Silksong Review: Faster Combat and Denser Exploration Earn 9.2/10

Hollow Knight: Silksong has arrived on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch and Switch 2, and it earns its score. The game lands at 9.2 out of 10, a mark that reflects tight combat, dense exploration and a world built to reward patience.

Trailer, via Team Cherry.

The Weight of a Needle

Combat in Hollow Knight: Silksong feels heavier and faster than what came before it. Every strike carries weight, every step aside demands timing, and the game rarely lets a player rest through an encounter.

Enemies punish carelessness. Bosses in Hollow Knight: Silksong ask players to learn patterns, adapt and try again. That loop, fail, learn, return, sits at the center of why the game works.

Players who push forward without care will meet quick defeat. The game does not ease its demands as it goes on; instead it raises them, forcing sharper attention with every new region.

Mapping the Unknown

Exploration remains the center of Hollow Knight: Silksong. Areas unfold slowly, hiding paths behind ability gates and secrets behind patience.

Players will return to old rooms often, once new tools let them reach places once closed off. That return never feels wasted, since fresh abilities turn familiar ground into something new again.

The map system helps players find their way without holding their hand. Markers appear only where a player chooses to set them, keeping discovery central to the experience.

Platforms and Steady Play

Hollow Knight: Silksong runs across PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch and Switch 2. Play stays steady across the range tested, with no major drop in smoothness reported during heavy combat.

Switch and Switch 2 owners get a version of the same dense world found on PC and current-generation consoles that can be carried and played away from a screen at home. The change between play at home and play away does not appear to cost the game any of its detail.

Sound and Atmosphere

Music shifts with location and mood. Quiet corridors carry thin, careful sound, while boss arenas swell with score that pushes urgency into every exchange.

Silence matters too.

The game knows when to hold back, letting footsteps and distant noise carry a room instead of music. That restraint makes the moments when the score does arrive land harder.

Difficulty and Fair Challenge

Hollow Knight: Silksong does not soften its challenge for players new to the series. Boss fights ask for repeated attempts, and jumps across narrow ledges test precise timing as much as quick hands.

Some players will find the challenge steep. Others will find it exactly what draws them back, encounter after encounter, until a fight finally falls into place.

The game offers no settings to lower that bar. What it offers instead is fairness: deaths in Hollow Knight: Silksong tend to feel earned rather than cheap, a distinction that keeps a hard fight from turning into a sour one.

That fairness carries through the whole game. A player who dies rarely feels the game has tricked them; more often, the player can see exactly what went wrong and what to try next time.

A World Worth the Time

Hollow Knight: Silksong asks for a real investment of hours, and it pays that investment back. Its world rewards curiosity, its combat rewards discipline, and its difficulty rewards steady effort over time.

Few games manage to make failure feel useful. Hollow Knight: Silksong does, turning every defeat into information for the next attempt.

Hollow Knight: Silksong stands as a rare sequel that builds on everything that made its predecessor work while refusing to repeat it outright. Combat is sharper, exploration is denser, and the world holds together with a steadiness that few games in its genre manage across so many platforms at once. The score for Hollow Knight: Silksong is 9.2 of 10.

game review · Hollow Knight Silksong · Indie Games · PC gaming · Switch 2