In all my years of gaming this is the first time I stopped and thought to myself "ok, this is stupid."
What the hell were they thinking when they designed Hunter's March and Savage Beastfly ? Did the devs even play test this game? It's even crazier to think that for many people this is going to be their first hollow knight, or even the first Metroidvania given the game's popularity. Good Lord.

Not recommended until major balance patches.


Edit: Review after 100% completion.

I enjoyed the game but I would still not recommend it. I simply cannot see the majority of the players enjoying this game. Silksong is not a perfect game, and that is ok, denying any and all criticisms is not healthy for the devs nor for the community. There are serious design flaws that cannot be defended with the simple argument of "skill issue." I will not elaborate on these design flaws since there are many comprehensive reviews about them already. I do wonder however, in this current climate, how would games like Dark Souls 2 be perceived by the gaming community of 2025 if it were to come out today? Would all of its problems like mob placement, boss runbacks, level design, hitboxes and animations simply just another instance of the player needing to "git gud?"

If I had to summarize this DLC in one word, it would be Underwhelming.

Performance issues and some of the bosses being overtuned aside, my biggest complaint with this DLC is the story and the lore. I was expecting a combination of the Artorias DLC and The Old Hunters DLC(All the Souls Youtubers who got the review copy called this the best fromsoft DLC ever afterall), where we would follow the footsteps of Miquella and uncover some more backstories of Marika's rise to power along the way, or an epic and satisfying conclusion to the game like what we got with The Ringed City. Instead, Shadow of The Erdtree is a disjointed mess that failed to add anything interesting into the lore. None of the important questions from the base game were answered. We got absolutely nothing, no Godwyn, no backstories behind Marika's connection with the Numen and the Eternal City, nothing to clear the muddiness surrounding the Night of The Black Knives, nothing about the Gloam-Eyed Queen, her Godskins, and her obvious connection with Marika, nothing about Maliketh and Marika, the influence of the outer gods were abruptly inserted into the DLC in the most irrelevant way as if they were a last minute thought, the list goes on. The entire DLC boils down to more of the same boring GRRM philosophy, where he thinks random dragons and incest are the coolest things in a fantasy world.

The DLC is massive; indeed it is like five Limgraves stacked together, but other than in the first area, exploration gets boring really fast. You rarely get rewarded for exploring. You fight the same enemies in big empty areas over and over again, and your reward will often be some upgrade materials and some more upgrade materials. The three legacy dungeons in the DLC felt small and unrewarding and uninspired; none of the bosses felt enjoyable or interactive or rhythmic to fight maybe except Messemer and Midra. The difficulty is not the problem, something went wrong with Fromsoft's design philosophy. The bosses in this game are simply not fun, not because they are too hard to beat, but because the whole process of learning how to beat them, which has been the fun in all Fromsoft boss fights, is not as fun this time. I had more fun bashing my head against the wall trying to beat the Headless Bloodletting Beast or Amygdala in Defiled Chalice Dungeons in Bloodborne.


I've been a diehard Souls fan since the original Dark Souls; I loved Dark Souls 2 and I even defended 1.0 Malenia. I almost never leave any reviews on anything, but I felt so underwhelmed and disappointed after completing this DLC that I just had to rant a little bit.

One of the most underrated and underappreciated game of all time.