To be honest, I'm not entirely sure this will be a good idea, but I'm going to give it a try nevertheless. Usually, I only do these logs for new Zelda games, but I have done one for Metroid Dread about four years ago, where Hollow Knight is very close to home and checks all those boxes of what I love about the Action Adventure genre.
The difference is that I wouldn't call myself an expert in Hollow Knight, because I've only beaten the game once so far. And while I had done things like the Path of Pain, Trial of the Fool, Radiance, Nightmare King, and what not, I lost motivation somewhere in the middle of Godhome and in the middle of my second playthrough. I've been playing a bit lately to warm up and may even go for the 112% after I'm done with Silksong, but I doubt that I could ever put myself through the Pantheon of Hallownest. And that also makes me a bit weary about this new game...
First of all, I want to say that admire the whole launch situation. Of course, it would have been nice if you could have pre-ordered and pre-loaded the game to avoid those outages of all major digital game stores all at once, but I was still at work anyway when that happened. And I like the intention of giving this to the whole world at once. No early copies for the gaming press, where at day 1 they are uploading complete guides of the game... What truly matters are the fans who have supported Hollow Knight, may it be as a backer on Kickstarter (where they even got the new game for free, because it was originally planned as an expansion), or simply as a player who has bought the first game.
And it's relatively cheap. It costs a bit more than Hollow Knight, but not much, only 20$ / 20€ in total. I thought that this was going to be the first time that I buy a game on Steam for its full price, but the bundle with the soundtrack was already discounted by 20%, so I got that for around 26€. Totally worth it.
However... while the game was released to everyone at the same time, by the time I'm writing this, there are probably people out there who have already beaten it. I'm sure of it. But as usual, I won't rush and will try to avoid spoilers for myself as much as I can. There will certainly be some secrets that I won't be finding without the internet, but it's going to be a long way before I look such things up.
Anyway, I've only played it for one and a half hours last evening and defeated the Bell Beast, meaning that these are some very early impressions, before I get back into it. I'm playing it on the PC, where my ultrawide screenshots may give this away (supporting such resolutions is a new feature, by the way).
The game already begins with an interesting "promise". After the initial cutscene it states "Act 1 – Pharloom", indicating that there might be more to this game than just one kingdom. Or maybe Act 2 starts with the Citadel, where reaching it at the kingdom's top is your initial goal. I really like the whole setting, this inverse of Hollow Knight where you had been digging deeper and deeper into the kingdom of Hallownest.
And this is already a much stronger aspect of the story. You will encounter pilgrims, who are trying to reach the citadel as well, but will fall down on their way eventually. Good for them and for Hornet that there is no fall damage in the world of Hollow Knight. And it certainly leaves an impression how deep the shaft goes that you've crumbled down inside the cage. You're encountering it several times and it's always tempting to just jump down again to discover something along the fall...
This world design also gives me slight vibes from games like Getting Over It, or Only Up!, except that you will be able to create shortcuts along your way... and it doesn't look like trash. Quite the opposite, Team Cherry has absolutely outdone themselves with how beautiful this game is. Hollow Knight was already timeless with its hand-drawn aesthetics, but there is so much more detail here that it often feels like you're playing an animated movie.
Otherwise it really is like Hollow Knight, just different, which isn't a bad thing, but you shouldn't expect something groundbreaking. For example, instead of Geo, you are collecting beads as a currency, called Rosaries, which scatter even more easily. And there are also the Shards, which you can get from breaking certain rocks and enemies, but I find them a bit too subtle. When I first broke one of such rocks I didn't even notice that it dropped something.
Or, you will encounter a map selling character, Shakra, wo also sings to mark her presence. But she combined Cornifer and Iselda into one, meaning you can buy all the map utilities right at the spot. You can also buy maps for multiple areas, like with Tingle in Majora's Mask, where you don't have to search for the map seller in each single one. And Majora's Mask might be a good comparison, because Silksong truly feels like a sequel (or prequel) in a similar DNA, where it remixes all sorts of aspects from its predecessor in a new setting.
After the Moss Grotto, which is the area you fall down into, it quickly branches out into multiple areas, like Bone Bottom and the Marrow. This gives the impression that the beginning is less linear than it was in Hollow Knight, but this might be an illusion. I think there is no way around getting your first major upgrade, Hornet's signature needle throw, the Silkspear. It lets you cut through spider webs, which then lets you tame the Bell Beast, the equivalent to the Stag Beetle fast transport.
Hornet herself feels much sturdier, but also like a bigger target. And some of the enemy patterns in the early game managed to catch me by surprise. My first death came during the first "group battle", where you're locked in with some enemies, because those walking large skulls do double damage already. And the enemies like to run you over, where it makes me want to have an equivalent to the "Heavy Blow" Charm, which I barely even used in Hollow Knight... But if I recall correctly, I had the same issue in the early game with the Knight. At least you don't have to fight your Shade any longer, which could be annoying.
The game still feels a bit slow at the beginning, where I can't wait to obtain the sprinting mechanic and the "hookshot", for everything to become more acrobatic. Maybe one of these will come next...
Finally, the one big difference is that Hornet actually talks, unlike the Knight... and many of the silent protagonists in the gerne, like Link and Samus most of the time. You will get proper text boxes for her, which show a little Hornet icon at their top to distinguish them more easily, though sometimes I'm still confused by them, especially when she starts to talk. I'm simply used to how it works in Hollow Knight and pretty much every Zelda game, where the textbox is always the other person talking.
I'm also sometimes confused by whom I can even talk to... and who will attack me instead. In Hollow Knight this distinction was clear for the most part. Bugs with glowing eyes are infected and will attack you. But in Silksong you are not facing the infection, at least not yet, and instead you're dealing with religious fanatics who apparently are racist against spiders. And this catches me off guard from time to time.
