The one maybe-critique that I've solidified this early on is the overabundance of 2-mask hits, especially as early as they are, and then having no leeway between contact damage and attack damage with that most of the time, and then there’s moments where the boss is downed and the 2-mask contact damage kills you.

It feels like there's more benches which counteracts the runbacks, so maybe it’s an 'I need to meet the game where it's at' thing. Otherwise enjoying it. Hornet is refreshing to play, even though she's much more technically-demanding in her playstyle.

It's cute.

It's beautiful.

It's challenging, but not impossible (I say 4 zones in, so I expect it to get much worse in that regard)

The art style is the same as Hollow Knight.

The vibes are excellent.

I was thinking about writing up a longer, more thought-out post as a kind of early review, but since I'll probably not get around to it, I'll just ramble here instead.

I only reluctantly say with great sadness that I am a bit disappointed with Silksong. When I saw people talking about how it was harder than Hollow Knight, I was excited because I love me my super difficult metroidvanias (for example, Aeterna Noctis is one of my all time favorite games and I will sometimes go back to it just to replay the most difficult bits of it, particularly the platforming sections that make the Path of Pain seem like a tutorial introduction). But some (too much I think) of the difficulty in Silksong comes down to what feels more like arbitrary numbers form of difficuty, like those mentioning the overabundance of hits, even from regular enemies and even environmental hazards like traps, doing 2-masks of damage. Given the amount of hits you have to perform to build up the entirety of your silk in order to heal 3 mask pips makes this just tedious. It also means that finally getting another mask (getting 4 hard-won pieces over time) makes very little difference in most cases. Finally getting that extra mask should make you feel like "now I can show those baddies!* but in practice, when a boss kills you in 3 hits because it takes 2 masks for each hit and you have 5 total, when you finally get that extra mask? You still die in 3 hits because it takes 2 masks for each hit and you have 6. It doesn't feel good to get that new mask, it feels useless and like it was mosty a waste of time, which is kind of a cardinal sin in this kind of game. And that's far from the only example. The lack of rewards for beating many of the bosses, even just a nice drop of scattered currency (like in Hollow Knight) has me wondering what they were thikning when they decided zero reward for a boss was a good idea. The feeling that overcoming challenges in general doesn't really net rewards, let alone rewards that seem commensurate to the challenge is very disappointing. One of the great aspects of metroidvanias is how the acquisition of new abiities makes you feel powerful as you progress. I know I have a lot further to go, so I'm hoping this improves, but so far, I have not felt that good old "now I'm a badass" feeling even once yet.

The economy is also not good. The shell shards, separate from the rosary beads, seemed like a good idea at first, but after playing a while, they just seem totally superfluous. I tend to have them pretty well filled up most of the time, with the cap reached fairy quickly, so usually they're just there and collecting more does no good anyway. But when I run into a boss I'm having trouble with, I start using a lot of the tools that cost shards (as players are meant to). But if I'm stuck on the boss, they run out, meaning I have to stop working on the boss and go farm a bunch of shards which is just annoying, before being able to come back and fight the boss again while using tools. So it's a feast or famine situation and neither state is very fun. You're either unable to collect them and they're useless OR you're having to grind for them when you'd rather be doing something else. And the fact that you have to be at a bench to use them up (transform them from shards into tool uses) makes all of that worse.

Meanwhile beads are the real main currency and what you lose when you die (in typical Souls fashion), but only certain specific enemies drop them, so when you want to buy something (which you need to do too much in this game) you often have to go to a specific place on the map where you know bead-dropping enemies are in order to farm for them. Since dying is so easy due to the low health you have, it also, for me anyway, disincentivizes picking up the chests or the beads hanging in the environment, and worsens that feeing of lack of reward when you do find a hidden area with a collection of rosary beads. I take note of their location to save them and come back for the next time I know I'll be farming/grinding beads, so I won't die and possibly lose them for good by dying again while on a runback to my death location. I know this is a common, intentional, even staple form of tension in games with soulslike death mechanics. But with how it's balanced in Silksong right now, it just feels too grindy. And that you have to pay for everything! Find a bench? There's a fee. Find a fast travel spot? There's a fee. Find a new door to a rest spot? Yeah, there's a fee. But guess what, if you step away before going inside, you have to repay that fee. And once you go inside and leave again? Yep, gotta pay the fee to come back. What is this, the fucking U.S.? There's also a merchant in there selling unique goods, which of course you have to pay for (that much is understandable), but you have to pay a fee every time you want to access that merchant? Gtfo. Insert joke about how I play these games to escape the capitalist hellworld, not stay stuck paying fees in order to pay fees. I found out there is a gear you can hit to break the door so you don't have to keep repaying that fee, so that's cool you can sabotage those rent-extracting fucker's little merchant scam thing, but before that, I was pissed about having to keep paying 30 beads every time I wanted to browse that merchant or rest on the bench there, and 60 if I took a step away from it accidentally before entering.

I have mixed feelings on the new diagonal pogo. It's thrown me off a bunch of times for sure, but I think overall I like the experimentation of it and the added complexity to the straight down pogo. I'll have to play more to really get a good sense of how well it works, and honestly that's true of all of this. I just have a lot more hope for the pogo than I do for the rest of the things I mentioned.

I'm really tired and I just spewed this out, not going to proofread, but instead try to sleep. So sorry for the long and badly formatted complaint comment. I do have a lot of good to say about the game too that I didn't get into at all, but would have in a proper review post.

Very difficult. Hornet is so large compared to the knight. Also the diagonal downward slash looks great and also feels great that one time out of a hundred when I remember that’s how it works.

Its a technically superior game to its predecessor. Its definitely harder, lots of mobs just do 2 masks from jump. Idk how to feel about the dive attack yet, but the number of enemies with helmets making it completely useless has been noted.

