Silksong Is Amazing, But Not Perfect

I was waiting for Hollow Knight: Silksong to drop for a long time. I rarely replay games, but Hollow Knight was an exception. I loved it enough to play it multiple times, even earning the Steel Soul speedrun achievements. I was expecting a similar experience from the new Hollow Knight: Silksong, and it delivered, for the most part. Loved the visual, the sound and music, characters, world design, etc, but there were a few things that I think could have been better. This is, in my personal opinion, what made the game for me less than 'perfect' 10/10.

Keep in mind these are just my personal opinions based on the initial public release build of Silksong; some of the things were patched out, so I talk about them later.

---

Economy

There are two types of currencies in the game: Rosaries and Shell Shards. Almost every bench, Bellways, etc, especially in the early games, are opened by spending Rosaries, but there were not enough enemies that dropped those. Only less than half of the enemies in the game drop these. You get a lot of Shell Shards in the early game, hitting the cap at times, which makes you feel that you are losing them.

That Shell shards cap, in my opinion, shouldn't be there just like Rosaries. These Shards are used to craft tools, which have a design flaw, too.

---

Issues with Tool Crafting

You might be running at max shell shards capacity until you get to a hard boss, where you use your tools but die again and again, so you spend a lot of Shell shards easily. As a player, you feel like you will run out of them quickly, so you don't use too many tools, and that makes it even harder for you to beat that hard boss. A simple workaround would be to have a fixed number of tools you could use, which get refilled after resting on benches. Just like you have flasks in Elden Ring, and they replenish after sitting in campsites. That whole Shell shards business wasn't necessary in my opinion. Or, if you are facing the same boss again and again, respawning on the same bench, then the cost of making those tools should decrease based on the number of attempts. So, you are not constantly worrying about running out of shell shards easily.

---

Boss Runbacks

When I heard that Silksong will have double the number of benches compared to Hollow Knight. I thought the runback to the bosses would be easier. I still remember how I hated going back to the Soul Master after I died, and it was very frustrating in Hollow Knight in my first playthrough. But this game has even worse runbacks than the first one. The Last Judge boss was very tough, but you had to reach there again and again by traversing over enemies, which did 2 mask shard damage. That thing was crazy. I don't know who thought it would be a good idea.

---

And it is not just with one boss; there are many others. It is fine when you do it 2 times in a row, but doing that tough platforming section 15 times in a row is pure insanity, especially when the said boss kills you in 5 seconds lol. Reach the boss fight in 30 seconds, die in 5 seconds and retry. That's a bad design, in my opinion. They later patched the environmental hazard damage to just 1 mask, which is good.

---

The Tiniest bugs doing 2 Mask damage

I don't mind the extra difficulty in Silksong. It had to be difficult than the first game. But even the spikes doing 2 mask damage and small minions in boss fights, or contact damage being 2 masks is a bit too much, especially at the start when you only have 5 masks' health and the iframes you get after a hit are very, very short. There were many deaths I had just because I landed on an enemy, which stunned me, and then another enemy dealt damage to me before I could even do anything. That felt like the game's fault, not the player.

---

This gets compensated with 3 mask healing at the same time, and how Hornet can heal even in mid-air. That's one of the most powerful things in the game. Hornet being able to heal anywhere made this slightly less punishing, especially in the mid to late game.

There was a patch that seemed to fix a lot of double mask damage to only 1 mask, especially in the early game. I don't know how much better it is now. I have to play again to find out if this issue has been solved completely.

---

The new Crest system is Restrictive

The new Crest/Charm system, in theory, gives you a lot of options on the way you play, but in practice, I found that it was quite restrictive. Each crest comes with a different nail swing, and most of them are bad for general purposes. I liked only the hunter's crest because of its better downward slash. Also, it comes with 2 of each type of slot. These slot types lead to a problem: the problem of restrictive builds. In the old charm system, one could focus on just a nail build, spell build or summoner build, but here, because you only have a couple of slots to place your charms, those builds become very restrictive. But hey, you can put the compass there without sacrificing your charm slots lol.

---

Many of those issues, like the economy and runbacks, can be fixed easily with small patches. They are not big issues which break the game completely. The game is still fun to explore, and it has some amazing boss fights and music. The world is almost twice as big and full of secrets. Things like Hornet getting kidnapped midgame were such a cool edition. The new quest system is not as bad as I thought initially. Despite the flaws I mentioned above, the game still feels like better than Hollow Knight in overall quality and gameplay. I believe Team Cherry is working on fixing some of the issues right now. If they can do it quickly I can change my review to 10/10. For now, it is 9.5/10, almost a perfect game.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.