Fantastic little game.

This DLC has Espinas.

The pinnacle of the Survivor-like games. Real great stuff here

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Did all 5 endings with 91% progress

It is very easy to recommend Silksong to anyone who enjoys Hollow Knight, and to recommend Hollow Knight to any who enjoy videogames.

No doubt a step-up from the first game - from the grander scale, to refined controls and abilities, build-making, exploration and challenging encounters. The game is even prettier than HK, the bosses are more elaborate, platforming is sick and has many more challenges than what you had before. The story is far more engaging, and its different structure brings tons of surprises and a breath of fresh air to the soulslike trope of roaming around on a dilapidated kingdom (even though it's still there). Soundtrack is as good as before, and Act 3 in particular stands tall as the best moment in both games so far.

However, it is also a game with lows that sink lower than the original many times. Some moments so abysmal that prohibits me from calling it flawless like Hollow Knight.
Awkward difficulty curves during Act 1, frustrating & grindy Rosary economy (a welcome challenge until it becomes a chore for 100%), several insidious boss runbacks that serve only to waste your time and sap the game of its fun, PARTICULARLY the universally-reviled end section of Bilewater. The newest entry to the hall of fame of worst videogame areas of all time, next to Lost Izalith and Frozen Outskirts.

Common complaints like the new diagonal pogo are overblown, since it's relatively easy to learn the new moveset, as well as obtaining crests that change your moveset (including one based off the original attacks from Hollow Knight). Frequent double-damage attacks are particularly bad on Act 1 since you'll likely only have 5-7 masks by then, but it gets less grating later on (and it will also be balanced further on future patches).

Flying enemies are numerous and, this time around, REALLY smart. Too smart, in fact - as they constantly (and frustratingly) dodge your attacks millimetrically, and very often, as they try to stay in a diagonal-blindspot for most of Hornet's base attacks.

Economy is really harsh - besides the Rosary scarcity, Shards are even worse if you want to use tools often, particularly with those that require refills from distant areas before you can use them again (Lifeblood & Flea Brews). It can easily become a chore too tall to justify engaging with the system in the first place. On a similar vein - the repeatable courier missions are FAR too difficult and annoying for their miserable rosary rewards, and that's including the first patch that buffs their yields in the first place.

In summary, it is an excellent game plagued with a few dreadful moments that steep lower than anything seen before in Hollow Knight. Higher highs and much lower lows than its predecessor... But it's nothing a few updates can't fix, right?

Also... Come on. It's so ridiculously cheap for the value it brings. Definitely play this game as soon as possible, you can very well make it through.

Seriously though, Team Cherry. Fix Bilewater ASAP, for god's sake. No one deserves to go through such a slog of an runback.

Can this dog ever be stopped?

WYSIWYG. This is a great coop game when things go the right way, even the wrong way for a few runs.
However, I cannot think of a single more frustrating game on this planet when it comes to losing (and you will lose very often, even when things look great for 95% of your run).

This might be the single worst Roguelike of all time when it comes to having diverse and interesting runs - there have been multiple times where I have gotten the EXACT same seed twice in a row, with every single dungeon & boss & event placed at the exact same places, where the only differences are the items you get through loots. Even Chalice Dungeons from Bloodborne had better variety between runs.

Many would say - and I agree - that the combat & gameplay are great, the classes are unique, and SPECIALLY the new bosses, which might be among From Software's best and most interesting fights so far. Those people claim that these upsides make up for the lackluster randomization across different runs, but I disagree on that.

When every run feels the same (and this feeling settles in very quickly), all of your playtime in Limveld will feel like a mere runback to the Nightlord at the 3rd Day. A 20-min long, exhaustive runback just to get that other attempt against the only unique bosses in the game (and many will require many tries if you don't have a god build/team).

Good Roguelikes should never subject you to this feeling... Many games in this genre feature fun and strategic decisions you can take at several different steps in your run, and the right decisions are often rewarded by run-defining builds that you KNOW are unique to the opportunities you got in that specific seed.

Nightreign, however, just boils down to getting a lucky spawn, working your way through an optimal route to stay alive & get stronger through runes, buffs and new items, with many of these boons being generic and hard to strategize around meaningfully. Sometimes, you'll be so unlucky that an ailment-specific dungeon won't drop any loot that deals that ailment? Or you'll enter a run against a boss weak to a certain ailment and not even get any dungeons for that kind of loot. Lol.

You can have interesting builds with bizarre conditions and effects that mix up gameplay considerably, but these are most-often reliant on good Relics and Deep of Night content, which is an incredibly grindy process to dive into.

Everything wrong with this game is multiplied tenfold when you try doing a Solo run, which is simply miserable. It's nice that the option exists - given the game IS balanced around 3-player runs, but don't even bother. Even if XP and health pools are scaled down to keep you as strong as you would in a coop run, as well as revives and other handicaps - All encounters still become the worst kind of gankfests you can think of, so good luck. You also have very little time to explore the map and secure good loot because the night must go on. It all feels like a gigantic waste of time, beyond what words can convey.

Sure, "git gud" and all that. But it's extremely frustrating to realize you have better Roguelikes to play, better Soulslikes to play, better Coop games to play, and any permutation of those 3 you can mash together into a different game - which are all likely to be more fun than Nightreign.

I am glad the game exists, and may From Software learn the right lessons from it (like good online play for once, or the incredible bosses). But I'm afraid this one is very hard to fix without dismantling the entire game from the ground up.

A game with the courage to challenge a stagnant monopoly on the genre; The courage to encourage all kinds of modding & customization; The courage to remove DENUVO after backlash a day before the game releases.

And it's actually good?

W