Hollow Knight vs Silksong: Which Should You Play First?

Hollow Knight, on sprawl rather than on polish. Hallownest is the bigger place to get lost in, and our catalogue logs the difference in systems rather than square footage: Hollow Knight carries backtracking, hidden secrets and resource management as mechanics, and Silksong's entry drops all three. That is the explorer's version of this argument. The first game withholds the map, withholds fast travel, and makes the shape of the kingdom something you assemble in your head over thirty hours. Pharloom is denser and reads more clearly, which is a genuine improvement for most people and a loss for the specific pleasure of being lost. Silksong's own stored player complaints include a generic feel in some environment designs, a sentence nobody has ever written about Hallownest. Both worlds are worth walking. Only one of them still surprises you at hour twenty five.

Silksong, and it is not close. Hornet runs, pounces and heals on the move, which turns every fight into something you fight through rather than back away from, and the Crest and Tool system means two players can build genuinely different characters out of the same encounter. Engaging and challenging combat is the second item in Silksong's stored player praise, and well-crafted gameplay mechanics is the fourth. Hollow Knight's nail is deliberate and readable by comparison, and its own players file the core loop as repetitive often enough that it reached our complaint list. The one thing the first game keeps is the downward thrust, which pogos off enemies and hazards with a precision Silksong's diagonal version never quite matches. That is one move against a whole redesign. If combat is the axis you are choosing on, take the sequel.

Hollow Knight, and this is the category that decides the whole comparison for a newcomer. Its stored player praise includes the phrase challenging but fair gameplay mechanics, which is the compliment metroidvania players hand out most sparingly. Silksong's stored complaints open with a difficulty that may deter some players, then add combat mechanics that can feel punishing and boss fights that run overly long. Its own Steam board argues the same point at length, with players calling the later acts padded with instant-death sections rather than harder in an interesting way. Hollow Knight is not an easy game and its players are split on whether it should have been easier. The difference is where the wall sits. Hollow Knight puts its hardest content after the credits in optional arenas; Silksong puts a version of it in the first few hours.

Silksong, on the strength of having a protagonist who is actually in it. Our catalogue logs dialogue as a mechanic for Silksong and not for Hollow Knight, which is the whole difference in one field: the Knight is silent and the story arrives through item descriptions and the things other bugs say near you, while Hornet talks, argues and has a reason to be climbing Pharloom. Both games log multiple endings and both hide their best material behind optional work. Hollow Knight's lore is the deeper well and intricate lore and storytelling sits in its player praise for good reason, but depth and delivery are different things, and a first-time player gets far more of Silksong's story without a wiki open. Come to Hollow Knight for what you piece together. Come to Silksong for what you are told.

Silksong, and the second half of this category is what settles it. Both games are hand-drawn by the same three-person studio and both are beautiful; stunning art and music leads Silksong's player praise and a beautiful hand-drawn art style leads Hollow Knight's. On art alone this is a draw. On performance it is not. Our availability data has Silksong on PS4 and PS5 with a native current-generation build, while Hollow Knight is a PS4 release you run on a PS5 through backward compatibility, and the single most repeated complaint our players file against it is serious save issues on the PS4 version. A save file that can lose thirty hours is a performance problem wearing a different hat. Silksong runs on the hardware most readers actually own, and it runs there properly.

Hollow Knight, on two counts that no other comparison of this pair seems to mention. The first is the subscription: our availability data has Hollow Knight included with PS Plus Extra and Silksong on no tier, so a subscriber pays nothing for one and full price for the other before a single hour is played. The second is what you get for it. Our catalogue logs roughly 37 hours for a normal run of Hollow Knight against roughly 50 for Silksong, so the sequel is the longer game, but Hollow Knight's Voidheart Edition folds in four content packs that shipped free and its completion figure of about 71 hours means roughly 34 hours still waiting after the credits. Silksong is the bigger single playthrough. Hollow Knight is the one that costs a subscriber nothing and still runs a full week.

Hollow Knight, and its own players put it in the list: high replayability with extensive content is stored praise for the first game and has no equivalent in Silksong's. The concrete reasons are the charm system, which lets a second run play as a different character without touching a difficulty setting, and Steel Soul mode, which turns the whole kingdom into one life. Underneath that sit the four content packs that arrived free after launch, each with its own bosses and its own reason to reload a finished save. Silksong answers with Crests and Tools, a real build layer and arguably a deeper one, and with multiple endings our catalogue logs for both games. What it does not yet have is nine years of additions bolted onto it. Ask again when Silksong's own content packs land.