After years of anticipation, Hollow Knight: Silksong, has finally been released. The video game is a long awaited sequel to Hollow Knight. The day of the release, thousands of fans joined in, causing chaos and crashed servers. Once everything was back up and running, it was safe to say Hollow Knight: Silksong was well worth the wait.

The game begins with a cutscene showing Hornet, a spider-hybrid, captured by other bugs, later discovered are from “The Citadel.” Hornet escapes and you play as her, embarking on a journey towards The Citadel to get revenge: doing parkour and fighting enemies and bosses along the way.

The developers, Team Cherry, as they are called, have received plenty of undeserved backlash even while the game was less than a week old. Players claim the difficulty of the game is too much and it’s reaching a point where it’s unplayable because it’s “too hard”.

However, it’s supposed to be hard. After such a long wait, an easy game would be disappointing. While challenging at times, the difficulty is part of what makes the game so enjoyable.

While difficulty is one of the more admirable qualities of the game, some aspects go overboard. 

For instance, finding the next place to go can be overwhelmingly strenuous. I’ve spent 30 minutes searching an area for even the slightest clue as to where to go next, all for the answer to be breaking a random wall in a random room. At times it feels the developers tried too hard to keep the players vigilant and on their feet.

Compared to the first game, Silksong does a great job at keeping the overall vibe and charm of the franchise. 

While they have their similarities, Silksong has redone a few of the basic mechanics of the game, noticeable within the first few minutes of playing.

Hollow Knight’s regenerative life ability, originally called SOUL, has had a redesign to Silk. Hornet is part spider and has weaver abilities, so changing that detail was an excellent decision to individualize the game.

Moreover, Hollow Knight had a pogoing system in which you could bounce off of objects in a parkour fashion. Silksong spiced up that feature by adding diagonal pogoing, causing a difficult adjustment and more thoughtful gameplay.

Fast travel is something that has been done exceptionally well in this game. The developers took a basic and efficient concept and gave it an exciting approach. 

At first, you walk into a room, fighting the “Bell Beast” boss. Once you beat her, she becomes docile and acts as your ride for fast travel. This makes things more interactive and interesting rather than just clicking a button to get from one place to another.

In contrast to Hollow Knight, the musical aspect of the game is something that’s lacking. 

Something very memorable about Hollow Knight is each environment’s catchy tunes that you’ll catch yourself humming throughout the day. However, Silksong’s music doesn’t quite reach that bar. While it’s not necessarily bad, it’s nothing that sticks out quite like Hollow Knight’s does.

Silksong’s map layout and aesthetic is very admirable. The map isn’t very hard to navigate for the most part and is very linear, unlike the first game. 

So far, the game has had a few minor bugs, however it’s nothing too common or something that ruins gameplay. Team Cherry has already released updates patching the existing ones.