Hollow Knight: Silksong Review – The Modern Night Symphony

Hollow Knight: Silksong is absurdly difficult, but that’s precisely what helps make it so hypnotist. It is one of those games in which it is plunged to be lost, constantly frustrated, but always feeling that most of the guilt is yours, wanting to try once again to take the stubbornness. To make it much more dangerous for your health, especially mental, the feeling of isolation that these mysterious scenarios bring is so attractive that you won’t be able to stop playing.

Since Konami wrote this such passionate Symphony of the night on PS1, which celebrated the Castlevania series, there have been numerous exciting metroidvania like Shadow Complex, Ori or even the latest Prince of Persia, which had a lot and somehow marked me. However, I would say that only Hollow Knight: Silksong is achieving an effect that constantly refers me to the days when I started playing this memorable Konami classic.

Hollow Knight: Silksong will be remembered for most for its enormous difficulty, but the appeal of this meteroidvania with daydreams soulslike is not exactly there, it is in the applied methodology, which recovers the sensations and tactics used by the producers in the 80s and 90s. Not so much for the difficulty, I confess that I didn’t care anything that was a little less punishing, but for the methodical to encourage the player to encourage the player explore tirelessly. In an era of screens full of aid and neon panels to indicate the way, the old style is new again.

The classic design is now fresh again

A huge amount of video games surprised and marveled the imagination of millions of players because of how ingenious they are. Developed in an era of technological limitations, they showed the teams to go far beyond expected when betting on ways to involve and entice the player. Today, technology helps immensely, we should appreciate this, but at the same time it is also serving to make experience easier, to make them less demanding.

Perhaps it is the need to reach casual masses, maybe this facilitism, but I feel that most agree that the design of the games is simplified and devoid of particular challenge to the player. When I speak in challenge I do not speak in punishing bosses, but in challenges like playing without map, not knowing where to go or have to be aware of everything to visually play the game. What were once elements used to keep the player focused on playing today are removed friction because the player’s attention is totally fragmented.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is a metroidvania that follows the classic models, navigation without map, without directions where, and with an absolutely austere economy to try to get around it. You can buy maps or amulets with small aid, but it costs rosaries, gains by defeating some enemies, but the amount is very limited and you will have to spend a lot of time on grinding to get all the possible aid.

This is a game in which you have to explore all corners and display strong navigation capacity, to comb all the places you can access to try to progress. You have to be aware of all the tracks, NPC conversations and explore the map well to try to find ways to reach new places, which inevitably means facing absolutely difficult bosses.

High difficulty is part of Hollow Knight’s personality: Silksong and even if Team Cherry use some artificialities (such as reducing the area of ​​vision to make it difficult to see a boss’s movements, for example) the truth is that it displays immense merit for its execution. Hollow Knight: Silksong is effectively a Git Gud game, which will challengely challenge your understanding of all mechanics. This meticulous design there is full understanding of all movements and even the execution time of each, so that you always know the result of each decision of yours even before you make it.

The scope of the jump and the duration of this leap, for example, will allow you to know whether to jump to a certain point you will escape the attack or not, you have to assimilate this type of information to be able to triumph. Hornet begins very limited in movements and skills, but throughout the journey it becomes more agile, but even that should be used with an almost mathematical balance because a Dash performed in panic, for example, can throw you against a boss and extra damage significantly reduces the little life it has.

It’s easy to dive into despair, but Hollow Knight: Silksong is a game that rewards the player who dedicates her attention. Gathering rosaries to acquire small aid, exploring every corner and even facing optional threats can help you get new attacks and skills that will help you, which will bring you more likely to win, but still, this is a game that melts your soul because the minimum error can have a giant price. However, this is your charm, arouses in you the desire to overcome adversity, you want to realize which tools in arsenal to your reach can help you find the pace of movements that will lead you to triumph before the boss.

However, Hollow Knight: Silksong is much more devilish than a mere metroidvania soulslike, is a side travel game whose thoroughness applies to platforms, as the level and rhythms design involved with the entire travel process are tuned for you to be very expensive every error or sloppiness. It was often losing on the way to the affected Boss I was frustrated by constant defeats, but it is easy to realize that it is ours, that frustration took us out of the pace that allowed to move with proper agility and fluidity for this mathematical design in tune to maximize difficulty.

This is the feeling that lasts and makes Hollow Knight: Silksong so special, capable of awakening the same passion as the worshiped classics that also enchanted their generation, the feeling that the fault is yours, that the reward exploration, that your dedication is rewarded with merit. In these hours of Hollow Knight: Silksong stands out the feeling that it is a game that becomes an obsession that conquers your fascination and respect. Even when you try to realize how to use Poggo mechanics, either in combat or to reach new places, you are demanding, you have to understand it well, but over time it becomes natural.

A reference?

It is impossible not to feel that Hollow Knight: Silksong is a case of triumph of the method, applying an ingenious design that results in an experience that fulfills all its purposes. It is an absurdly difficult game that lives up to the term “Git Gut” because you really have to realize in full mechanics to enter a boss fight and analyze the movements to understand how and when to react. In the midst of this descent to madness that the frustration of repeatedly losing will bring you, is one of the most robust and charming experiences of recent years.

The game is spectacularly accurate, requires constant delivery on your part, something that ends up conquering. The feeling that the economy is too austere remains, just like the feeling that Hollow Knight: Silksong seems to favor the difficulty and frustration of the player’s fun, however, it is undeniable that it represents the old era, preicos and methodics that require total focus, something so rare today.