After 30 minutes with Hollow Knight: Silksong, I'm desperate to play another 100 hours of its refined, needle-sharp action
Going hands on with Silksong for the first time is oddly nerve-wracking. After six years of anticipation, hype, and desperate occult rituals, the question is: can it possibly live up to expectations?
What ends up surprising me most, then, is how much the game puts me at ease. From the first moment I take control of Hornet, it's like slipping on my favourite old pair of shoes. Six years? No, I'm back in Hollow Knight's world like no time has passed.
That's not to say it simply feels the same. Even missing her full range of traversal abilities, Hornet feels distinctly different from the Knight — more agile, more graceful, more precise. As soon as I try her deadly divekick attack, I can tell I'm going to need to master it for boss fights to come.
Though the game does feel different in the hands, it's speaking the same language. It takes mere seconds to get to grips with Hornet, from her little backwards step before turning to her quick, elegant attacks.
Immediately I'm out into a hostile but familiar world. Keys to find, shortcuts to earn, hidden items secreted just out of view. It looks sharper, but this is Hollow Knight as you know it.
The difference, then, comes in how Hornet is able to traverse it. The Knight felt like a wretch cast into the darkness and forced to learn on the fly. Hornet feels equipped and confident.
Her sprint is super fast, letting you backtrack in half the time. Her jump offers much more fine control over its height—a tool put to the test not just in platforming, but with aerial enemies to launch yourself at and fiery projectiles to leap over.
Combat pushes you to treat both air and ground as distinct angles of attack. Helmeted enemies ignore your strikes from above, forcing you down to their level, while shield-bearers constantly change which direction they guard themselves from, keeping you on the move to find your opportunities.
It comes to a head in the demo with a duel against a boss who feels like a mirror to Hornet—fast, agile, and precise in her own ways. Launching rapier thrusts and screen-filling whirlwind strikes and throwing up cheeky parries when she appears vulnerable, she forces me to lock in and make the most of my full arsenal.
That means plenty of dashes and divekicks, but also finding the right moments to launch swift throwing knives. They're helpful for grabbing every damage opportunity, but I can't rely on them entirely—and not just because their ammo is limited.
Getting in close and landing a few old fashioned strikes is vital, because it charges my magic bar. What's that for? Well, it depends what kind of player you are. For the cautious, filling it to max lets you spend it for a burst of healing. But there's a more reckless choice: spending chunks of it to launch super-charged attacks.
In the end, a little of both (and some very skin-of-my-teeth evasion) sees me through to vanquish my foe—but she jumps away off-screen before the killing blow, and I'm sure she'll return for a harder fight later down the line.
I can't wait to meet her again. Heading into this, my fear was that Silksong couldn't live up to how high its expectations have climbed. In a way that's true—if you're hoping for a sea change for the genre, I didn't see anything in this 30 minute slice to suggest one. It's new but it's safe, working in familiar metroidvania formulas.
Yet those 30 minutes sucked me right back into Hollow Knight's world, much more than I even expected. By the end I was desperate for another 100 hours. If what you've been waiting for is more Hollow Knight, but even better, more refined, and needle-sharp, this seems to be it.