Combat in Hollow Knight: Silksong feels simple at first, but it’s a constant game of learning, adapting, and predicting. With a limited moveset, you must defeat what is on the screen, but did you know that you can parry attacks? For confident combatants, this can be a game-changer. 

How to parry in Hollow Knight: Silksong

To parry in Hollow Knight: Silksong, you must time an attack exactly as an enemy attack would hit you, and directly into the enemy attack. So, if the attack comes from above, you must parry up; if it comes from in front of you, you must parry by attacking in that direction. 

You cannot parry certain attacks in the game, such as the acutal bodies of bosses. If an enemy has a jumping attack, then you need to dodge it, and you will not be able to parry it. Another important thing to keep in mind is that some enemies will have a follow-up attack should you parry them.

For example, the enemy in the image above will do a downward slam with his weapon. If he hits you, that’s it, but if you parry it, he will follow up with a forward slash, hitting you unless you know it is coming and are prepared for a second quick parry. The only way to get good at parrying in the game is to practice, as the timing needs to be perfect.

It’s definitely a system where you might need to parry just a little earlier than you suspect, so don’t get disheartened if it takes a while to crack it. If you put the effort into mastering it, you should end up having a much better time dealing with bosses such as Lace.

For more news and guides on Hollow Knight: Silksong, make sure you stick with Shacknews.

Hailing from Ireland, Aidan has been conditioned by local weather conditions to survive hours at his PC grinding through whatever game is offering the lowest possible drop rates for loot. He thinks the easiest way to figure out what fans of games want to read is to just be a fan of games. You can normally find him logged into Warframe, Destiny, or a gacha game. You can reach out to him on X @scannerbarkly.