Hollow Knight vs Silksong: Key Differences
What's inside
- Hollow Knight vs Silksong: quick comparison
- The playable characters: The Knight vs Hornet
- Movement: earned traversal vs built-in agility
- Combat: two versions of the same tension
- Exploration: Hallownest’s silence vs Pharloom’s towns
- Difficulty: why Silksong hits harder
- Progression: Charms and Nail vs Crests and Tools
- Which should you play? A decision matrix
- Cost per hour: the worked numbers
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Hollow Knight vs Silksong: quick comparison
- The playable characters: The Knight vs Hornet
- Movement: earned traversal vs built-in agility
- Combat: two versions of the same tension
- Exploration: Hallownest’s silence vs Pharloom’s towns
- Difficulty: why Silksong hits harder
- Progression: Charms and Nail vs Crests and Tools
- Which should you play? A decision matrix
- Cost per hour: the worked numbers
- Frequently Asked Questions
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Hollow Knight is the better first pick for most players: it is cheaper, gentler on newcomers, and its 2017 campaign teaches the rules that Silksong assumes you already know. Pick Hollow Knight: Silksong instead if you have already finished the original and want faster movement, a tighter risk-reward combat loop, and bosses that punish hesitation. Both are single-player metroidvanias from Team Cherry built on the same corpse-run skeleton, but they diverge sharply in character, traversal, combat economy, exploration style, difficulty, and progression.
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Contents
- Hollow Knight vs Silksong: quick comparison
- The playable characters: The Knight vs Hornet
- Movement: earned traversal vs built-in agility
- Combat: two versions of the same tension
- Exploration: Hallownest’s silence vs Pharloom’s towns
- Difficulty: why Silksong hits harder
- Progression: Charms and Nail vs Crests and Tools
- Which should you play? A decision matrix
- Cost per hour: the worked numbers
- Frequently Asked Questions
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Hollow Knight vs Silksong: quick comparison
| Feature | Hollow Knight (2017) | Hollow Knight: Silksong (2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Playable character | The Knight (silent, masked vessel) | Hornet (speaks, has a defined personality) |
| Starting health | 5 masks | Mask-based; upgrades come from collectibles |
| Maximum health | 9 masks, at 4 Mask Shards per mask | Increases through shard pickups |
| Healing | Focus, costs 33 SOUL, roots you in place | Bind, costs Silk, resolves faster |
| Special attacks | 3 spells, paid for with the same SOUL | Silk Skills, paid for with the same Silk |
| Build system | 45 Charms across 11 notches, permanent | Crests that swap the moveset, plus Tools |
| Currency | Geo | Rosaries |
| Fast travel | Stag Stations | Bellways |
| Max completion | 112% with all free content packs | Percentage-based, tracked in-game |
| Typical first run | Roughly 25-30 hours | Commonly reported at 30-40 hours |
| Full completion | 60+ hours | Roughly 50-60+ hours |
| List price | Around $15 | Around $20 |
The playable characters: The Knight vs Hornet
The Knight is deliberately blank. It never speaks, never reacts, and carries a nail with a short reach and a four-direction swing. Hornet is the opposite: she was a memorable boss in Hollow Knight and now headlines her own game as a taller, faster fighter with a longer needle, spoken lines, and a running commentary on the world. That single change reshapes both combat and storytelling.
Practically, Hornet’s needle covers more ground per swing and chains faster, so you spend less time repositioning between hits. The Knight’s shorter reach forces you to commit to distance management. If you enjoy the feeling of slowly learning an enemy’s spacing, the Knight is more rewarding; if you want to close gaps and stay aggressive, Hornet is built for it.
Movement: earned traversal vs built-in agility
Hollow Knight’s movement is a slow unlock. You start heavy, then add the Mothwing Cloak for a dash, the Mantis Claw for wall clinging, the Monarch Wings for a double jump, and Crystal Heart for a horizontal super-dash. The first five hours feel plodding on purpose, which makes Hallownest feel enormous and hostile.
Silksong front-loads agility. Hornet clings to walls and moves faster from the opening hour, and her signature traversal tool is the Clawline, a grapple that pulls her toward anchor points and lets her swing across gaps. The result is a game built around aerial, vertical platforming rather than ground-level route-finding.
- Choose Hollow Knight if you like the map opening up in step with your abilities, and you don’t mind backtracking being slow early on.
- Choose Silksong if slow early movement frustrates you and you want precision platforming as a core challenge rather than a late-game add-on.
Combat: two versions of the same tension
Both games use one resource for healing and for offense, but they tune it differently. In Hollow Knight, hitting enemies fills your SOUL meter. Focus spends 33 SOUL to restore a single mask, takes about a second, and pins you in place; the same SOUL pays for Vengeful Spirit, Desolate Dive, and Howling Wraiths. Every heal is a spell you didn’t cast.
Silksong runs the identical idea through Silk. Landing hits fills the gauge, Bind converts Silk into health, and Silk Skills spend the same pool on damage. The difference is tempo: Bind resolves faster than Focus, so the choice is less “can I survive this animation” and more “do I want health or a big hit right now.”
| Resource question | Hollow Knight | Silksong |
|---|---|---|
| How you gain it | Landing nail hits and taking some damage | Landing needle hits |
| Cost to heal | 33 SOUL for 1 mask | Silk, scaled to the gauge |
| Vulnerability window | Long, grounded | Shorter |
| Upkeep cost | None — Charms are permanent | Tools restock at benches using Shell Shards |
The Tools system is the biggest mechanical departure. Instead of permanent Charms, Hornet equips consumable Tools with limited charges, restocked at benches with Shell Shards. That adds an economy Hollow Knight simply doesn’t have: you can enter a boss attempt with your best tool empty, and every attempt drains a resource you have to farm back. It is a real difficulty multiplier and a common source of frustration for players arriving from the first game.
