Hollow Knight vs. Silksong: Which Should You Play First?

If you only have time for one game, start with the original Hollow Knight — it's cheaper, shorter, and was built as a self-contained story, while Hollow Knight: Silksong assumes you already know how Team Cherry's combat and exploration work and raises the difficulty from there. Below is a direct, spec-by-spec comparison of both games — map structure, difficulty, price, platforms, and completion scope — drawn from Team Cherry's own store listings and official game pages, so you can decide which one to boot up first.

What is the original Hollow Knight?

Released on February 24, 2017 for PC, Hollow Knight is a 2D hand-drawn action-adventure set in the ruined insect kingdom of Hallownest, reached through a well beneath the town of Dirtmouth. Per its own Steam listing, the game features a "vast interconnected world," more than 130 enemies, and over 30 bosses, with no stated difficulty options. It later came to Nintendo Switch (2018), PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (2018), and — per a 2026 post on Team Cherry's own site — received a free next-gen upgrade for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2 in February 2026, adding higher resolution, higher frame rates, and extra visual effects at no cost to existing owners.

What is Hollow Knight: Silksong?

Hollow Knight: Silksong is the full sequel, released September 4, 2025, after a development run that began life as a 2014 Kickstarter stretch goal for a playable Hornet DLC before growing into a standalone game, per the account on Wikipedia. You now play as Hornet, captured and dropped into the unfamiliar kingdom of Pharloom, and must fight and craft your way up to a citadel at its peak. Team Cherry's own listing puts the bestiary at over 200 foes and more than 40 bosses — roughly a third more enemies and a third more bosses than the original shipped with. The game launched simultaneously on PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series X|S (with day-one Xbox Game Pass access), and Nintendo Switch/Switch 2.

Story and setting: Hallownest vs. Pharloom

The two games are connected but not interchangeable story-wise. Hollow Knight casts you as the silent Knight, descending into Hallownest, a buried insect kingdom beneath Dirtmouth, to confront the corrupting force known as the Infection and uncover the kingdom's fallen royalty. It's a complete, self-contained arc with a handful of alternate endings depending on how much of the world you've uncovered by the final confrontation.

Silksong puts you in control of Hornet — a supporting character and optional boss fight from the first game — who is captured and dragged to the unfamiliar kingdom of Pharloom. Per Team Cherry's own description, you "ascend to the peak of a land ruled by silk and song," fighting through regions like mossy grottos, coral forests, gilded cities, and misted moors toward a shining citadel at the top of the map. You don't need to have finished Hollow Knight to follow Silksong's plot — Hornet's story stands on its own — but several returning motifs (binding seals, kingdom-ending Infections and Plagues, Pale King-style ancient rulers) will mean more if you've already played the original.

Map size and world structure compared

Neither game's official pages publish an exact map area in square kilometers or a room count, so treat any number you see elsewhere as a fan estimate, not a developer figure. What Team Cherry has confirmed, per Wikipedia's development-history summary of the studio's own statements, is the direction of travel: Silksong's world was originally planned to be smaller than Hollow Knight's, but "greatly expanded during development," to the point that the team called one single region, Greymoor, "one of the biggest areas they've ever created." A 2021 internal rework also split and reshaped multiple zones, including dividing the former Red Coral Gorge into the Sands of Karak and the Blasted Steps.

Translated into practical terms: Silksong is the larger, more sprawling game of the two, built explicitly as a successor rather than a retread, while Hollow Knight's Hallownest — though still large for its genre — is the more tightly scoped and quicker-to-internalize map of the pair.

Difficulty and combat changes

Both games ship with a single difficulty level and no easy mode — a deliberate choice by Team Cherry in both entries. But they are not equally hard. Per Wikipedia's reception summary, critics generally found Silksong harder than Hollow Knight: enemies deal more damage per hit, which Team Cherry offset by making Hornet's health regenerate faster than the Knight's did. Reviewers were split on whether this trade-off felt rewarding or punishing, and three specific friction points came up repeatedly in critical coverage: long "runbacks" to boss arenas after a death, a scarcer in-game currency (Rosaries) for buying tools and upgrades, and a diagonal pogo-bounce move that many players found harder to land consistently than Hollow Knight's more forgiving downward pogo.

Silksong does add a layer the original never had: Hornet's acrobatic moveset includes a wider set of tools, crafting materials, and a Steel Soul–style permadeath mode (per Nintendo's own product page) that only unlocks after your first full completion — mirroring Hollow Knight's own Steel Soul mode, which was likewise a post-completion unlock.

