Hollow Knight: Silksong Review

Hornet moves nothing like the Knight. She is quicker, her needle has range, she pogos with a different rhythm and the silk resource ties healing and abilities to landing hits, which pushes you forward in fights the original would have let you retreat from. Pharloom is built upward rather than down, and the ascent gives it a shape and a destination the first game deliberately withheld. The art and the score are extraordinary, the bosses are the best the studio has designed, and the density of hidden rooms rewards the same obsessive mapping that made the original a landmark.

Where it will divide people is difficulty. The early game is punishing in a way the first was not, several bosses in the opening act sit above anything from the first half of the original, and the rosary economy makes death costlier than it needs to be while you are still learning. It is also less lonely and less strange, which is a trade some players will not want to make.