Hollow Knight: Silksong Review — A Sharp, Stunning Evolution of a Modern Classic

After years of anticipation, speculation, memes, and more than a few “any day now” jokes from the community, Hollow Knight: Silksong finally arrives — not as a quiet indie sequel, but as one of the most scrutinized releases of 2025, especially after so much uncertainty surrounding the Hollow Knight Silksong release date. Developed by Team Cherry in Australia and launched globally in October across PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and Game Pass, Silksong lands with the confidence of a studio that knows exactly what its audience wants and how to expand beyond it.

What we get is a sequel that feels familiar but refuses to coast. Silksong is faster, sharper, more expressive, and more narratively driven than its predecessor — a modern action-Metroidvania with precision-engineered combat and some of the genre’s best level design to date. And yes — for many fans — it was worth the wait.

The Setup: A Captive Kingdom and a Story of Ascent

Silksong begins not with a pilgrimage downward, but with an abduction upward. Hornet, captured and transported to the mysterious kingdom of Pharloom, awakens in chains deep within a strange, towering world. This shift — from descending into Hallownest to climbing through Pharloom’s layered heights — sets the tone for the entire game. Silksong is about upward motion, tension, and pressure, with an environment that always seems to be pushing Hornet forward faster than she expects.

Team Cherry keeps the story light on words but rich in atmosphere. Pharloom comes across as a place where rituals, quiet power struggles, and unspoken expectations shape everything around you. Instead of relying on silence the way the previous game did, Silksong brings the world to life through small character moments — energetic NPCs, short exchanges tied to questlines, and animations that subtly show how Hornet reacts to what’s happening around her.

Players who have followed the project from the start will immediately sense the long road behind its development. The years spent waiting for solid news about the Silksong release date left the community dissecting every scrap of footage. Now, moving from brittle coral tunnels to echoing metal workshops, you can almost trace how those early trailer clues evolved into their final forms. Entire threads on r/HollowKnight once tried to decode every statue and mural, only to discover those details transformed or reinterpreted in the finished game.

Combat & Movement: Faster, Fiercer, and Needle-Precise

Where the earlier adventure felt heavy and deliberate, Silksong moves with a sharper edge. Combat and traversal are built around Hornet’s speed, giving encounters a sense of lift and flow — momentum, verticality, and sudden direction changes all play a role. It’s a style that shapes the entire feel of Silksong gameplay, pushing you toward quick decisions and confident, precise movement.

The Needle as a Weapon and a Movement Tool

Hornet moves faster than the Knight ever did — sprinting, vaulting, flipping, and chaining jumps together with silky grace. The needle isn’t just a weapon but a movement anchor:

  • thread-dashes let you latch onto foes for mid-air redirects,
  • rope swings turn arenas into vertical playgrounds,
  • combat animations are shorter, punchier, and more improvisational.

The biggest mechanical change is healing. Instead of Soul, Hornet uses Silk, stored in segments that encourage tactical bursts of restoration rather than long meditative pauses. It keeps fights kinetic — you heal when you earn space, not when you gain Soul.

This rhythm shift makes Silksong feel more reactive, more improvisational, and more rewarding for players who master its speed.

Enemies: 100+ New Foes with Personality

Silksong introduces over 100 unique enemy types, each with its own attack cadence and navigation quirks. In Pharloom, enemies don’t just hit harder — they move with intention. Flyers swoop with longer windups, crawlers scramble across uneven terrain, and spellcasters often try to reposition after every attack.

In this sequel:

  • combat is faster,
  • enemies track the player more intelligently,
  • and encounters are built around exploiting Hornet’s speed rather than punishing her mobility.

Even standard grunts exhibit personality — a trait that has always set Team Cherry apart. The result is an ecosystem of enemies that feel like they belong to the same strange kingdom, each animated with meticulous detail.

Exploration & Level Design: Pharloom, a Kingdom of Layers

If combat is where Silksong shines, exploration is where it astonishes.

Pharloom is a kingdom built upward — a vertical labyrinth where each region folds into the next with surprising elegance. Unlike Hallownest’s somber blue palette, Pharloom flourishes with intense color, intricate textures, and biomes that feel ritualistic and lived-in.

