Hollow Knight: Silksong
As I write this, I have achieved 100% completion on Hollow Knight: Silksong, having played it exclusively (apart from a few co-op sessions of It Takes Two with my wife) for about three months. Despite the high number of hours I’ve put in—which number I won’t say, as it’s sort of a badge of shame that indicates my relative lack of skill—I’m still itching to go back and repeat the final boss fight again.
I’ve touted the original Hollow Knight as an all-time favourite game of mine, and I’m here to say that its sequel is almost equally enjoyable.
Like the original, my favourite parts of the game are the boss fights. There’s always an often-long process whereby I learn the enemy’s moves and figure out how to dodge them, and then find the openings during which I can counterattack. It ends up feeling almost like a rhythm game, and it’s very satisfying as my muscle memory inches towards mastery.
Combat in Silksong is considerably more complex than in its predecessor. There are multiple “crests” to choose from, each of which grants you different melee moves. On top of that, there’s a weapon and ammo system. This is one area where I preferred the original game’s simplicity: without the abundance of choices, the Knight protagonist felt like a character that existed in its own world. Silksong’s Hornet, on the other hand, sometimes feels like a video game object that I’m fiddling around with to optimize combat.
This slight break in immersion is a shame because I found the storytelling of Silksong to be more compelling overall than Hollow Knight. The original game’s plot happened mostly in the past, and the player’s journey is to piece it together through vague dialogue and text. I admit that I didn’t really know what was going on until reading and watching some fan recaps. In Silksong, though, the story is much more present, and Hornet’s motivations are clear and noble, which makes me as the player feel involved. As a result, the game’s final act was filled with emotionally satisfying moments.
All of this is punctuated by perhaps my favourite thing about the game: the score by Christopher Larkin. I had been a fan of the first game’s score, so I decided to listen to the sequel’s soundtrack before starting my playthrough. Having some familiarity with the music before playing let me appreciate it more, because otherwise, I would probably be too overwhelmed by the gameplay to pay much attention to the soundtrack. I think I’ll be listening to these albums long after I put the games back on the proverbial shelf.
As I said at the start, I’m still replaying the final boss because I’m not quite ready to leave the game behind. Playing Silksong made me want to go back to Hollow Knight again; and I feel like if I did that, it would lead me to another playthrough of Silksong. Is it a possible future for me that these are the only two games that I’ll ever play for the rest of my life? Not the worst outcome, I would say.