Honestly same. I just beat Hollow Knight earlier this year (so, I have a pretty recent comparison) and the basic enemies are so much harder. The few boss fights I've done seem comparable, but any more than 3 enemies at a time means I have to lock in or die.

I'm having a skill issue. I recently played nine sols(basically hollow knight but with parry) and hornet is so much less capable. It's like going from a movement shooter like ultrakill to csgo, or from sekiro to ds1. You just have to be so much less aggressive and it feels bad to barely be doing damage.

Loving it. Hornet plays so much more fluid and agile than the knight, the boss fights have been consistently fantastic, the soundtrack is great. It successfully sets itself apart from Hollow Knight with the way Hornet plays in such a good way, leaving both games with their own place. About 10 hours in, just beat my favorite boss so far, and the world is opened up even further now.

Too early to say, but if the quality persists at least at this level, then I think I'll like it more than Hollow Knight simply from how much I love Hornet's moveset and how it feels to travel around the world. Honestly feels like someone took Hollow Knight, a game I already adore, and made a character more tuned to how I enjoy playing platformers, and enemies with more dynamic and interesting kits. Love the soundtrack, too!

Been watching live streams and it does indeed look hard as fuck. I know I couldn’t do it. I’d nope out pretty quick

It might have the best sound design in any game, which is a pretty good thing to have in a game about going around hitting every wall with a sword.

I think the bosses should have like 20 % less HP and start doing their actually dangerous attacks sooner.

There is spider nudity. It's great.

I'm probably a decent bit further than you, and this definitely isn't as hard as late-game Hollow Knight (like the optional stuff like Coliseum 3, not even getting into the pantheon business), but it's incomparably harder than the corresponding point in Hollow Knight. Honestly, some of the ambush rooms are way harder to me than basically any of the bosses, except for one boss that basically got negated(?) due to a glitch(?). The ambush room on what appears to be the far east side of Greymoor [it might go further but I can't reach it] shattered my soul and even though I think I've beaten every boss in Act 1 except for the last two (and whatever's behind the simple lock in the Docks). In the Greymoor ambush room in particular, the bigger enemies are deliberately designed to move in a really irregular fashion and when there are multiple different kinds of big enemies moving in individual irregular fashions while lunging, poking, and throwing fanning projectiles, I just can't process it.

I'm really wondering what the scale of the game is, because I haven't gotten an "Act II" yet and, given what I've seen so far, that's kind of strange, but I think it probably constitutes a moderate spoiler.

Edit: I think the soundtrack is like 1/5th as good as Hollow Knight's, even if the sound design is really impressive, as another user noted.

My friend has forced me to play hollow knight so many times that I despise it and its sequel too, not a fan of metroidvanias

I find it slightly too mechanically demanding to be as enjoyable as the first. I feel like exploration isn't rewarded enough, and thr overabundance of combat rooms discourages the sort of casual wandering I adored in HK :(

Honestly I've found it pretty annoying, most of the bosses seem to have like 3 moves and the gameplay loop is just wait, dodge, hit twice, repeat.

I don't think it's as hard as it is tedious and requires patience

Would you fine folks recommend keyboard or controller for this and hollowknight ? (I havent played Hollowknight yet so if I get around it I will start with that)

I think I wish I got around to Hollow Knight earlier so I could participate

I'm not enjoying it that much initially. It feels like the game has been made for that 1% of Hollow Knight players that have platinumed it instead of for everyone else, a bit like how Elden Ring felt at launch.

I get the diagonal down attack as well. Pogo was sort of the answer to everything in the first game so they're trying to counter that, but that just involves putting helmets on a bunch of enemies so it feels artificial.

The thing that's irking me is the lack of build options. There are very few charms and the traps that replace them mostly need to be bought and are very expensive. So they involve going back to the same places over and over when you can afford them. I just feel like I can't tweak Hornet around the edges to suit me or what I'm facing better.

I think the overworld enemies are so tough because they all take at least 3 hits and don't get knocked back as much as in the first game. The flying enemies also float towards you slowly then speed up at the last second. Couple that with the 3 hits and little knockback and they get annoying quickly.

The game has been in development for a long time and has a solid fountain so maybe there's something I'm missing and it will eventually click. I remind myself Silksong was meant to be postgame dlc so of course it was going to be harder.but maybe Team Cherry spent too much time with it and everything makes sense to them but not normal people with fresh eyes.

The controls and movement are supreme. I love how the game rewards aggression in combat. Yes I'm gonna risk dying to a basic enemy but I'm gonna look so badass!

Encounters with basic enemies are way harder than Hollow Knight, but I've found the platforming to be more fun and engaging. Especially after unlocking a move set that has a simpler downwards strike.

Sorry for the cliché, but many Silksong players need to just get good. I know I need to. Love it so far. It's everything and more I hoped for since it's more challenging than Hollow Knight. I feel like this time I have to play smarter too, use every tool I have in my arsenal and adapt. I've played Silksong for about 12 hours or so and a third of that has been dying to the same few bosses. I feel like many of us have forgotten how hard Hollow Knight was all these years and playthroughs ago...

I'm playing it on PS5 and highly recommend taking screenshots as means to take note. A new shop? Screenshot. Not enough currency to open something? Screenshot. A locked gate? You get the idea. I never have to backtrack to a store just to be reminded an item is still too expensive.

The couple of things I wasn't so sure of are double damage and angled pogoing. Double damage makes the game, especially the bosses, harder and getting your first new mask (sixth) doesn't feel as rewarding as it should. Pogoing is weird because everything in Hollow Knight has become muscle memory. Pogoing klicked for me after getting

For the whiners, there's an easy solution to all your problems: get the game on PC and download all the mods you need to make the game easier.