Recent reviews by Forestilling

Hollow Knight: Silksong is an extremely difficult and equally punishing game. If you enjoyed Hollow Knight and want a sequel using HK's highest difficulty optional content as the average, then you will probably love this game. If you're unsure but you're willing to put in the time to master the skillset to overcome those challenges, you will also enjoy the game. The artwork, music, and challenge is incredible. It's fair to say this is a masterwork as a piece of art.

But one that isn't for everyone. I have to update this thing from my initial first impressions because it was too long, some info was wrong, and some things took getting used to.

The game has things I don't like about it, runbacks being chief among them. But while it's the kind of punishing that I hate, the difficulty itself is something that you do get used to. There are times I think, "they're not actually serious with this crap right?" only for it to be manageable when I actually attempt it. It's insane what they expect of you, and even more insane how you surmount those challenges without even realizing you've gotten better at the game. In that sense, I think from my perspective they have balanced the difficulty fairly well.

I came to a very long room with more of the frustrating platforming I'd been dealing with in that zone, and I thought, "I bet they expect some stupid [redacted] platforming with no safe spots to stand and rest, like some Path of Pain type crap. Turns out it was even worse than I thought. Took a few tries, which I think is pretty reasonable for what I was looking at it. This is what I mean when you don't realize you've already developed the skills. You are required to play well. Sometimes it seems like you're required to play perfectly. But the game does guide your skill towards that level of play.

The problem, is that section is part of a boss runback. Just part of one. The full thing took someone on YouTube showing it with no mistakes taking 2 minutes of perfect platforming to get to back to the boss. Every time you die. Reduce that to maybe 1 minute if you know how to create the shortcut, which allows you to start your runback from the previous level. That's still every death, and that's 1 minute without making a mistake. A mistake there costs you either a lot of time, and/or up to 3 masks of damage. Because if you mess up a jump the platforms hurt you and so does the floor.

Add in to that that if you get hit while healing, you lose ALL your silk/soul, including silk that wasn't used for the heal. With max upgrades, you can hold enough to heal twice, but getting hit during a heal takes 100% away, not just the half you used. Fighting a boss whose only attack is RNG projectile spray, you can't heal between his attacks because he only does that and he does it all the time. RNG decides if you get screwed. I use this example because it isn't a case of a player mistake being punished twice. It's random. Still punished twice.

So I've changed my mind on the difficulty. I'd prefer if it were a bit easier, but it isn't too bad. It's the fact that they made it so challenging, and then doubled down on punishing mistakes that bothers me. Usually it amounts to wasting the player's time at best. It gets in the way of everything I said before about learning and managing the difficulty. You can't just enjoy learning how to fight a hard boss when you have to disconnect mentally from it for two minutes to do frame-perfect platforming and dodge enemies throwing 1-3 projectiles and diving into you.

Bosses can take ten minutes to kill, but some you'll start off dying in 10 seconds, and have to grind 1 minute runbacks just to fight it longer than you spend being punished for not automatically being good at it. I'm sure TC doesn't expect everyone to just automatically be good at every boss, so why do they you punish you so hard just for trying?

So when judging whether the game is right for you, I recommend weighing the punishing nature of it more than how hard it is (unless you love hard, which just makes that a plus, but most of those people are already playing it). You can get used to a boss or to platforming, but when the game's extreme difficulty forces you to repeat content... that's where you lose people. That's where criticism of the difficulty comes from. It isn't really the difficulty, it's the abrasion. The friction present in every moment like the game hates you for playing it.

If you can get past that, it's incredible. If you can't or don't have time for that look elsewhere. And remember, both liking the game and disliking it are valid. Some people love C&B torture. It isn't wrong to be a little freaky. But it's not for everyone, especially when it's unexpected.

For me, it's the most beautiful, detailed, and engaging piece of crap ball-punching bullcrap masterpiece of a game I ever hate-loved.

Lack of basic control options makes the game unplayable. To be clear, you can use Steam itself to resolve these issues. Even so, it's a baffling degree of laziness that I refuse to support. Had I bought the game on console I'd be SOL, and probably not even able to refund it. That's completely unacceptable, and Steam making up for their laziness doesn't excuse it. I'll support a game that actually cares about players' ability to play it.

Very good, but it's Bethesda. It has all the normal problems Bethesda games have. One of the standouts to me was the sheer potential this game has. It's good, but even while you're enjoying a questline you can't help but think of how it could be a little bit better. I don't regret getting it early, but the mod scene should make this game unbelievably good if you can wait. If you can't wait, you'll like it as long as you just go in expecting Bethesda formula in space. It's a little more than that, but only a little.

I hate the new game plus feature. The unique implementation in this game actually takes something away, instead of adding. I'm not saying it's bad, only that I hate it. I hate it in the best possible way. I wish I could do it all over again... but not like that.

This game makes me feel like I'm 8 years old playing Pokemon Red for the first time. Not because it's that much like Pokemon, but because it just has that magical feeling games used to have. I thought I would never feel that again.

The single complaint I have is something most people won't be bothered by. The character sprites. I'm not a huge fan of the overworld sprites and the player's battle sprite has a very square head that makes it impossible to create a feminine character. You always look like a guy. You'd think a game that lets you choose your pronouns would be better at this, but unfortunately despite all the options for character customization it just feels like swapping wigs because of the square head and blobby hairstyles. Even for me as someone for whom this kind of detail is very important, it's not a dealbreaker. If you have enough interest to be reading reviews just go buy it.

Could barely get the game to run. Not worth the trouble.

It's a good survival game with satisfying progression and fair mechanics. There is a lot more content than I expected for Early Access, and that content is fairly polished. Every biome is designed to always have useful resources, so no place ever becomes obsolete. Each biome also has unique enemies(even Breath of the Wild can't say that).

The game is significantly more difficult to progress in without multiplayer, unless you're skilled at parrying. I find it frustrating that every enemy requires you to perfect parry it in order to fight it later on. They do so much damage, and show up in such high numbers, that you either perfect parry them to block the damage and open them for attack, or your take massive damage and risk death. It's the only element that stands out as feeling lazily designed. It devalues gear progression, which is the only kind of progression you have once yours skills begin to stagnate.

Dying drains your skills, and the game is difficult enough that even playing with 3+ people I have never seen anyone progress beyond 35 in a skill. You die and lose 3 levels in your highest skills and they take so long to level up that you're bound to die again before making progress, so skills are more likely to stagnate or regress than to progress once you get them around 30. This makes the next 70 levels of skills unattainable unless you sat around grinding them deliberately. The issue with this is that it means once you get to that place with skills, a huge sense of progress is lost.

There are some consistent bugs like deconstructing structures and not getting all or any materials back, and I have noticed significant lag when playing multiplayer about a quarter of the time. One player having poor internet seems to have a negative affect on the entire server even if they aren't the host, and if they are it is unplayable.

I recommend this game only if you are okay with the state of the game as it is now. That goes for all games. Never pay for a game unless you are okay with only getting what is available at the moment of purchase. I think it's worth it for the price, but the devs also created a lot of bugs with the previous patch that have not been addressed in over a week. That kind of thing is what you're getting into with early access.