Exploration: Hallownest’s silence vs Pharloom’s towns
Hollow Knight gives you almost nothing. You buy maps from a wandering cartographer, there is no quest log, Dirtmouth is a ghost town, and it is entirely possible to wander into a late-game region in your second hour. The reward for exploration is the exploration itself.
Silksong keeps the map-purchase loop but wraps it in far more structure: a quest and wish system that gives you concrete objectives, a populated hub in Bellhart, more NPCs with dialogue, and Bellway fast-travel points that make long backtracking trips less punishing. Pharloom is also more vertical, so a lot of “exploration” is climbing and grappling rather than walking.
Difficulty: why Silksong hits harder
Three structural reasons explain the consensus that Silksong is the harder game, and none of them are about raw numbers:
- Aggression. Enemies and bosses attack faster with shorter telegraphs, so reaction time matters more than pattern patience.
- Contested Silk. Healing and your strongest attacks draw from one pool. Mistakes compound instead of being erased by a safe heal.
- Platforming stakes. Clawline and aerial traversal sections demand precision, and falling costs health rather than just time.
Hollow Knight’s reputation for brutality comes largely from optional content — the Godhome boss rushes, the Path of Pain, the Trial of the Fool. Its critical path is comparatively forgiving. Neither game ships with a conventional difficulty slider, so the choice of which to start with is really a choice about how much friction you want.
Progression: Charms and Nail vs Crests and Tools
Hollow Knight’s progression is additive and permanent. You collect 45 Charms and slot them into 11 notches, turn 4 Mask Shards into a mask, turn 3 Vessel Fragments into a Soul Vessel, and upgrade your nail through five tiers using Pale Ore. Once you have power, you keep it, and 112% completion is a fixed checklist.
Silksong’s progression is modular. Crests replace Charms and change Hornet’s entire moveset and Tool layout, so building a character means choosing a fighting style rather than stacking passive bonuses. Quests pay out in currency and upgrades, giving you a second progression track alongside exploration. The trade-off is that builds can degrade mid-run when Tool charges run out, so you always want a fallback loadout.
Which should you play? A decision matrix
| Your situation | Play this | Why |
|---|---|---|
| New to metroidvanias | Hollow Knight | Lower cost of entry, gentler critical path, slower teaching curve |
| Finished Hollow Knight and want more | Silksong | Same world, faster combat, harder bosses |
| Only 20-30 hours to spare | Hollow Knight | Shorter main story; Silksong runs longer even on a clean route |
| You love build-crafting | Hollow Knight | 45 Charms across 11 notches gives the widest tuning space |
| You like swapping playstyles mid-run | Silksong | Crests change the moveset rather than adding modifiers |
| You want towns, NPCs, and quests | Silksong | Bellhart hub, wish system, and more dialogue |
| Playing on older or mobile hardware | Hollow Knight | It has mobile ports; Silksong targets PC and current consoles |
Cost per hour: the worked numbers
Both games are cheap enough that value is mostly about how long you’ll actually play. Using typical list prices and commonly reported playtimes:
- Hollow Knight: around $15 ÷ 30 hours ≈ $0.50 per hour for a first run. A 60-hour completionist run drops that to $0.25 per hour, and a sale price near $7.50 pushes it under $0.13 per hour.
- Silksong: around $20 ÷ 35 hours ≈ $0.57 per hour. At 60 hours it falls to $0.33 per hour.
Two adjustments matter here. First, Silksong’s difficulty means more retries, so your first playthrough will likely run longer than a clean route suggests — which lowers cost per hour but raises the frustration budget. Second, Hollow Knight’s post-launch content packs were free, and neither game sells microtransactions, so the purchase price is the entire cost of ownership.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to play Hollow Knight before Silksong?
No. Silksong is a standalone story set in a new kingdom, Pharloom, with Hornet as the protagonist, and it explains what it needs to explain. That said, Hollow Knight establishes the world’s rules and Hornet’s history, and it is the easier of the two games, so playing it first makes Silksong noticeably more approachable.
Is Silksong harder than Hollow Knight?
By most accounts, yes. Silksong’s enemies attack faster, healing competes directly with your strongest attacks for the same Silk pool, and its platforming sections demand more precision. Hollow Knight’s hardest content is optional, while Silksong’s main path stays demanding throughout.
How long does each game take to finish?
Hollow Knight’s main story typically runs about 25-30 hours, with 60-plus hours for full completion. Silksong is commonly reported at roughly 30-40 hours for the main path and 50-60-plus hours for full completion, depending on how much optional content you chase.
Do either game have co-op or multiplayer?
No. Both Hollow Knight and Silksong are strictly single-player experiences with no cooperative or competitive modes. Any difficulty you encounter is meant to be solved solo.
Which game is better value?
At list price, Hollow Knight edges ahead on cost per hour simply because it costs less and offers a comparable amount of content. Silksong justifies its higher price if you want the longer, denser, more systems-heavy experience and don’t mind the extra difficulty.
Are they available on the same platforms?
Hollow Knight is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and mobile devices. Silksong launched on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X|S, and Switch and Switch 2. Check your regional storefront for current availability and pricing before buying.
