to fill up a full strand of thread before binding becomes possible. While that means a successful bind will always heal multiple pips, you’re likely to be spending more time in the danger zone until you can biff enough foes for another full strand – and, if an enemy gets a hit in while binding, that entire strand’s healing potential is forfeit.
It also looks like opponents might get a smidge swifter as well, answering to Hornet’s mobility. I’ve only played through a couple of early areas, and don’t want to overstate the difference – it’s not like Silksong gives everyone tiny bug-sized jetpacks – but I did encounter nimbler enemies more often than in Hollow Knight’s opening half-hour, with repeated appearances from charging shieldbearers, the aforementioned flying bastards, and sharp-skinned larvae that would tear around platforms like malfunctioning table saws.
Mind you, if Silksong is getting a little more brutal, it’s also getting a little more beautiful. The opening moss cave biome, in particular, is a gorgeously verdant warren, with layers upon layers of trees, giant ‘shrooms, and undergrowth all shifting under a parallax effect that’s pulled off to even more striking effect than the original’s. The darkness of the later-visited forge city affords it fewer opportunities to shine, but it’s still heaving with details: miles and miles of ornate pipes, chains draped from the ceilings like fairy lights. Hollow Knight had skills in this department, of course. It’s just that Silksong has refined them.
Granted, after seven years in a forge of Team Cherry’s own, it would be fair to expect more than just refinement. I’ve yet to try out most of Hornet’s new powers or see how they influence later-game platforming and combat, but so far, it’s all very Hollow Knightish. Maybe that’s all the clownposters wanted; maybe they’ll find themselves deflated.
Probably not disappointed, though. The upside of playing it safe is that absolutely nothing has compromised what made the first game’s action a tactile pleasure: its abnormally fine-tuned controls and pin-sharp audio/visual feedback on hits and jumps. Hollow Knight feels good. Silksong feels good. You won’t hear me complaining. Except about having to be up at 7am on a weekend, obviously.
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