Let's start with this - I finished the original several times, every time with full, complete playthrough, Path of Pain included. So it is not like difficulty is unfamilair to me. The game is noticeably harder than the original Hollow Knight beause nemies that hit you for 2 points of damage are MUCH more prevalent, meaning Hornet is a fair bit more fragile. This means you have to addapt to a fairly different playstyle and quickly - one that revolves around avoidance, calculated attacks and acrobatics. The game is beautiful, sounds amazing, generally controls almost flawlessly (except one MAJOR thing that infuriated me, I'll get to that), oozes the climate. It should be perfect. Many of the bosses are epic - Lace, The Dancers, the Widow, Karmelita, Trobbio, Phantom and more - they evoke the best moments I had in the original Hollow Knight and in a good way. The general platforming is perfectly fine - Hornet moves much more smoothly than Knight ever did. The new charm system is interesting - you get a choice of more movesets with the crests, but the charm setups are more restrictive this time around. You also get replenishable tools which act as rough equivalents of spells from the first game - they can be immensely powerful, though grinding for shards acting as effectively ammo can be a bit tedious. That being said - the tool system gives you much more firepower overall and a much more varied attack selection. Now, let's discuss couple of rough spots. The first act is generally perfectly balanced - it is difficult, but it also guides you well if you are willing to explore. But the beginning of the Act 2 is a bit rough in couple of places. Let's start with the health - a lot of enemies, most bosses deal 2 masks of damage. This makes your first health upgrade nearly pointless, and it diminishes and slows down your further health progression - you basically need 2 more hitpoints to actually matter. 2nd Act is a place where you can encounter 2 very annoying, although optional bosses early on. Second fight with the Beasfly - yeah, a boss that at this stage of the game wrecks you in 3 hits. can and will destroy the floor, charges from beyond the screen while tracking your hight, spawns help that is erratic and tanky. That was not a fun fight at all. Broodmother - tiny arena, constantly spawns adds that explode for 2 damage, herself does 2 damage, has a snare attack that guarantees you getting hit, and her primary lunge attack can be chained - she can immediately turn and hit you again if you dodge. She can basically turn half the screen into a dead zone. The upgrade distribution is a bit uneven. First Needle upgrade is fairly late in Act 1, and it hardly changes anything - enemies you will be encountering at this point will still die in the same amount of hits, but at least those in early areas you have no reason to really visit again much will die in 2 hits now. What a boon. And then it turns out the 3rd needle upgrade - you know, a fairly essential thing - is locked behind a TIMED courier mission. Remember the Flower mission for Ze'Mer/Grey Mourner? Now do that on a timer to get an essential upgrade. I DETEST timed missions. Fortunately, there is a way to do this very easily - if you are willing to take your time and plot the path and clear it beforehand. While platforming is generally tight and well done, there is one problem. Let me tell you the story o Mount Fay - a massive climb with a pseudo-time limit due to cold mechanic. This one is weird - it exposes one horrid inconsistency in the controls. You need the Clawshot - which is basically a harpoon upgrade. The harpoon can latch to special hoops and to the walls - to jump away from those walls, you need to press 'jump' - makes perfect sense, doesn't it? You can also harpoon to the enemies - you press 'jump' and you jump away. Wonderful. But on Mount Fay you will notice you are not making these jumps well - your jumps are ever so slightly too short. You start thinking - it must be my aim, or my timing. But nope, no matter what, you will not make these jumps 99% of the time. You get desperate, trying for hours - you call this Path of Pain 2.0 in anger. You throw the controller and leave it. Next morning you start trying again to no avail. And finally, in frustration you just kill one of the enemies with the harpoon, without jumping... And Hornet JUMPS. This is where it hits you. If you jump manually, you cancel the animation and make half the jump. You have to NOT press 'jump' in order to JUMP HIGHER. You get overcome by anger - asking you to not jump to jump. What's next? Not touching the d-pad to run faster? And the worst of wall - after 4 hours of trying in vain... after discovering this nonsense, the whole Mount Fay takes you 15 minutes and maybe 2-3 tries to complete. The impossible challenge is easy, because you figured out the logic-defying quirk in controls. I'll tell you this - THIS ONE THING stained my entire experience with this game so much, it took me days to overcome my anger