As the school season starts up, it ushers in many questions: Who’s in my advisory? Is the cafeteria food any good? Most importantly, however: how will Hollow Knight: Silksong compare to its prequel?

While Silksong, the sequel to Hollow Knight, took seven years to make, sophomore Liam McAuliff only waited for three. McAuliff has been playing Hollow Knight for nearly four years, with hundreds of hours in his main savefile and numerous others.

“[Hollow Knight] honestly was probably one of my comfort games: where if I got on my Xbox, and I didn’t know what game I wanted to play, I would hop onto Hollow Knight, and I would just spend some time on that because… honestly it’s just such a fun game,” McAuliff said.

McAuliff wasn’t the only fan eagerly anticipating Silksong’s debut. It’s on over 5.2 million wishlists—the most on Steam. When the release date of Sept. 4 was revealed on Aug. 21, the news shook video gamers worldwide. At 9 a.m. CDT, every digital storefront crashed when Silksong was first available to purchase.

After the release, McAuliff was stuck on Steam due to the storefront crash. However, he is already nearly a third done with the game and is enjoying it so far. While McAuliff doesn’t think the game is too difficult to play, he’s had “a little bit more of a challenge playing it” compared to Hollow Knight.

“I think people need to think of Silksong as its own game, compared to Hollow Knight,” McAuliff said. “They’re different. They’re in different worlds; they’re different [main] characters.”

McAuliff isn’t the only one making progress in Silksong. Sophomore Eliot Rees is nearly two-thirds done with the game.

“Yes it’s hard, but the developers did recommend you play the first game to prepare for it, so I think the skill level is pretty on par with the first game,” Rees said.

While McAuliff and Rees don’t find the game too bad, senior Phoebe Borchardt said she hates all of the boss fights so far.

“I think in some ways, it’s really, really unfair,” Borchardt said. “You can take damage from [bosses] when they’re staggered, which kind of sucks.”