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.