Silksong Initial Thoughts

Hollow Knight: Silksong is the first metroidvania I have ever played. That is the equivalent of making your first action game Dark Souls. However, I did have experience with Bloodborne and other difficult games to look back on. I expected to die. A lot. In fact in my first playthrough of the game, I died around 500 times. I even modded in a death counter to keep an accurate tally.

What on Earth made me want to play this game? The Widow boss. I am a sucker for a good boss and Widow's boss fight looked fun and funny as hell, so I picked up the game. Also, I love when female characters are allowed to be crazy and evil and her grumbling, screeching and yelling was hilarious to me.

The best $25 I've spent in years.

The Visuals

It's an incredibly beautiful game. There are several moments in the game where I just sit back and take in the scenery. The parallaxing on the environments is also really nice as well.

The character designs—enemy and ally alike—are extremely inventive and cute. I want an artbook for this game so bad. I got one for Mario Odyssey because it blew my away, and this one would be the same. So many of the characters and enemies are what I call "Little Guys" with those big baby eyes and little feet and little outfits. I particularly love the Mask Maker, the Judges,

There were so many moments where I said "No wonder it took them 7 years!" while looking at this game. As an artist, the details in all of the backgrounds from the smallest alcoves to the set-pieces are all lovely and I know took an insane amount of time to painstakingly make. There is copy and paste, and unlike some people, I understand that its not cheating to take shortcuts. Especially if the shortcuts still make the game look good.

In terms of biomes, my favorites from are Shellwood, The Blasted Steps and Sands of Karak (it does a desert level in such an interesting way), and least favorites are Sinner's Road and Putrefied Ducts (I hate maggots, otherwise both of these would be in my top 5). All of them are well-thought-out, well written and considered, even in small places like Wisp Thicket and Hunter's March. Even the little alcoves have bits and pieces of lore to them if you're willing to look for it.

My absolute favorite piece of lore to be found is in The Cradle, one of the last areas of the game for the normal ending. If you go to a side room, you will see a number of small cages just like the one Hornet was captured in. On each of them, there will be a description of each of the Weavers that were caught. If you look closer, you'll notice that that they were Weavers in quarter or eighth part, while Hornet is the only half-part. I can get into a whole thing about blood quantum and white supremacist notions of purity and inheritance, but this is just my initial takeaways.

Speaking of taking!

The Difficulty

This game is hard. As someone who likes hard games with hard bosses, this was right up may alley. You have to built a certain way to understand why these games are so appealing. Some people unwind with cozy games (I clocked in 100+ hours into Fields of Mistria), and some people unwind with extremely hard games with insane boss gauntlets. I do both and neither are better or worse to me. As long as everyone's having fun, it's good.

I came into this game with the same philosophy as I do with Soulsborne games: there are ways to make this easier, but it won't be easy to find. Silksong is the same way. The Wanderer's Crest (an item I had to get to make pogoing significantly easier) required 500 rosaries, some traversal and an arena of enemies to defeat. Pretty straightforward. My second playthrough I got the Reaper's Crest while I was in Greymoor with a pretty easy enemy gauntlet.

In terms of bosses, my favorites are Widow (I love the lore behind her bc it paints a violent picture of Weaver society), The Last Judge and The Fourth Chorus (the aura of this boss is crazy). My least favorites have been Trobbio (sorry, the flashing lights made it , the Double Moss Mother(too chaotic), and Groal The Great (nasty as hell).

In terms of enemies, I love the Silk Snippers and the Judges (the cymbals are hilarious). For the least favorite, it has to be the enemies in the Whiteward. I love a good haunted hospital but the Morticians remind me of penises and I hate that.

The Body Horror

So, I thought the original Hollow Knight was spooky in the way the movie 9 was spooky, so I had a general idea of what to watch out for. Cute and mildly creepy, got it.

I was wrong.

Turns out, I was in for a delightful and horrifying surprise with the amount of body horror in this game. Anyone who's seen my posts on Bluesky knows that I adore body horror, but I have a specific love for eldritch or non-human-related body horror.

The idea of people being possessed with silk is insane on its face, but the game goes to great and disturbing lengths to show just how frightening it can be. It leans into eldritch horror the way that I found out later through looked up the lore for Hollow Knight more in depth after seeing the first bodies get possessed and wondered if the previous game was this creepy. Short answer: YES.

Also, I won't spoil anything, but while looking for information about a boss, I found out just how far they take the whole "silk possession" thing. If you wanted to know what specifically happens to someone's body after being possessed, you will find out. If you like Bloodborne for that, you will love this game for the same reasons. Especially the aforementioned Whiteward.

The Gender

The gender of this game. I knew Hollow Knight was one of the few nonbinary protagonists in video games, but I figured that they'd just be an anomaly in the world of Hollow Knight. Turns out, no. Hornet is the anomaly in Hollow Knight for having a gender specified. This keeps pretty in line with bugs in nature. Larger bugs are usually female, smaller ones are male. Larvae have no defining gender markers in most cases.

Everyone can have any disposition and body type. I wish I could say that was the norm in media, but it's not. It's the 2020s and there's been a rolling back of diversity and DEI related anything since the Trump admin came back into office. It's nice to see that this game has everyone capable of having every disposition in every gender. I wish more games had that as well.

Overall

I think that Silksong should win game of the year. I originally was going to give it Hades 2, Hades 2's ending was so bad and had so many plot contrivances that I cannot warrant giving it GOTY.