Not having touched Silksong yet, I'd recommend playing the Hollow Knight first. It holds up really well and is absolutely worth a play through. I think sometimes a sequel releases and it makes the original feel hard to go back to, if it's added new features or quality of life things. If I were in your position, I think having the "uncontaminated" experience of Hollow Knight is worth it.
That is, unless you really want to feel like you're part of the conversation these first few weeks after Silksong comes out.
I love regional pricing. I can get this game for $4.99 (and maybe an extra offer if it ever has). But I already bought it on the Nintendo eShop for $0.15, so I will play it on there. As I previously said, I LOVE regional pricing.
I don't think anyone has played far enough into Silksong to say for certain yet, but the first game is so story-light that I can't imagine you'd be lost if you skip ahead. You really shouldn't though, the first one is very good.
I would go so far as to say the story from the first is obtuse. I had to read a few story synopses that pulled all of the threads together. Very much a show don’t tell situation.
It is very much worth playing but you could probably skip it. As others have alluded to, the storytelling is very influenced by Fromsoft (Souls games, basically) and is pretty oblique. But, even without following it exactly, the gameplay itself is still great, and the music and art do an excellent job setting up a melancholy vibe. The different zones have a lot of personality.
Addendum: having now had the chance to start on Silksong, strongly recommend Hollow Knight first. That's not because of story, but because Silksong seems like it's geared to be noticeably more difficult than Hollow Knight was, both in platforming and in combat. (One of the things that I think Hollow Knight did really well was the spread of available difficulties. Beating the game isn't too hard; getting the true ending involves a few more specific difficult tests; and the DLC added boss gauntlets that let you go pretty crazy with how hard you want to make it.)
No-one can know that for the next dozen hours or so. There were no early review copies, which means no-one knows if Silksong benefits from knowing the story, mechanics, or world of the first game
In addition to what others have said, my understanding from Team Cherry's few reveals over the years since HK released is that Silksong takes place in a different location than Hallownest, the setting of Hollow Knight (though within the same world). Thus, given that most of the story of Hollow Knight is about Hallownest and what happened there, it is likely that you wouldn't miss much besides a few cool little connections by playing Silksong first.
Hollow Knight is a classic. If you enjoy Metroidvania style games you’ll love (almost) every minute. The music and sound effects are great too, so it’s worth playing with headphones if your gaming setup is in an environment with heavy background noise.
That being said, from what I’ve played of Silksong so far, it doesn’t seem to be crafted such that you’ll get the most out of the gameplay only if you played HK. Full appreciation of the in-game lore you’ll discover in Silksong is probably another matter, but even then I think playing them in either order will be a good time. Enjoy!
Hollow Knight is a great game, even with the fact from a story PoV you can probably skip it, I simply do not recommend it. To most (myself among them, and metroidvanias are one of my favorite genres), HK is one of the games at the pinnacle of the genre.
If you do, use a guide or something to get through Hollow Knight. If you 100% Hollow Knight you’ll probably be too burnt out to pick up Silksong for a while.
I don't think that's necessary. Hollow Knight is a game whose appeal comes from exploring a massive, beautiful world and and discovering its secrets -- using a guide would take away a lot of the fun, at least for me.
Yeah, HK is a huge game and Silksong is probably bigger; it'll take a while to play through both. But that's a good thing. Play these games for the experience of playing them, no need to rush through them just to check them off a list.
Of course. I usually don't 100% metroidvanias for this reason. But I also don't usually look up a guide (unless I really want to find a specific boss or secret or something). I just put the game down and come back to it later if I want to keep exploring it.
There's nothing wrong with using a guide if that's how you have the most fun. But I think most people would have more fun playing Hollow Knight without one, which is why I don't think "if you [play Hollow Knight], use a guide or something" is good advice as an unqualified statement. I enjoy the experience of playing a game far more than the accomplishment of having completed it, so I'd rather enjoy a game fully and leave it unfinished than halfheartedly rush through it with a guide.
I mostly agree, and would say you should just play it blind. If you care about getting 100% (112% after the DLC) there are probably a couple of things where looking them up would be useful. It is also a very big world, so trying to do cleanup once you have all exploration tools can be quite involved
How do you know if you enjoy playing the game without a guide if you don't do it? Looking something up to unstuck yourself is one thing, but following a guide from beginning to end is robbing yourself of the opportunity to enjoy the game as presented.
"beating the game as quickly as possible" is such an obviously flawed reason to use a guide that I won't even respond to it. If you don't have the time to play the game, don't.
It's the thing about type I fun and type II fun, where type I is "fun while it's happening" and type II is "not fun while it's happening but fun in retrospect": if you don't use a guide, the type II fun that results may be greater in quality and impact than the type I fun you'd get using a guide
