Last year, the Hollow Knight community waited for YEARS for a new game to come out. Thankfully, unlike other developers, Team Cherry delivers for their supporters. Hollow Knight: Silksong got released on the Steam market, immediately making it to the front page. A game, you could say, twice as good as the original. The art, the story, the difficulty levels - everything is perfection.

If you haven't seen any gameplay or played Hollow Knight, depending on your taste in games, you're missing out. A2D parkour, boss fights, secrets, amazing lore - everything you could dream of. Silksong is mostly an aftermath of the original game, which takes place in a different location than the first. Even though they're related stories - and gameplay-wise, you aren't required to play the first game to be able to understand what's going on in Silksong - but it is recommended to do so to get used to controls, abilities, fighting mechanics, etc. Silksong has its own separate lore, much deeper than the original game, as our protagonist, unlike the first game, can actually talk to other creatures as well, instead of only listening to them.

The protagonist of Silksong is Hornet. If you aren't aware with the story line from the first game, she's somewhat related to the Knight we play as in Hollow Knight and we meet her in the main game too as a mini boss fight. Hornet, is a polite but stern, reserved but not cold, spider that the top-notch writing we encounter during the playthrough, let's you get to know about her. She's an amazing hero, taken unwillingly to the Pharloom land, and with her sociable skills she quickly finds out her purpose in it. She helps multiple other characters with their quests, needs, objectives and neutralizes anything hostile.

Pharloom, the new area the story takes place, is a fascinating area, full of secret areas that, of course, knowing Team Cherry, have other secrets in them. This dying land where hopeful bugs go on pilgrimage its lower levels all the way up to the shining peak of a spectacular cog work city called The Citadel in blind service of their faith - most bugs don't make it through to The Citadel as they are judged by The Last Judge at the entrance (one of the many boss fights we encounter).

Just like Hollow Knight, Silksong needs patience and skill that improves over time. It's not a hard game, but a challenging game because it doesn’t just punch you in the face and reject you for the sake of being hard. It challenges you to overcome obstacles that routinely feel insurmountable at first but are finely tuned to be conquered as your skill, knowledge, and toolset of earned abilities improves. Perhaps an extreme example of this is an area like Bilewater, which has very few respawn benches to rest at and includes some of the most punishing poison water I’ve seen in any game, forcing you to cleanse yourself after falling in it by wasting your precious healing ability while also draining the resource that fuels that ability which is INSANELY infuriating. I thought this area was unreasonably difficult to navigate when I first tried to force my way through it but then I took a break, explored elsewhere, and returned hours later with new combat options, items to help mitigate that poison, and a better game plan that made it much easier.

The new Tool system that fits into these Crests is impressively flexible in a way I really liked. Alongside equipable abilities that consume Silk when used, the Tools themselves are divided into three distinct color categories. Red Tools grant extra offensive options with limited ammo, like throwing knives or aerial spike traps; blue Tools tend to focus on defense, offering perks such as increased Silk capacity or resistance to fire; and yellow Tools provide broader utility, like automatically collecting dropped currency or showing Hornet’s position on the map. This separation feels like a clear upgrade over Hollow Knight's single-slot system, since support perks and combat enhancements no longer compete for the same space. Because of that, I found myself switching Tools more often depending on the situation, whether exploring or facing a boss.

Each Crest also comes with its own distribution of these colored slots, which opens up room for creative and unconventional builds. You can experiment by combining certain abilities or ignoring ones that don’t suit your playstyle. For instance, since I preferred saving Silk for healing instead of special moves, the Architect Crest which replaces a Silk slot with an extra red Tool slot ended up working really well for me for a while. Still, I do wish the different "weapon" styles weren’t permanently linked to each Crest’s Tool layout and passive traits. I would have gladly kept using the Architect for its Tool versatility and its ability to convert Silk into ammo away from benches, but its more rigid, drill-like attack style (while interesting) eventually pushed me back to the Reaper.

Hollow Knight: Silksong did not only meet my already high expectations but completely exceeded them in the best way possible, building on a game that I already loved and making it faster and more exhilarating than ever. While some quests and the somewhat unusual ending may have some minor issues, they are in no way enough to detract from the overall experience, which is simply incredible. Team Cherry has absolutely hit the mark with the balance between the precision of the 2D platforming, the exploration of the beautiful and unpredictable world, and the intense and heart-pounding combat with some of the best boss battles in the series.