Hollow Knight: Silksong is no longer a rumor, a Kickstarter promise, or a recurring joke in comment sections. Since its 2025 launch, the sequel has been in players’ hands, and it is all anyone is talking about. Team Cherry’s follow-up to one of the most beloved Metroidvanias ever made delivers more of what fans wanted: sharper combat, stranger bug kingdoms, and a difficulty curve that occasionally feels like a wall made of needles. The long wait is over. The celebration is real. And yet, for all its confidence, Silksong arrives with a curious blind spot. It seems to have learned almost nothing from the Metroidvanias that followed in Hollow Knight’s footsteps.

That is not a knock on the sequel’s quality. Silksong is proving to be more of what players love, albeit quite a bit more punishing. Hollow Knight fans are a devoted bunch, the kind of players who treat a brutal boss rematch like a friendly handshake, so many will learn to love the higher difficulty in time. But difficulty is not the same as friction. Confusion is not the same as challenge. And the genre has been whispering lessons into Silksong’s ear for years, only for the sequel to cover its ears and hum loudly.

The Lost Crown’s Memory Shards Were a Quiet Revolution

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown launched to critical acclaim and then slipped out of the wider conversation faster than it deserved. The game revived a dormant Prince of Persia series after well over a decade of silence, and it stood as one of Ubisoft’s most adventurous and experimental projects in years. By May 2025, it had drawn over 2 million players. Despite that, the team behind it was disbanded and reassigned to other projects. A sad coda for a game that deserved a longer victory lap.

What The Lost Crown brought to the Metroidvania table was not just slick platforming or cinematic boss fights. It was the Memory Shard. The feature allowed players to take screenshots of the map and attach them directly to that map. The result was a small but brilliant quality-of-life innovation. Players could retrace their steps more easily. They could remember which skills they needed to unlock a new area. They could leave a visual note for their future selves instead of relying on memory, instinct, and a vague sense of dread.

Critics called it a brilliant new mechanic, though some rightly criticised how it was tied to progression. Players had to locate more Memory Shards in the world instead of being allowed an infinite number of them. That limitation was annoying. The core idea, however, was excellent. The map became a conversation between player and world. It remembered what the player could not.

Silksong’s Map Is Bigger, but Its Memory Is Not

Hollow Knight’s success was a major turning point for the Metroidvania genre. Many consider it the best Metroidvania ever made, and its level design, exploration, and combat have become a blueprint for the games that came after it. But it would be silly to ignore that those inspired games have done some things better. A genre does not evolve by bowing to its ancestors forever. It evolves by listening to its cousins.

Backtracking through Hollow Knight’s map to see whether newly acquired skills open previously blocked areas can be tiresome. Players can buy colour-coded markers to add to their maps, helping them identify what is inaccessible and what is simply unexplored. But unless someone is highly organised, it is easy to forget what each marker meant. Was this pin for a wall that needed a double jump? A gate that needed a key? A strange bug that needed a conversation and perhaps a snack? The map stares back with coloured pins that refuse to explain themselves.

Players return to annoying-to-reach areas, marked with good intentions, only to realise they still cannot access them. They waste time fighting through rooms that were never the problem. The path forward was somewhere else. The map knew. The player did not.

Silksong’s map is significantly bigger than that of the first game. That scale is exciting, but it also makes the absence of a Memory Shard-style feature harder to ignore. Such a mechanic would not reduce the difficulty. It would reduce the busywork of aimless exploration. Fair enough, Silksong is meant to be punishing. The combat can bite. The platforming can sting. But confusion is not difficulty. A map that refuses to remember is not a boss. It is a chore.

What Silksong Could Have Borrowed

A Memory Shard system could have served Silksong well without sanding down its edges. Team Cherry did not need to copy The Lost Crown wholesale. It could have adapted the idea in a dozen ways:

• 📸 Visual memory: let players attach small snapshots to map pins.

• 🧠 Context: show what skill, key, or tool was missing at a blocked path.

• 🗺️ Less friction: reduce aimless backtracking without removing exploration.

• ⚔️ Difficulty preserved: keep combat and platforming as sharp as ever.

• 🕰️ Optional use: make it a convenience, not a requirement.

Here is the thing, though: Team Cherry does not owe players a photocopier. It owes them a map that communicates. The studio could tie shards to benches, limit them to a handful, or attach them to an NPC with a dry sense of humour. The point is not to make Silksong easy. The point is to let players remember why an edge exists. The map waits. The player wonders. The answer is often no.

A Genre That Learned from Hollow Knight Deserves a Sequel That Learns Back

Countless Metroidvanias have learned lessons from Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight. Some borrowed its moody atmosphere. Some borrowed its corpse-run tension. Some borrowed its map-making rituals and then improved them. Silksong does not seem particularly keen on learning from its descendants. That is a shame, because those descendants have had some pretty darn good ideas.

The Lost Crown’s team may have been disbanded, but its ideas remain in the world. A sequel can honour its ancestors and still listen to its cousins. The best Metroidvanias are not museums. They are conversations. Hollow Knight spoke. A generation answered. Silksong should answer back.

And look, the devoted fans will endure. They will learn to love the higher difficulty. They will memorise routes, curse softly, and return. But love should not require a notebook and a prayer. Silksong can remain punishing and still be kinder to memory. The map is bigger now. The wait was long. The lesson is small, but it matters.

Beyond the map screen, there is a similar pleasure in finding something worthwhile without wandering through endless noise. The best shortcuts are the ones that respect your time and point you toward value, whether that is a well-placed pin or a deal worth noticing.

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