and have fun with it again. And hopefully, if you read this - I have saved you hours of frustration - because now at least, you will be spared the anger I went through. Now that I've got that out of my system... Once you get over these growing pains I mentioned - there is a world of wonder to explore and discover - new lore, wonderful character moments, fantastic level and character design. The more I played, the more it clicked, the more my initial hurdles disappeared. Turns out that, with the exception of the Mount Fay issues, I just had to get into the rhytm of things. And how adequate is that? Silksong - it is in the title, the analogies to music, singing and dance are all over the place - rhytm, being methodical, calculated, harmonic - this is how you conquer this game. It punishes chaos, brute force and panic. Most of the hurdles can be conquered by exploration and getting prepared, like a proper Metroidvania requires. For example - Bilewater - the infamous Blighttown equivalent of this game. It can be trivialized with some combinations of Crest and Tools - like Architect with a Plasmium vial. Pretty much all bosses are doable if you learn to observe - Hornet is not a powerhouse the Knight was, she is an agile huntress - and you need to play like one. This game punishes mindless aggression. If you have trouble with any boss - stop, and learn to dodge first, wait for the attack and THEN find the openings. Treat your fights like a dance, where the enemy is the lead. Follow their steps with your own. And don't be scared to use tools - the game gives you tons of options, learn them, use them - do not restrict yourself unless you are doing challenge runs. Initially I was prepared to give it only 4 out of 5... But once I got over the whole Mount Fay... problem... I was greeted with an adventure full of wonder, full of care and secrets. It is a true sequel, and a worthy successor in every single aspect.
To quote a classic. What is the most important aspect of any game? Being able to play it. And well... It is hard to play a game that refuses to launch at all. I played it back in the day and it is a wonderful game - so if you get it to work by some miracle - you are indeed lucky. To me? My adventure with revisiting this classic ended up literally before it even started. The game does not even begin to run. It tries to, and immediately crashes without any error shown. Playing around with compatibility gets me to unresponsive black screen or one weird error message. Apparently the game is absolutely allergic to various USB peripherals... Which is a problem considering everything uses USB these days. And I don't even use anything wireless, which was also reported as one supposed problem. There is also talk about various other fixes, like trying some weird codex combinations, intalling on C drive and so on - but judging from various comments, even those solutions are unreliable at best and I'm honestly not willing to keep throwing mindless solutions at the wall and hoping something will stick.
Basically, a vast improvement over first Original Sin in virtually every way. The writing is better - it toned down the humour, and while it is still there, it no longer overshadows the actual plot. In all honesty, despite cheerful, colourful setup, this game can be really depressing at times. That being said, this game is not for everyone and has some quirks. Difficulty - unlike many modern titles, D:OS 2 is bruttally difficult and AI will punish all mistakes. Archetype team involving a tank character simply does not work, as enemies will simply ignore the hardest nut to crack. On the other hand, each battle feels pretty unique and presents different challenge. The armour system - basically physical and magical armour acts as additional hitpoints against specific attacks AND barrier against CC. So, for example, if you want to knock enemy down or freeze them, you need to deplete specific type of armour first. This is the system that you will either love or hate. Some people say that it forces you to focus on only full physical or magical damage team composition but this is a lie - there are ways to work around this through proper tactics, and it gives good results in the end. Another controversial aspect is dependancy on level. Your level matters, A LOT, especially at medium and high difficulties. It is so significant in fact, that a single level may mean a difference between life and death. Areas are basically level coded, so you are pushed in the right direction by levels of your foes. This is more of a traditional RPG and not in the slightest a proper open world game - each act presents a semi-open area. The presentation is overall excellent but there are some very strange things going on there. There is no day and night cycle which would normally be standard these days and weather is region-locked, which leads to some funny situations - sunny town, but the second you move outside, rain. To sum this up - beautiful, intriguing, brutally hard and quirky.
