After what feels like a lifetime of painful waiting, Hollow Knight Silksong has finally arrived. It dropped on September 4, a release date that was announced just a few short weeks beforehand, taking many players by surprise. And the surprises keep coming, as Hollow Knight Silksong is a refreshing, meaningful evolution of its predecessor, offering a strikingly distinct experience.
Hollow Knight Silksong is only Team Cherry's second game, serving as a true test of the studio's flexibility and creative power; the developer had to prove that lightning can strike twice.
One could extoll the virtues of Hollow Knight Silksong for hours: its music is terrific, its traversal is powerful and satisfying in a way that the first game's wasn't, and its setting, while familiar, is still a world apart from Hallownest. These factors all play an important role in the final experience, but one central narrative element ought not to be overlooked: Hornet, the protagonist of Silksong, is fundamentally different from The Knight, the hero of the first game. Crucially, she speaks, and has a personality, and this relatively simple twist makes for a narrative adventure that feels entirely removed from that of the first game, in the best possible way.
How Hornet's Capacity for Speech Changes Hollow Knight Silksong
Hornet Is More Active, and Has More Presence, than The Knight
In the first Hollow Knight, players fill the shoes of a standard silent video game protagonist: The Knight never speaks, at least not in a clearly defined way. Like in other seminal franchises like The Legend of Zelda, this muteness is mostly ignored by NPCs, who will monologue, provide exposition, and pontificate without feeling discouraged by the silence of their conversation partner. This is par for the course for many games, but the shortcomings of such a convention are laid bare by Hollow Knight Silksong's more conventional storytelling approach.
Not only does Hornet talk, she talks a great deal. She is a princess, after all, and this royal status is reflected by her courteous, chivalrous manner of speech. She takes control in many conversations, exhibiting a cool elegance while still commanding respect and getting what she wants. For instance, if she's lost and needs to know where to go, she will actually ask a friendly NPC for advice instead of just standing there silently while they chip away at some vague, aloof speech. This helps give Silksong's narrative more structure in comparison to the first game, but it also goes a long way toward immersion and overall story effectiveness.
Although a commonly cited advantage of the silent protagonist is their capacity to be a blank slate for the player to project themselves onto, this doesn't always work out as planned. It's hard to relate to a character who never responds during conversations, for obvious reasons. Indeed, despite Hornet having a considerably more well-defined personality than The Knight, she is, in a sense, easier to inhabit as a player, since she more accurately represents how someone in her position may actually act. On top of all this, she is, for lack of a better word, more "human."
This doesn't just impact the tone and style of the narrative, either. Hollow Knight Silksong's story is also more structured and easy to follow than the first game's, since Hornet is an active participant. She makes decisions for herself, and makes important contributions that dictate the direction of the story, whereas The Knight is more like a leaf in the wind, going wherever they need to go based on intuition and FromSoftware-style dialog exchanges. In the end, Hornet's crystallized personality, communicated via dialog, makes Hollow Knight Silksong's story more entertaining, relatable, and well-paced than it may have been otherwise.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 91 /100 Critics Rec: 97%
- Released
- September 4, 2025
- ESRB
- Everyone 10+ / Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood
- Developer(s)
- Team Cherry
- Publisher(s)
- Team Cherry
WHERE TO PLAY
Become the Princess Knight
As the lethal hunter Hornet, adventure through a kingdom ruled by silk and song! Captured and taken to this unfamiliar world, prepare to battle mighty foes and solve ancient mysteries as you ascend on a deadly pilgrimage to the kingdom’s peak.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is the epic sequel to Hollow Knight, the award winning action-adventure. Journey to all-new lands, discover new powers, battle vast hordes of bugs and beasts and uncover secrets tied to your nature and your past.
- Engine
- Unity
- Franchise
- Hollow Knight
- Number of Players
- Single-player
- Steam Deck Compatibility
- Verified
- PC Release Date
- September 4, 2025
- Xbox Series X|S Release Date
- September 4, 2025
- PS5 Release Date
- September 4, 2025
- Nintendo Switch Release Date
- September 4, 2025
- Nintendo Switch 2 Release Date
- September 4, 2025
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PC
- OpenCritic Rating
- Mighty
- Wiki
