Writing a review is hard, so I'm going to leave a shortened summary of my thoughts on the game here in case I don't finish. I personally don't recommend the game in its current state and found it inferior to where Hollow Knight was on launch. Hornet is a boring protagonist whose dialogue amounts to snarky jabs, stoic resolve, and the occasional girl boss moment. The difficulty is all over the place with double damage slapped on almost everything, some of which has ended up being an oversight that got missed. They leaned in on the platforming even though all the die hard HK fans were there for the bosses, and it becomes a slog to traverse the game. It does not help that movement feels worse than Hollow Knight, and enemies are not only HP sponges but also very annoying and always fly away. Also, there are 2 gay ****** you need to fight, and the first time isn't optional. It's 20 bucks so its cheap but it'll likely go on sale and after a year or two a lot of this will likely get patched out and you'll have the complete game with all content updates. Personally, just go play Blasphemous since that's what Silksong rips off the most, and it's the better game.
Edit: Would you believe me if I told you this game has cut content after 7 years of development?
Last edited by W1llus on September 22nd, 2025, 23:45, edited 1 time in total.
Every game has cut content. Content is cut all the time, usually because it was bad. Do you not remember the KOTOR 2 restoration patch that kept trying to restore useless content?
I've finished the game now and I think it was a worthy follow-up to HK. Hornet moves better and fights better in every way. Bosses are generally good and the exploration is very good. Act 3 feels like it could have been cut completely. I don't think this genre should be this long/big. The Citadel was a great set of areas. The game has too many monster gauntlets. I feel like half the tools are useless and the other half is too good.
The first two acts are easy to recommend. Complaints about difficulty can be ignored; every difficulty can be overcome by returning to it later and using your tools.
The third act feels like they just glued what they couldn't quite finish together.
The most damning thing I can say about it is that in the middle of Act 3 I got bored and played the entirety of Nine Sols instead which, in terms of combat and boss fights, was superior. Also quite a bit more challenging. It took me 18 hours to get to the final boss and I finished the game at 23 hours. Now that's a boss.
If I had to rate it I'd give Silksong something like an 8 or 7 out of 10 depending on my mood, HK maybe an 8.5 and 9Sols an 8 to 9.5 depending on how much focus you place on exploration vs combat.
I don't think Hornet talks too much. She's very matter of fact. Not much room for whatever girlbossing means. But I will say that it was almost comical how no warrior in this game is male. Sure, there's the old knight.... But he's old. There's Seth... But that's the post game. And the green prince is a *** which just seemed really weird. Why did they have to mention this like five times? But all these guys contrast with the like 20 flavors of badass warrior woman you meet which is just a little weird. Took me out of the game.
Last edited by Cedric on September 23rd, 2025, 00:56, edited 6 times in total.
Every game has cut content. Content is cut all the time, usually because it was bad. Do you not remember the KOTOR 2 restoration patch that kept trying to restore useless content?
this is a really bad example because half of kotor 2 really was cut and without the restoration patch it's just an unfinished game
There were parts of kotor 2 that were cut because they didn't have time to get the scripting working (the final area) leading to unceremoniously dropped subplots, and then there were absolutely awful gameplay sections that were cut because they didn't have time to make them fun (droid planet among other parts). The people who did the restoration patch decided to restore everything instead of being sensible.
Better example of a game that doesn't need a restoration patch and is probably made worse by the existing one(last I checked) is Fallout 2.
It could use a tasteful restoration patch. But a lot of the content that was dropped was dropped for a reason.