One of the most gorgeous, grim and fascinating worlds i had the pleasure of playing throughout. Despite feeling only mild on the first game this sequel managed to make me a long-life fan of the setting and i eagerly await for future content from Team Cherry. The gameplay is incredible smooth with the protagonist being much faster and more agile than the knight, and despite the equipment system not being the most intuitive of them all, the sheer depth it offers is staggering. Hollow Knight had a very simple system offering some variety on how to play but it was very deliberately barebones compared to the vast amount of builds Silksong allows the player to create. The difficulty has seen some backlash but for the most part its reception is incredibly overblown. The games design is intentionally hostile and/or deceiving to the player but its a far cry from the insanely hyperbolic statements floating around its discussion, especially since there are multiple tools/crest combinations that trivialize even the hardest sections of the game. I dont have a lot of complaints but i would criticize the health inflation compared to the first game. This is less about how it impacts the difficulty of the game and more about how it just makes exploration a bit of a pain in certain biomes. Entering an area and seeing multiple enemies that take almost 10 hits to kill is never particularly fun and while the needle upgrades help mitigate this problem, it just never feels quite enough. This problem is at its worst during the first act and while it gets progresively better, Endgame just makes it worse again. Team Cherry also made a bit too many enemy gauntlets to my taste. Theyre almost never particularly interesting to fight and sometimes even get in the way of a much cooler boss fight. You cant even replay them to your hearts content if you do happen to be a fan(like in the colliseum of fools) so regardless of how much you enjoy them i do think this is something the og did better.
Tight controls, great atmosphere and its short enough that it doesnt overstay its welcome. The reflex time mechanic was a great way to make the shootouts more fun and engaging. The cqc was more varied than expected, especially since there is barely any need to use it throughout the course of the game.
