Like many fans of Hollow Knight, I spent the last several years eagerly awaiting the day that Team Cherry would finally release its sequel. I think I even reached a point where I told myself that I didn’t care anymore, after waiting 2-3 years without a single update from Team Cherry regarding Silksong’s progress. Yet, like just about everyone else, I immediately jumped to play Hollow Knight: Silksong when it released in the beginning of September. I enjoyed it for the most part too, but, after completing it 100%, I’ve concluded that I prefer the original.

Notice that I say “prefer.” I’m not a delusional hater. Hollow Knight: Silksong is objectively bigger and better than Hollow Knight in just about every way. The map is larger; there’s more to do; more characters; more bosses; more items, and so on. Hornet herself is much more enjoyable to control than The Knight. She’s fast, acrobatic and agile with a much more expansive kit and range of abilities. You can see that an incredible amount of passion was poured into the game’s every facet. Truly, Hollow Knight: Silksong is a tremendous accomplishment and Team Cherry should be proud of their creation.

So then, how could I prefer the original over this triumph of game design? Well, there are a few reasons. One is a difference in boss design. In Hollow Knight, boss encounters were mostly one-on-one duels. It’s just you and the boss, and defeating them depended on how well you could learn their patterns and exploit their weaknesses. The game had its cruddy bosses too, but I can’t think of any that I really hated. I can however think of several that were just an absolute blast regardless of how hard they are: Nightmare King Grimm, Radiance and the Mantis Lords being a few notable examples.

These sorts of fights exist in Silksong too, but they feel like the minority. More often than not, the game likes pitting you against multiple opponents operating completely independently of one another. I assume this is done to “encourage” players to flex Hornet’s agility and kit, but in practice it’s just annoying to deal with. Whereas many of Hollow Knight’s boss fights felt like well choreographed dances, most of Silksongs felt like frantic brawls. Again, this is likely by design, but for me they just weren’t that fun. With Hollow Knight boss fights, my reaction afterward was usually “whew, that was intense!” With Silksong, it was more like “glad that BS is over!”

I also wasn’t a fan of “endurance” being used to add in extra difficulty. Long stretches without benches, long runbacks, and long multi-wave gauntlets over and over again. Frankly it got tiring after a while, especially whenever I ran across one of Team Cherry’s fake bench pranks. Ha ha guys, real funny. Now excuse me while I try to get all the way back to where your stupid prank killed me. There’s also the beefier on average enemies, lessened rewards for exploration, and money grinding – all of which seemed to exist for no other reason than to waste my time.

Tough and threatening enemies slow you down as you try to move from room to room. Finding nothing but rosaries often made exploration feel stupid, and seriously, why do shards exist? Tool uses are already limited, so why are you punishing me even more for using them? No wonder they feel comfortable setting the 100% speedrun trophy at 30 hours! You lose a lot of time to stupid stuff in this game.

Was Hollow Knight perfect? Certainly not. It had its irritating qualities too, Geo in particular. However, I never felt like anything in the game was punishing me for playing how I wanted to play or deliberately wasting my time. Everything had its purpose and it all fit together nicely for the most part. It was also a shorter game, which fits my tastes better these days. Is Hollow Knight actually better than Silksong? Again, no. But I still like it better all the same.

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Did you play Hollow Knight: Silksong? What are your thoughts on it? How do you like it compared to Hollow Knight?

Image is an official promotional screenshot from the Steam page.