Game Reviews

Hollow Knight: Silksong has a lot in common with Grand Theft Auto 6. Fans have been waiting on it for years. Each new crumb of information is quickly devoured. Competitors are scrambling out of the way. And after years of fermenting hype, the most wishlisted game on Steam now has to deliver something bigger than the all-consuming cultural distortion field surrounding it. No small task. I’ve now played 15 minutes of the final demo and I still could not tell you which way it’s going to go. That’s because everything that can make a Metroidvania Soulslike like Silksong truly pop is precisely what Team Cherry is keeping most under wraps.

I played the Gamescom 2025 build of Silksong on the Xbox Ally PC gaming handheld during a PAX West-adjacent event at Microsoft and it felt like eating a Dunkin Donuts Munchkin: easy, sweet, and over way too soon. That’s by design. Team Cherry said in a recent interview that the game took seven years to make because of all of the new areas, characters, and secrets it wanted to pack into the Hollow Knight sequel. And it also clearly didn’t want to ruin any of those things by actually talking about them before the game’s September 4 release date on PC and console, or by showing them off ahead of time in the demo.

The only portion of Silksong that anyone has played so far takes place near the beginning of the game. Hornet, the new protagonist, awakes in an underground glen full of bright moss and easy enemies. A short platforming section introduces players to the familiar Bloodborne-inspired combat (you need to deal damage to get health back) and the game’s exploration which has you exhausting dead-ends until you find the path forward. It wraps with a simple mini-boss fight that’s intent on scaring any newcomers away.

Team Cherry

The second section takes you to smoldering caverns with more deadly enemies to navigate. Ensembles of flying, fire-ball-spitting wizards and knights with big shields make you work to survive and gesture toward the ambient, elevated threat level that fills each path you choose to go down with just the right amount of tension.

This is all classic Hollow Knight so far. The only thing that really sets Silksong apart in the demo is Hornet. The character’s a bit faster, has a down diagonal attack to speed up aerial recoveries, and can heal more quickly but only after more energy is gathered from dealing damage. It’s a different, more aggressive flow than the original game’s, and could take on an even more distinct identity once players start unlocking their full arsenals.

Will Hollow Knight: Silksong really cost $20?

All of which is to say that while there were certainly no red flags in my brief hands-on time with Silksong, it’s impossible to know from the 15-minute demo whether Silksong can deliver on what fans have been hoping for over the last eight years. It’s slick and prettier than the original, but what will ultimately matter is the cleverness of its secrets, exploration, and later-game boss fights. One other bit of potential good news ahead of the game’s launch next week is that it might not be very expensive either.

Hollow Knight launched for just $15 back in 2017. You can currently buy it on PC for just half that price leading up to the sequel’s release (act now and you might be able to beat it in time). A leak yesterday on the GameStop website suggested Silksong will be $20, only $5 more than its predecessor at a time when Team Cherry easily could have charged $30 or more. The store listing has since been taken down and might have just been a speculative placeholder.

According to Dealabs‘ own leak, the $20 price for Silksong on PC is accurate. No physical editions of the game have been confirmed yet, however.

All eyes will be on Steam for when the actual price drops. So far Team Cherry hasn’t actually confirmed how much it will cost. Like almost everything else about the game, the small indie team is keeping that close to the vest. Not that it will matter. Just like the lack of reviews ahead of launch, Silksong doesn’t have to play by conventional rules. It’s in a league of its own. In less than a week we’ll finally know if it truly belongs there.

Source link