Despite a healthy ‘Mostly Positive’ review score on Steam and a concurrent user count high enough to make a AAA game blush with envy, Hollow Knight: Silksong’s Chinese players are seemingly less impressed by the highly-anticipated sequel.
While the Steam user review rating from players experiencing the game in English, French, German, and Polish are ‘Very Positive,’ and Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian reviews are ‘Overwhelmingly Positive,’ players using simplified Chinese have brought the score down to ‘Mostly Negative’ for that language, chiefly because of issues with the translation.
After tens of thousands of Chinese players left negative reviews, dragging Silksong’s overall Steam user review rating down to 76% positive, Team Cherry’s Matthew Griffin acknowledged the problem on X/Twitter, writing: “To our Chinese speaking fans: We appreciate you letting us know about quality issues with the current Simplified Chinese translation of Hollow Knight: Silksong. We’ll be working to improve the translation over the coming weeks. Thanks for your feedback and support.”
So, what’s the issue? “The current Silksong [Chinese] translation reads like a Wuxia novel instead of conveying the game’s tone,” said one player. “This isn’t about effort, but about taste and direction, and speaking from experience likely can’t be fixed without replacing the translator.” Another said: “can you imagine as a Chinese, I need to play the game by switching in English to understand [the] translation.”
“Native Chinese speaker here. The translation uses awkwardly archaic wording that makes a lot of the content unintelligible,” added someone else. “I’m talking about word salad type of situation. On top of the anachronistic pretentiousness, it’s downright gibberish at times.”
Neither Griffin nor Team Cherry has yet confirmed when a patch is coming, but at least we know the developer is aware of the issue and is looking to fix it “over the coming weeks.”
We’re having a great time with what we’ve played so far, however. In IGN’s Hollow Knight: Silksong review-in-progress, we wrote: “I could keep digging into more early observations, but honestly I just can’t wait to stop typing this so I can dive back in […] But so far Silksong is exactly what I want from a sequel like this: it’s not completely reinventing the wheel or messing with all the things that made the first game so incredible, but it’s also not resting on its laurels. No part of it feels untouched, and as far as I can tell right now, it somehow feels even better for it.”
But amid the excitement over Team Cherry’s long awaited sequel is a debate within the community about whether the game is too hard — perhaps even unfairly so. Now, Silksong players are trying to help out those who have quit the game because they’re finding it too difficult by pointing to mods that make it much easier.
Thankfully, IGN is here to help. Here’s how to unlock and use the map, how to get Rosary Beads, Achievements and Trophies list, and our ever expanding Silksong Interactive Map. Also, you may need the Bell Beast boss fight guide. It’s a hard one!
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Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
