Good side: - The platformer part works like metroidvania but bosses work like souls like games. - Hornet talks and the dialogues are beautiful. - You have more interaction with characters in the world and I love that. - New mechanics like tools and the silks skills work really well, I was afraid tools would be too weak to be worth using but turns out they do good damage as well. - It ran flawless on steam deck since day one (I was surprised there were patches to fix bugs, I didn’t find any) Annoying side: - Souls genre learned checkpoints far from bosses are not fun. Yet developers like Team Cherry (and many others) insist on this. I gotta say that given the time, you learn how to optimise the route so it doesn’t get hard but it’s still annoying waste of time. - Currency to repair tools. If you die a lot like me, this means: 1) you may wast all the currency repairing the tools and will eventually beat the boss without them or 2) that you will not use the tools on the boss to save for when you are familiar with the fight until you beat them without the tools. The time that would take to give the boss a break so I could farm more shards to repair the tools is time I’m not practicing the fight. There are many tools I actually never used because I would either try to save shards for a tough encounter or not use since I would die anyway. - Boss hit too hard is not annoying per se but makes the points above more problematic. Hard bosses can either do too much damage or make for long fights. Silksong was designed for short fights different from games like monster hunter that most people will take several minutes on a single “boss”. I don’t think this is an issue. The problem I see with this is that it multiplies the annoyance of the tool currency and checkpoint locations. The more often I need to face those issues, the less fun the game becomes. Conclusion: The game is solid and I’ve been having a good time enough to keep me engaged. I think there is some QoL missing that could really reduce the unnecessary annoyances. I intend to finish the game but I’m not sure I’d play again like this. If no QoL is added, I might look into some mods to solve the tool repair currency and checkpoint near bosses.
I like the characters, the combat is fun but the evolution of the nemesis system was weird. In the first game we control orcs with fear and they simply obey. On this one, you can make your own army and the siege fights are a very nice addition to the system. They added more sophisticated behavior for the orcs, the influence of dominate effect seems weaker. Some orcs can even resist. “Dominate” feels more as a “recruit” than in the first game and while it does allow more room for the orcs AI and nemesis mechanics, I think it might have been better in a different game? This doesn’t spoil the fun, absolutely. The evolution of the system was something I enjoyed to play. My biggest problems with the game were 2: - orcs monologue - siege blocks story I’ve researched a lot to see if I could get rid of the orc monologues, I want to fight, not stop to hear what 2-3 captains have to say! Some people suggest to remove the audio files while others say that doesn’t work anymore. That said, I know some people really enjoyed the monologues and maybe that works for you. The sieges are fun but they take time. Level and gear play a role in this game and sieges can get really hard if you are not prepared. I’d be fine with that if I could do it in my own pace and I find the siege fun. Problem is that it ends up blocking the story and I’m force to do the siege even if I’d prefer to do something else. There are other activities around like challenges and such, but at the point I stopped playing, all side quests and main quest relied on me doing siege after siege. I’m pretty sure this is a personal preference as I don’t see many people mentioning this.
