slightly

The notes for Hollow Knight: Silksong’s first proper post-release patch have arrived. Team Cherry have been busy fixing bugs and making some “slight balance adjustments in the early game”, which you can now give a go early via beta branches on Steam and GOG.

That’ll mean you’re testing the changes ahead of the update’s planned full deployment next week, with Team Cherry aiming for a mid-week arrival “barring any unforeseen issues”. Now you know that, let’s get into the changes, which the studio have outlined in a post on the Steamy platform.

First of all, the bit that might prove controversial among hardened Skongers. As part of those early game balance tweaks, Team Cherry have opted to roll out a “slight difficulty reduction” for the boss fights against Moorwing and Sister Splinter. How you feel about that will likely depend on whether you’ve spent the past few days yelling at folks for seeking out mods or guides to help make their path through the metroidvania a bit less stressful.

Outside of that, the balancing’s also seen Sandcarvers have their damage reduced, plus increases in the rosary rewards dished out by relics, psalm cylinders, and courier deliveries. The prices of bellways and bell benches you run into around the game’s midway point have also dropped a bit. Oh, and there’s been a “slight increase in pea pod collider scale”.

That’s it for the balancing, with the rest being bug fixes for problems like “getting stuck floating after down-bouncing on certain projectiles”, “courier deliveries sometimes being inaccessible in Act 3”, and that “situation where players could remain cloakless after Slab escape sequence” I mentioned in the strap. No prolonged Hornet nudeness for the horn-dogs. Well, coatlessness really, but either way she might have gotten a bit cold, so an important fix.

I’ll list the rest of the fixes below, so you can scan through to see if anything you’ve run into crops up:

Fixed wish Infestation Operation often not being completable during the late game.
Fixed wish Beast in the Bells not being completable when Bell Beast is summoned at the Bilewater Bellway during the late game.
Fixed craft bind behaving incorrectly when in memories.
Fixed Lace tool deflect soft-lock at start of battle in Deep Docks.
Fixed Silk Snippers in Chapel of the Reaper sometimes getting stuck out of bounds.
Fixed Claw Mirrors leaving Hornet inverted if taking damage during a specific moment while binding.
Fixed Snitch Pick not giving rosaries and shell shards as intended.
Removed float override input (down + jump, after player has Faydown Cloak).

“All fixes will apply retroactively, so players who’ve hit a significant bug that prevents progress may want to switch over to public-beta to receive the fix,” Team Cherry wrote. “Further fixes are already being worked on for a second patch. If you have an issue and you don’t see the solution in the list above, we may be working on it.”

If you’re planning on jumping into the patch’s Steam beta, instructions for getting access can be found here. Just remember that you’ll likely need to disable any mods, such as these freshly released multiplayer ones, that you’ve got installed first.

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Kirby and the Forgotten Land + Star Crossed World occupies a strange space in the spate of Switch 2 upgrades. Its upgrades to the original game are relatively modest, offering small performance improvements to a game that already ran well in the first place. But its new content is among the most expansive, consisting of a new mini-campaign that threads itself through original stages and culminates in even tougher challenges than in the main game. It doesn’t revitalize the experience in the same way that the Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom upgrades do on Switch 2. Instead, it adds even more of what made the original so great.

When you start up your existing save in Star-Crossed World, you’ll be greeted by a new island centered on an ominous dark heart, the Fallen Star Volcano. Helpless Starry creatures have been scattered throughout the world, and at the same time, star crystals have fallen that transformed stages and enemies, so being the helpful demigod that he is, Kirby volunteers to rescue the Starries.

Functionally, this means revisiting stages from the original Forgotten Land that have been given new crystalized variants. Those alternative stages coexist along the originals, so they can be selected separately. There are usually two crystal stages per world, making this new campaign about one-third the size of the original campaign. And while pieces of the stages will be recognizable, they mostly feel extremely different. You access new parts of stages by activating crystal touchpoints, which make new crystalline paths to follow.

The crystal effect gives the stages a lovely sparkling feel that looks a little better than the original Switch game. Though not a massive improvement, it’s a nice enhancement that helps the Switch 2 upgrade feel worthwhile. The one drawback is that this crystal effect is the commonality throughout all the stages, which has the result of making the stages visually similar. There’s still variance when you’re following a crystal path through a neon-lit casino versus a craggy volcano, of course, but the crystals mean they look more alike than in the original game.

The Star-Crossed stages largely offer similar challenges to the original, with some tougher enemies that seem primed for the abilities you’ve probably upgraded from the original game. As in the original, the standout are the “mouthful” segments, like a giant gear that lets you climb up across walls or a sandwich board that turns on its side to let you glide down a hill snowboard-style. Those are some of the most inventive and challenging segments across both games, and they’re sprinkled in just enough to make them feel special. The new mouthful forms do accentuate the lack of any new copy abilities for Kirby, though.

The new stages are littered with Starries–you get them for completing the stage but also find hidden ones scattered around, and get rewarded with a Starry for completing hidden objectives. For more experienced players, I found it fun to thoroughly scour stages and try to get them all–or as many as I could–on my first try. Nintendo falls back on its old habits by gating progress behind your current Starry count, but there’s plenty of reason to replay stages to find all of the little creatures. And if you’re really struggling, you can visit a Waddle-Dee in your home base to get tips on hunting down any that you’re missing. Another Waddle-Dee revives the gacha mechanic with trophies of the new environments and crystalized enemies, giving you something to spend the new Starry coins on.

Kirby and Elfilin look out at Fallen Star Volcano

Gallery

As you progress through the Star-Crossed World, the dark heart at the center of the Fallen Star Volcano slowly gets enveloped in crystals. Once you’ve finished the regular Starry stages, a new challenge opens that may even be tougher than anything in the main Forgotten Land campaign. It’s a surprisingly sudden difficulty spike, albeit one that felt like a nice end-cap to the entire Forgotten Land experience.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land + Star-Crossed World takes an already-great game and gives you more of it. The upgrade doesn’t feel as essential as the Zelda Switch 2 Edition games, because those helped ambitious games run more smoothly and fully realize their original potential. But it is more substantial than either of those, by nature of adding new story content and stages to explore. Kirby and the Forgotten Land was already a platforming buffet, and this add-on is a great reason to go back for seconds.

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Hollow Knight: Silksong’s first patch makes some early bosses slightly easier, out now in Steam and GOG beta

Kirby Star-Crossed World Review – Forgotten Land Gets Bigger, Only Slightly Better