After over six years of waiting, Hollow Knight: Silksong is finally available to play, but early Steam reviews aren’t as unanimously positive as you might expect. The highly anticipated sequel to the beloved Metroidvania, Hollow Knight, was officially released on all platforms on September 4, after years of silence from indie developers Team Cherry.
After the success of Hollow Knight, Silksong had become the most wishlisted game on Steam. So many people scrambled to buy it as soon as it was available that Steam was completely down for a while, and other platforms’ stores experienced performance issues. Now, two days later, reviews are starting to roll in, and not all fans have something good to say.
The game currently has a mere “Very Positive” review rating out of 27,000 user ratings, indicating that while most fans are enjoying it, many are unimpressed by the long-awaited game.
Hollow Knight: Silksong Doesn’t Quite Reach The “Overwhelmingly Positive” Rank
Negative Reviews Compare The Game To Hollow Knight
Out of all the user ratings for Hollow Knight: Silksong on Steam, only 94% are positive—just shy of the 95% needed to bump the reviews rating to “Overwhelmingly Positive.” Compare this to the 97% of the 140,000+ ratings for Hollow Knight. Initial Metacritic user scores also seem to place Silksong just short of greatness at 8.9 (compared to the 9.1 Metacritic score of Hollow Knight).
This may not seem like such a big deal, but for such a highly anticipated game, anything shy of greatness feels underwhelming for many fans. Many of the negative reviews compare the title to Hollow Knight and share their disappointment in the sequel, with quite a few sorrowful writeups on Steam starting with “I really wanted to love this game.”
Steam user Icarus IX puts the general feelings of most of the negative reviews succinctly and clearly: “Hollow Knight is a masterpiece. Silksong is not.“
Fans Question Design Decisions Of Hollow Knight: Silksong
From The Combat To The Economy
The biggest complaint that fans have about Silksong is the way combat works. Hornet, the protagonist of Silksong, is much squishier than the Hollow Knight, and many enemies do two masks of damage on her even as she becomes more powerful. This doesn’t sit well with many fans, who find the battling experience to be frustrating rather than fun.
The Rosaries money system is another aspect many fans take issue with. The small red beads are used for everything from unlocking new skills and maps to creating some rest areas. Not every enemy drops Rosaries, though, which makes it a scarce resource that stalls upgrades and progression.
Lastly, the negative reviews seem just generally disappointed and frustrated at the game design itself, calling it unnecessarily punishing and not optimized for the character.
Part of this is fans’ expectations in the aftermath of Hollow Knight, which captivated fans with its incredible level and combat design. As Icarus IX puts it in their review: “Hollow Knight had the slickest, tightest game design ever. … I was frustrated at my own mistakes, but never at the design of the game itself.” Silksong, in contrast, feels to many like they’re fighting against the game rather than growing with it.
Of course, the positive reviews still far outweigh the negative reviews, and the percentage of negative to positive ratings may change as more Hollow Knight: Silksong fans get through the game. The excitement for the game remains huge, reaching a peak concurrent player count of half a million, according to Steamdb. Still, it’s hard to overlook the disappointment a small percentage of Hollow Knight fans have at this game that’s taken over six years to complete.
