Hollow Knight: Silksong | Critical Acclaim

In late August, Hollow Knight fans were surprised to learn that the long-awaited sequel would be released in just a few weeks. Team Cherry launched Hollow Knight: Silksong on September 4, 2025, to immense fanfare, breaking digital storefronts worldwide. The game achieved over half a million concurrent players on Steam the day after its release and sold more than three million copies in three days on the platform, according to Alinea Analytics. Without advance review codes, impressions have been emerging gradually. Nonetheless, Silksong has quickly become one of 2025's biggest titles, boasting a Metacritic score of 92 for the PC version. Critics have been exploring the fantastical yet unforgiving world of Pharloom, where players control Hornet, a character introduced in the original Hollow Knight as a recurring boss. PC Gamer's Tyler Colp, who rated the game 90 out of 100, praised the thrill of playing as Hornet, citing her powerful skillset as a key appeal. Colp noted that when he wasn't being overwhelmed, it felt like the tide had turned in his favor, and the satisfaction of mastering the game's challenging mechanics was incredibly rewarding. VGC's Ashley Schofield, who rated the game 3 out of 5, was impressed by Hornet's graceful movement and gorgeous motion in Silksong. Every input flowed cleanly into one another, and the joy of movement only heightened with the gradual unlocks of her dash, float, and wall jump abilities, giving a sense of freedom and precision to navigating Pharloom. DualShockers' Monica Phillips, who scored Silksong 9 out of 10, commended the improvements to Hornet's moveset and the game's overall gameplay. Phillips noted that Silksong essentially has the same base gameplay as Hollow Knight but reworks, improves, and reimplements every mechanic and component in a way few sequels have attempted before. The difficulty of the sequel has been increased to match Hornet's more powerful combat abilities, but Rock Paper Shotgun's James Archer felt that Team Cherry's implementation was somewhat blunt, with enemies having a larger pool of health and bosses hitting twice as hard. However, DualShockers' Phillips reveled in Silksong's increased difficulty, noting that as the game progresses, it tends to challenge players more quickly and intensely than the original, making every fight feel like a dance with death where players must learn the steps on the spot. Mastering a boss's pattern, getting a reward, and feeling satisfied due to the struggle is a constant experience in Silksong. On the other hand, VGC's Schofield found that while some bosses feel like fair challenges of mechanical skill and memorization, Team Cherry's insistence on increasing player suffering in Silksong tests players' patience rather than their skills. Schofield complained that the extreme difficulty is rarely interesting or rewarding and instead fills players with a tired, hollow relief that it's over. PC Gamer's Colp, however, found entertainment in the difficulty, praising the diabolical commitment to challenging players in a world where everyone's been knocked on their ass. While he felt the difficulty had purpose when he could step back and appreciate the creative boss fights, he acknowledged that Silksong doesn't always get the balance between effort and reward right. In Silksong, benches are spawn points that allow players to change Hornet's combat equipment and recover health. When she is defeated in combat, she returns to the last bench she sat on. For most critics, the placement of these benches became a detriment due to how far apart they are placed between combat encounters. Archer said he can see the point of these runbacks as a way of penalizing carelessness and adding tension, but this tension doesn't work because players can simply dash over and under every non-boss enemy. Losing to a boss already carries the punishment of not being able to play further, making runbacks feel like boring busywork. If it weren't for the runbacks, Phillips said she would have given Silksong a perfect score, citing the incredibly designed challenges and the repetitive gameplay of runbacks from benches. For Schofield, worrying about respawn points and Hornet's health makes exploration feel more terrifying than exciting, with players focusing on the memory of the last bench rather than wondering what new discovery could lie past the next secretly breakable wall. Exploration was a major highlight among critics, with Rock Paper Shotgun's Archer reveling in getting lost on purpose in Pharloom and describing Silksong's worldbuilding as an example of how well Team Cherry can effectively beckon players to danger. Almost every tunnel or silo is littered with offshoots and ledges, begging for a quick look that often turns into a long look or even a two-hour exploration of a completely different area. As Colp traversed Pharloom, he appreciated how every shortcut and secret area contextualized the horrors he faced in the bigger picture. There's always something just out of view or lingering in the background that draws the eye, and those details kept him hungry for more. By the end of the game, he couldn't tell what was more exciting: the fact he somehow dug his way into an entire unexplored zone or the questions that new place raised about Pharloom's biggest mysteries. Silksong's symbiotic pairing of worldbuilding and exploration also lends to its narrative, striking that perfect balance between a forefront narrative and complex lore. You can go through the game and barely know what's going on, but if you dig a little deeper, interact with the world, and read through the flavor text on enemy logs, you'll find there's an entire world crafted under your feet. While most critics were skeptical of the difficulty spike in Silksong, some found it hard not to reframe it as a positive aspect of the game in some ways. I want to give Silksong a thrashing, Archer wrote, but for every moment of frustration, there are five of relief, joy, or beauty. Colp had a similar experience with Silksong overall, saying he may be bruised and sore from the experience, but he's happy to say that it does pay off. Silksong is too good to let the brutal difficulty hold it back, or to hold him back from seeing all of it – even if he wishes there were at least some options to tone down the nastiest punishments. Silksong will beat you, burn you, rub your face in the dirt, and then dazzle you with another piece of a haunted clockwork world, confident the sight will elicit a bloody, jagged-tooth grin. Schofield, however, was critical of Team Cherry's approach to merging two genres – Metroidvania and Soulslike – together for Silksong, saying these genres are fundamentally at odds with each other, with the necessary staples of each actively damaging the other half to end up with a lesser whole. Silksong ends up with a playable identity crisis. The beauty of its art and design and the precise, joyful feel of its movement are inarguable wonders, but the tiring and demotivating nature of its sadistic approach to challenge ripples throughout the entire experience of exploration and combat. Silksong is more of what was good about Hollow Knight, but it failed to avoid some very clear pitfalls in design on its long path to release.