Hollow Knight: Silksong is a masterful, daring follow-up that’s destined to be misunderstood for years to come

TechRadar Verdict

Hollow Knight: Silksong is so much more than I expected from a sequel, deftly avoiding the pitfalls that come with following up from one of the best indie games. Team Cherry’s second masterpiece is not for everyone, but it’s absolutely proven to be worth the wait. It rewards patience in its combat, platforming, and exploration, before daring the player to take big risks during boss fights. Frustrating map design decisions and a tendency to punish the player early on dampen the experience from time to time, but make no mistake, Silksong is every bit as great as its predecessor.

Pros

• +Every single room feels meticulously handcrafted
• +Hornet is a proper protagonist
• +Side quests offer some of the best reasons to explore the full map
• +The best boss fights I’ve ever played

Cons

• -Map design is still frustrating
• -Resource economy needs further balancing

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you're buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Long-awaited metroidvania game Hollow Knight: Silksong is already proving to be a victim of its own success.

The unbearable hype surrounding its storefront-destroying launch, combined with the simultaneous release into the eager hands of both critics and players, has created a uniquely voracious narrative.

There’s a sense that one must devour Silksong all at once, or else risk being left behind and out of the loop on what is surely one of the biggest gaming events of the decade so far.

The problem is, Silksong is not a game to be binged. It’s a sprawling, complicated, and brilliant sequel that demands patience above all else. Only then does it fully reveal itself as a game that’s much more than the conversations around difficulty would have you believe.

Review information

Platform reviewed: Nintendo Switch 2
Available on: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PC
Release date: September 4, 2025

Not even two weeks into its life, developer Team Cherry’s Silksong has largely been misrepresented and mislabelled as an impossibly difficult and sadistic continuation of 2017’s brilliant Hollow Knight. Of course, Silksong is a very challenging game; I agree with that wholeheartedly. It’s so much more than that, though.

As the dust settles, and now looking back on my first completed playthrough, I believe it’s going to take years for the collective player hivemind to truly unpack exactly what Silksong does well, and where it falters.

Rough starts and Bellharts

I made the decision to play the first five hours of Hollow Knight alongside those of Silksong’s. This is where the two games differ most drastically. Hollow Knight is much more generous with checkpoints, resources, and clear tutorial sections than Silksong.

Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox

Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more.

Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors