Hollow Knight: Silksong hands-on preview – not worth the wait

Silksong is finally about to be released and we’ve already played it, but why are fans so excited about the sequel and how does it differ from the original?

Maybe we’re missing something, but we’ve always been puzzled by the amount of passion some people have for 2017’s Hollow Knight. Don’t get us wrong, it’s a fine game, but in our view it’s a fairly workmanlike 2D Metroidvania, married to elements of contemporary Soulslikes – particularly in terms of the difficult. It’s definitely a good game but not so much that we’ve been on tenterhooks for the sequel.

We often feel like we’re alone in that relative apathy, as ever since Silksong was announced in 2019, initially as DLC but eventually as a fully fledged sequel, fans have been crazy with anticipation. Every time any kind of preview showcase is about to happen, everyone immediately convinces themselves the Silksong is going to be featured and are then immediately disappointed when it isn’t.

In fact, they’re disappointed even when it is, as even now, after having played the game, we still don’t know when it’s out. Although an annoucement is expected today, so we’ll update this article if and when that happens.

Silksong is supposed to be out this year, so the release date is presumably quite soon, which would make sense as the build of the game we played seemed very polished. Two sections were on offer, the self-explanatory Moss Grotto and the lava-filled Deep Docks.

We played Deep Docks but got a good look at Moss Grotto in the seemingly endless queue to play the game (and later found out that it was from earlier in the story and so considerably easier). And that was in the press area, before Gamescom was opened to the public, so if you’re visiting yourself you could be there for days before you get a go.

Unfortunately, this only added to the sense of disappointment once we finally got to play the game and found it to be… fine. It’s exactly what you would expect, whether you’re an ardent fan or a dispassionate observer, and absolutely nothing more.

The graphics are better, with some nice visual effects for the sparks and embers in the Deep Docks, but at the same time rather monochrome and uninteresting, with Moss Grotto having little in the way of landmarks and the grey iron of Deep Dock’s platforms quickly becoming monotonous. Not offensively so, but still not what we’d expect of a game this keenly anticipated.

The level design is clever but there’s nothing especially original about the switch pulling and platforming moving. And that’s probably the root of the problem for us, in that we never felt the original game was doing anything very new or unique.

The unusual insect theme was interesting, even if it encouraged some rather unexciting creature design, and ut certainly had an unusual atmosphere but there’s a quite few modern 2D Metroidvanias we’d put ahead of it, not least Metroid Dread itself.

At a time when even FromSoftware’s games are pulling back from the most extreme levels of difficulty, Silksong feels like an unwanted throwback to the worst excesses of the Soulslike genre, where every mistake is punished mercilessly.

There’s some platform jumping in the demo that would make an 8-bit game weep and the boss battle at the end of the level, against a rapier (actually, we think it’s a pin) wielding insect called Lace, is perfectly ordinary in most respects – except that if you make more than a couple of mistakes you’re doomed.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that – plenty of games we’ve enjoyed have been just the same, although most of them are over a decade old at this point. Our main complaint is simply that the game doesn’t appear to be doing anything new and it’s not even doing anything old in a particularly interesting way.

The biggest difference compared to the original is that you’re playing as a different character and they do handle quite differently, with Hornet being better in the air and having a diagonal kick attack that’s a lot harder to get used to than the originals straight-down vertical move. Dashing also leaves her more vulnerable in battle, so there’s a lot of muscle to undo and relearn (although we’ll admit we’d forgotten most of it anyway, since it has been eight years at this point).

If you’ve been waiting impatiently to play Silksong for that long, we don’t imagine you’ll be disappointed; not least because you’ve probably been keeping very close tabs on it and know exactly what to expect. But if you’re new to the franchise we’d temper any expectations of Silksong being some transcendent moment in gaming. We’ll sure it’ll be good but it’s really just more of the same, with no very obvious hook to explain the enormously long wait.

Formats: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC
Publisher: Team Cherry
Developer: Team Cherry
Release Date: TBA

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