... was actually deserved. It is stable, beautiful, plays well, the controls are intuitive, no bugs, pun intended, and it is as smooth as butter. It is exactly what the sequel to Hollow Knight needed to be. It doesn't go out of its way to be different. This is a polished product that deserves attention and your time, if you are a fan of the original game.
And if you haven't played it but love Metroidvanis with sufficient difficulty, this is the game you've been waiting for.
It can be easy to fall victim to the ridiculous expectations placed upon this game, but after 7 years, Team Cherry, doesn't disappoint.
And the fact that they put this Day 1 DRM-free is just the cherry on top of this delicious moss-covered cake.
Play this game. The music is phenomenal, the art is once again incredible. This game is charming, it is hard, and it is, as the kids say, a vibe.
Beat the original once many years ago and had fun. This game is... much harder. Did you work like crazy getting all the hardest challenges in the first game? This is your jam.
If you're a casual, like me, you might spend a lot of time not having much fun as you use awkward controls in unforgiving platforming contexts and fight very hard against bullet spongy enemies who ignore your attacks and tiny enemies who bumrush you into spike pits. Moreso than you'd expect.
Graphics and sound at same level as original, very moody and unique. Much to experience for those who make it far enough.
Recommend for those take their Hollow Knight "extremely spicy." For everyone else, could be an acquired taste.
Here we are seven years on, and I can fully believe that that entire time was spent immaculately crafting this game to Team Cherry's dream specification. The music, presentation, atmosphere, art, my GOD the art. It's Hollow Knight again and polished to even more of a mirror sheen this time. I love all the environments and silly little bugs milling around, there's so much I love about its presentation.
Regrettably it's also quite easy to believe that this is a game that three people spent seven years practicing and tuning in private. You'll be able to get into the game, sure, but did you beat all the superbosses and finish all the pantheons back in Godhome? Because that seems to be the difficulty FLOOR for Silksong. Everything starts doing 2 damage so the 1 health upgrade you can get before the second act is useless, most of the bosses just plain take too long even on a successful run with massive health pools and occupy half the screen while dealing 2 damage even on contact. The REALLY bad ones also summon trash mobs endlessly... and most often it'll take at least twice as long to run back from the nearest bench as it will to die again to the boss that facestomped you the last 30 times.
The farther you get into the game the more frustrating it gets. The never-ending biomes with the worst omnipresent poison mechanic ever devised that play more like something a trashpost game parodying Dark Souls would make as a joke. The tools that are limited per-use between save points, but also consume a secondary currency which exists purely as a solution in search of a problem. Every bench, every fast travel, every THING costs massive chunks of a currency that only some enemies drop and you'll always be skint on until quite a bit later into the game. Half the arenas are just endurance runs against 5 waves of the also-overtuned standard mobs including plenty of evasive, back-dashing, projectile-spamming flyers that don't even drop currency now just to ensure the encounter is a COMPLETE waste of your time.
I *almost* managed to finish Godhome back in the day, I just ended up losing my patience with the worst boss (Uumuu). I finally hit my stopping point in Silksong around 30 hours in when an endurance room lasted for about 12 consecutive rounds including throwing three bosses into the mix. There's a constant stream of "gotchas" here that exist purely to spite the player, seemingly because it's thematically suitable that you're exploring a living world that actively wants you dead as opposed to a dead world that just lashes out in passive reflex to any living presence. I could keep putting myself through this but I haven't been having fun since the 8 hour mark and it's only getting worse.
Silksong has been overtuned to hell and back and it's the kind of punishing that even fans of the original might not be able to stomach. It's the kind of punishing that even some Souls players, and half the people who manage to enjoy and finish this game, will still openly admit is "excessive". The only possible circumstance in which it is "a good jumping-on point for new players", as it was allegedly intended, is maybe specifically if you're a Bloodborne fan or you dropped Hollow Knight because you were bored with your exploration NOT being broken up by two-thirds of all trash mobs having the balancing of a miniboss encounter.
I can barely call this a metroidvania anymore with how you have to buy your way forward at every step of the way, and every single enemy demands absolute locked-in focus just to survive basic traversal. I'd call it a soulslike but even most of the Souls audience seems to disavow the comparison. I'm not sure what to call it other than a very pretty, very deliberately crafted test of one's patience.
I wont beat a dead horse. Alot of people have already pointed the major issues of the game and even more people has sung its praises, so this is my take so far.
Disclaimer: I played Hollow Knight, loved it, didnt finish it (close to the end). I'm not a diehard HK fan, I think its an incredible game, but thats it.
It feels like the game hasn't been properly playtested. I'm sure Team Cherry had a vision for this game and this game represents their vision, but for me after almost 10 hours into the game, I'm starting to feel miserable.
The combat is great. Hornet's set of moves is much more dynamic then her predescessor. Everything else in the game seemed to have been designed to make your journey as miserable as possible. I dont want to fight the 30th flying enemy iteration in groups of 4 or the 10th pogo parkour death path to fight another boss over and over again.
I won't recommend this game. I understand the intention of making a challenging soulslike game. But this... this is misery and feels unfair and not properly balanced at all. Its cool to be hard, I want it to be hard, but I want it to be fun as well and this, so far, has not been fun.
Team Cherry catered to the "hardcore" base on this one.
Let's get the good out of the way first.
Beautiful visuals. Amazing music. Cool characters.
But the BAD. Oh goodness THE BAD.
In an effort to both increase the difficulty and set this apart from Hollow Knight, they have fundamentally removed the things I enjoyed about the original.
Movement is supposed to be more "flowy" but instead just feels inprecise. Combat is OBNOXIOUS. Pacing is a grind. Nothing seems to flow together like one would expect. The game is brutal just for the sake of it. I feel like I'm being punished just for playing.
The original Hollow Knight is one of my favorite games of all time. So for this to come out after the 7 years of waiting... honestly, this is heart breaking.
I don't want to keep playing. It hurts.
I'm glad team Cherry enjoyed making it.
I just wish I could enjoy playing it.
tl;dr they made an entire game for Steel Soul players, and no one else.
