I'm not a world-class Hollow knight player, but I'm quite skilled, so I expected Silksong to be both fun and challenging while also being reasonable. I tried to wait to review it, wanting a fuller opinion, but it is so exceedingly brutal that it is a chore to play rather than fun at all. I can't believe that Team Cherry did such a terrible job. I couldn't be more disappointed. I keep trying to play it, but I'm fast reaching my rage quit, delete forever, and get a refund stage. The game has beautiful artwork, just like the original, but there the similarity ends. Every boss and many regular bugs do two masks of damage per hit, and mask fragments are so rare they might as well not exist. So, while you supposedly have five masks of health to start the game, you actually have three in most instances. Healing is much harder, and the warding bell that is supposed to protect you as you mend your wounds doesn't really work. Your healing can be interrupted, but your silk still vanishes, so you get no heal. The first few bosses were challenging but fairly fun, but after that they are just ludicrously brutal and unfair. They block progression, and due to the fact that you need advanced skills to reach most areas, you can't open biomes to try alternate progression, which goes against all things MetroidVania. Greymoor was brutal enough, but Hunter's March, the 6th biome I've entered, takes brutal to a ludicrous level. Hollow Knight had simple combat mechanics that could grow to an artform. Silksong has awkward combat mechanics that have me making stupid mistakes far too often, but even once you get the hang of it, the boss fights and similar encounters hit too hard while constantly putting you in situations where you can't possibly hope to dodge. Overall, I can't recommend the game. I will try to complete it & give an updated review, but even if I manage to finish it won't have any of the replayability of the original. Team Cherry wasted years, because they gave us a dud.
Many reviewers already noted how awful the controls are, and I couldn't agree more. Even trying to remap the controls didn't help. It always felt wonky and unresponsive, and while the game looked fun, like classic Castlevania, it doesn't play like it. It is slow and unwieldy, and navigation with rings was a nightmare, and while the game said I could press D to block certain attacks, it wasn't true. There was no block that I could find with any key. The same was true for a move called the hanging dash grab. The game told me to press a certain key to execute such a move, and nothing happened when I did. The entire experience was frustrating and a total waste of my time. In feedback threads the designers kept saying that the character was supposed to feel unresponsive and junky until later in the game. News flash, game designers, if the game and gameplay is this bad at the start, there is no later in the game. People won't play your game. I'm just thankful that GOG has a refund policy.
Lands of Lore Guardians of Destiny stands the test of time. I played it when it first came out, and it stuck with me. The storyline is fantastic as is the adventure, humor, and many of the cutscenes considering its age. I kept coming back to replay it until newer PCs weren't compatible, but it was the desire to play it again many years later that led me to discover GoG.com, and they reunited me with this treasured classic. I highly recommend it, especially to those who played in the earlier days of fantasy adventure gaming and are looking for a nostalgic experience.