Each area feels like it has a cultural identity:

  • The Coral Wastes shimmer with fragile skeletal coral and flowing currents.
  • Chorus Tower echoes with sound-based enemies that attack on rhythm.
  • Bellsmith’s Domain thrums with mechanical life — gears, ropes, and blacksmithing traditions etched into every corner.

Silksong also introduces a new quest board system that organizes side objectives across the kingdom. It adds welcome clarity without compromising the game’s sense of freedom.

Map readability is dramatically improved. Markers, pins, and region-specific silhouettes make Pharloom easier to navigate, even as it remains richly layered with secrets and alternate routes.

Bosses & Difficulty: A Theatrical, Acrobatic Gauntlet

Silksong features more than 30 full-scale boss encounters, and nearly all of them represent a leap forward in both spectacle and choreography — a lineup of Silksong bosses that easily stands among the strongest in the genre.

Where Hollow Knight emphasized precision and patience, Silksong pushes players into momentum-based duels. Bosses leap, swing, dive, and shift phases with greater fluidity, demanding constant repositioning. Several of the standout fights feel like acrobatic duels — Hornet weaving through a storm of blades, flames, or rhythmic projectiles in arenas designed for vertical movement.

Difficulty-wise, Silksong strikes a careful balance.

  • It’s challenging, yes.
  • But its early hours feel more forgiving and less punishing than what players might expect from the series’ previous outing.
  • Later fights ramp up into some of Team Cherry’s most demanding design ever.

No spoilers here — but a few late-game bosses will test the limits of your reflexes.

Soundtrack & Visual Direction: A Richer, More Expressive Silksong

Composer Christopher Larkin once again sets the tone for the world, but this time his music leans in a slightly different direction, shaping a Silksong soundtrack that feels brighter, sharper, and more theatrical than the original’s subdued melancholy. 

The soundtrack in the previous game often stayed quietly in the background, built on soft strings and muted piano. Silksong, by contrast, brings in brighter, sharper sounds — light percussion, bells, and quick, fluttering motifs that match how fast Hornet moves. Some tracks subtly shift as you climb or descend an area, and several boss themes feel almost like short theatrical performances, complete with dramatic rises and sudden stops.

On the visual side, Silksong shows Team Cherry working at the top of their craft. Animations look cleaner and more fluid, and there’s noticeably more nuance in how characters move or react. Environments, whether it’s a quiet shrine or a noisy forge, are packed with small touches that make Pharloom feel lived-in. The kingdom’s buildings — part grand design, part fading machinery — paint a picture of a place built to impress, even if the world beneath that surface is starting to come apart.

Technical Performance Across PC, Switch, PS5 & Xbox

Despite the larger scale and more complex animation work, Silksong runs impressively well across all platforms. On PC, load times are almost nonexistent on SSDs, and the game maintains a locked 144 FPS on mid-range hardware — making the Hollow Knight Silksong PC release one of the smoothest ways to experience the game at launch. PS5 and Xbox Series X|S benefit from crisp 4K output with silky frame pacing, while Switch performs better than expected:

  • Handheld mode runs at a consistent 60 FPS in most areas.
  • Minor dips appear during particle-heavy boss fights.
  • Visual clarity is strongest in docked mode, but handheld remains fully playable.

Game Pass availability also gives Xbox players an easy entry point, and cloud saves sync smoothly across PC and console.

Team Cherry’s three-person team continues to outperform much larger studios in technical polish — a rare achievement for a project with this scale and community scrutiny.

Verdict: A Confident, Acrobatic Sequel Worth Every Year of Waiting (Score: 9/10)

Hollow Knight: Silksong succeeds not because it tries to recreate the original, but because it builds on it with purpose. Where the earlier adventure felt like a descent into tragedy, Silksong feels like an ascent marked by speed, tension, and growth.

  • Combat is sharper and more expressive.
  • Exploration is richer and more readable.
  • Bosses deliver some of the genre’s best encounters.
  • The soundtrack and art direction elevate the world to something both alien and beautiful.

If the original was a modern masterpiece, Silksong is a confident evolution — less lonely, more theatrical, and fully committed to Hornet’s identity as a protagonist.The years of anticipation created almost unfair expectations, but Team Cherry delivers a sequel that stands proudly beside its predecessor. Whether you’re a returning fan or completely new to Pharloom, this is one of 2025’s must-play titles.