On February 14, 2019, Team Cherry – the creators of the massively successful indie game, Hollow Knight – released a teaser trailer for their new game: Hollow Knight: Silksong.
Despite the fact that there was not a release date for Silksong, fans of Hollow Knight were elated, and impatiently waited for it to come out. Then, on August 21, 2025, after nearly seven years of waiting, Team Cherry released its final trailer for Silksong and finally announced a release date: September 4, 2025.
Silksong not only lives up to its expectations, it exceeds them. It is a magical game, deserving just as much praise as Hollow Knight.
Similar to Hollow Knight, Silksong contains an expansive variety of weapons and accessories that players can use. Exclusive to Silksong is the crest mechanic, giving Hornet, the playable character, a new moveset, and tools – consumable weapons. The crest system is a nice and refreshing rework to Hollow Knight’s “charm” system, that allows just as much customization, and the tool system encourages the player to use whatever weapons that pique their interest or align with their playstyle.
Silksong is gorgeous: every character’s and enemy’s attacks have so much personality and effort behind them. The most popular of these characters being Sherma, a little bug who just hits a bell and sings a little tune. Even just the tutorial area really reflects just how much love and effort was poured into this game, with all the bugs and the boss looking extremely vibrant and full of life with their attacks.. This level of detail is all the more admirable, considering that Silksong’s map is even bigger than Hollow Knight’s, which already had an extremely large world.
It is not necessary to play its Hollow Knight in order to still have an amazing experience playing Silksong; Silksong is its own separate game that’s in the same universe as Hollow Knight. While it maintains the same spirit that made Hollow Knight amazing, it tweaks a couple things to make it different. Hornet has some new attacks when comparing her moveset to the character in Hollow Knight, and there are some added or completely reworked systems, such as the charm system now becoming the crest system, to make this game feel fresh and unique when compared to Hollow Knight.
Silksong has gotten some flack for being too hard, and there are some moments where that complaint is justified: Silksong has its moments where it’s cruel because it wants to be, almost trying to make the player upset. The most notorious of these being Hunter’s March, where every enemy either deals double damage, or is simply a nuisance and a half to take care of.
Despite the difficulty, Silksong more than makes up for it with all of the things that it does do right. This game will be amazing for anybody who loves Hollow Knight or simply isn’t too bothered by playing a hard game. However, for people who were disappointed by Hollow Knight (or any other metroidvania), or simply just suck at video games in general, then maybe give it some thought before buying it.
