Introduction

Silksong arrives like a plague of silk: quiet at first, then suddenly everywhere you look. Team Cherry's long-anticipated follow-up to Hollow Knight flips the script by handing the reins to Hornet, Hallownest's prickliest former princess, and dropping her into Pharloom - a kingdom 'haunted by silk and song.' If Hollow Knight felt like an elegy whispered in catacombs, Silksong is a pilgrimage told in quicksilver: more verticality, faster healing, acrobatic combat, and a world wired around quests. At its center, though, is the same one-two emotional punch that made its predecessor resonate: a compact, mysterious protagonist and a cast of NPCs who quietly push her arc forward. This review digs into those character threads, how Silksong weaves them into gameplay, and why Hornet's journey matters as much as the hand-drawn monsters you stab on the way.

Gameplay

Silksong plays like the DNA of Hollow Knight got a gym membership and took pole fitness classes. Hornet moves with a dancer's momentum: tighter, quicker, and designed to string attacks and traversal into seamless loops. Healing is sped up, which changes rhythm: you feel encouraged to be aggressive, to trade blows and bucks and then recover in the middle of a skirmish instead of retreating into a bench-cave to brood. Combat upgrades and new tools lean into Hornet's identity - she was a fighter-princess in Hollow Knight's shadows, and here she's the full thing: acrobatic, surgical, and riddled with narrative hints that every ability teaches you something about who she is. Gameplay changes are not just mechanical but narrative: Silksong adds an explicit quest system (Gather, Wayfarer, Hunt, Grand Hunt) and a journal to track them. That matters for character work. Hornet's pilgrimage up Pharloom's peaks becomes not just a sequence of platforming challenges but a series of small stories offered by NPCs and quest boards. Each quest is a micro-arc: a grieving scholar asking for a lost item, a huntsman needing a rival humbled, or a wayfarer who wants directions home. Completing those quests gives Hornet context and emotional texture; the game turns fetch tasks into chances to discover how Pharloom remembers - and misremembers - its past. This design choice expands Hornet's arc from 'find and fight' to 'learn and reckon.' The currencies and systems reinforce narrative stakes. Rosaries act like Geo did before: they are the mundane evidence of victory, lost on death unless threaded onto a string - a small, storytelling-minded mechanic about fragility and what bonds you keep. Shell Shards and craftable tools (which require Shell Shards to repair) set a tone where Hornet must maintain her implements like a pilgrim tending relics. Crests and tools, craftable and repairable, feel less like inventory tedium and more like tangible artifacts on her path - symbols rather than numbers. Enemies and bosses function as narrative punctuation. Team Cherry promises over 200 enemies and 40+ bosses; these are not just damage fountains but beats in Hornet's arc. The bosses read like characters in a tragedy: some are guardians of a memory, some are expressions of a culture's fear, others test Hornet's identity. Areas such as Greymoor - reportedly one of Team Cherry's largest - offer scope for multi-stage arcs: the environment remembers old rulerships, rituals, and the violence of decline, and Hornet's ascent through them is an ascent through testimony. Hornet herself is a study in restraint. Where Hollow Knight's silent protagonist invited players to project, Hornet brings a pre-existing personality: she has history, agency, and a moral ledger. The game hints that Pharloom knows things about Hornet's origin and nature that even she does not. The pilgrimage structure is perfect for a character arc: each rung of the ascent reveals a shard of truth. NPCs revealed during development - and even the curious inclusion of a fan-created character like 'Seth' in the marketing riddles - suggest Team Cherry wants a living world that reacts to and shapes Hornet. The long development (from DLC idea to full sequel) is visible in the way quests feel crafted to build cumulative emotional momentum rather than scattershot content-farming. Pre-release hands-on impressions consistently praised the combat and movement; critics said Silksong's movement polishes Hollow Knight's rough edges to highlight motion itself. That polishing is crucial to character work: Hornet's identity as quick, nimble, and purposeful isn't just story text - it's how you move. You come to understand her through the controller, which is as old-school an approach to character as you can get and one that Team Cherry executes beautifully.

Graphics

Silksong's visuals continue Team Cherry's signature hand-inked style but with an extra layer of animation and background life. Environments are no longer static wallpaper; backgrounds breathe with the lore of Pharloom. Greymoor, touted as one of the biggest areas, demonstrates the team's ability to scale art without losing detail. Animations are where character arcs shine silently: Hornet's idle stances, a defeated enemy's slump, or a townsperson's repeated small action all narrate backstory without text. Critics at Gamescom noted lush visuals and scintillating attention to audio-visual detail, and that's accurate: the world design reads like a diary left open in the rain - beautiful, stained, and full of half-words. Character design remains economical but expressive. Hornet's silhouette is unchanged enough that you always know who she is, but her animations, tools, and movement vocabulary expand her personality. NPCs introduced in developer riddles and updates suggest a menagerie of scholars, hunters, and bizarre locals who look and move like they carry stories - each sprite a capsule biography. The soundtrack previewed by Christopher Larkin promises to be another layer of narrative: song as memory, perhaps, echoing Pharloom's tagline 'haunted by silk and song.'

Conclusion

Silksong is not just a bigger Hollow Knight; it's a more narratively intentional one. Team Cherry transformed a DLC idea into a full sequel that uses movement, quests, and world design to tell character stories rather than merely hang them on pedestals. Hornet's arc - a princess turned pilgrim compelled to ascend a strange kingdom and unearth truths about herself - is the game's emotional spine, and every mechanical choice supports it. Side-quests and the journal system give NPCs room to breathe and let Pharloom feel like a society carrying its own scars, rather than just a gauntlet of arena fights. There are bumps inherited from expectation: the long development left fans hungry (and sometimes clown-faced), and anything this anticipated risks mythic inflation. Even so, pre-release impressions and Team Cherry's deliberate polish suggest the payoff is worth the wait. On Xbox Series X/S, the performance and visual fidelity let the art and motion sing, while Xbox Game Pass at launch broadens access for players who have been living in a countdown. For players who want a Metroidvania that treats its protagonist as a full person with a pilgrimage to complete, not just an avatar for platforming, Silksong gives you acrobatics, bosses, and a story told in silk-and-steel steps. Final verdict: Silksong earns a solid 9.0/10. It's lovingly crafted, mechanically alive, and emotionally deliberate - a sequel that deepens the universe by focusing on the woman at its center. If you loved Hollow Knight's atmosphere and want a protagonist with agency and a real narrative ascent, get ready to climb Pharloom. Bring tissues for the lore, and bring a rope for the sheer verticality. Team Cherry spent years hemming this tapestry together; the threads hold.

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