Combat pacing differs too. Hollow Knight's Nail attacks and spell-based Soul magic are built around a slower, more deliberate rhythm, where most early-game enemies can be out-positioned with patience. Silksong leans harder into momentum: Hornet's needle attacks, silk-based tools, and crafting system reward constant aggression and quick directional changes, and several of the game's signature boss fights are built to punish players who try to play as cautiously as Hollow Knight often allowed. That faster, more punishing design is a large part of why critics — per the reception summary on Silksong's Wikipedia page — described it as the harder of the two games despite both sharing the same core Nail-and-dash toolkit at their foundation.

How long is each game?

Official storefront pages for both games do not publish a playtime estimate — Team Cherry doesn't quote "hours to beat" on Steam, GOG, or the Nintendo eShop for either title, so this article won't invent one. What official material does make clear is scale: Silksong launched with roughly a third more enemies and bosses than Hollow Knight shipped with (200+ foes and 40+ bosses, versus 130+ and 30+), and a world its own developers describe as having grown well past its original, smaller plan during development. If Hollow Knight took you a weekend to finish casually, budget meaningfully more time for Silksong — but look to your own pace rather than a quoted number, since neither developer has published one.

Critical reception and sales

Both games landed in similarly rarefied critical territory, but Silksong edged out the original on most platform-specific Metacritic scores. Hollow Knight sits at 87 on PC, 90 on Switch, 85 on PS4, and 89 on Xbox One, per Wikipedia's citation of Metacritic. Silksong scores higher across the board: 90 on PC and Xbox Series X|S, 92 on PS5, 91 on Switch 2, and 94 on Switch — a spread Metacritic itself classifies as "universal acclaim." OpenCritic lists a 97% critic-recommendation rate for both games.

Commercially, Hollow Knight has sold more than 15 million copies as of August 2025, built up gradually over eight-plus years across six platforms, according to Wikipedia's sales figures. Silksong moved faster out of the gate: Team Cherry reported more than seven million copies sold by December 2025, just three months after launch, and the game drew over 500,000 concurrent players on Steam on its first day — enough to briefly overwhelm storefronts on multiple platforms at once. Silksong also won Steam's own Game of the Year award for 2025 and picked up a Game of the Year nomination at The Game Awards.

Price and platforms compared

Figures above are pulled directly from the Hollow Knight Steam page, the Silksong Steam page, and the Nintendo Switch storefront listing for Silksong; Metacritic scores are as cited on each game's Wikipedia article.

Should newcomers start with Hollow Knight or jump into Silksong?

If you're new to the series, start with the original. Hollow Knight is $5 cheaper, has the smaller of the two maps, ships with gentler enemy damage, and tells a complete, standalone story with no required knowledge of Silksong. It also now runs at improved resolution and frame rate on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Switch 2 thanks to Team Cherry's free 2026 upgrade, so there's no hardware reason to skip it on current-gen consoles.

Jump straight into Silksong only if you're already comfortable with tight 2D combat and pogo-bounce platforming from another Metroidvania — it is not designed as an easier on-ramp, and several of its most-discussed friction points (sparser currency, longer runbacks, the diagonal pogo) are exactly the kind of thing that punishes players who haven't built up Hollow Knight-style muscle memory first. Series veterans with a backlog, on the other hand, have little reason to wait: Silksong is the bigger, newer, more actively supported game, with Team Cherry already shipping post-launch patches and a first free expansion.

There's also a budget angle worth weighing. Buying both at full official price comes to roughly $35 combined — still less than a single new full-price release on most platforms — and Hollow Knight regularly appears discounted on Steam and console storefronts, which narrows the already-small price gap further. If you're deciding between playing one now and waiting, there's no narrative penalty to playing Hollow Knight first and starting Silksong whenever you're ready; the sequel's story doesn't pick up mid-scene from the first game, so there's no "spoiler clock" pushing you to rush either one.

What's next for both games

Team Cherry isn't done with either title. Hollow Knight picked up its free PS5/Xbox Series X|S/Switch 2 performance upgrade in February 2026, and Silksong's first free expansion, Sea of Sorrow, is due later in 2026 — we broke down everything confirmed about the Sea of Sorrow DLC separately. Silksong is also still receiving numbered content patches (Team Cherry shipped Patch 5 in March 2026, adding further localizations), so whichever game you start with, neither is a finished, static product. If you're mapping out your broader 2026 release calendar alongside Silksong, our look at Final Fantasy Resonance's release date, price, and platforms covers another major title landing this year.

Written byJonah Reyes

Jonah Reyes leads Pandromeda's gaming coverage: console and handheld hardware, release dates, pricing changes, patch notes and the business moves behind the biggest franchises. He sources every date and price from the platform holders and publishers themselves, and says plainly when something is still only a rumour.

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