Recent reviews by ShellfishShelly

Silksong is a pretty damn good game. Unfortunately, I believe it falls victim, like many sequels, to having to compete with it's predecessor. In some ways, it wins and exceeds. In others, it feels inferior and, arguably, even falls flat. From features that, in my opinion, serve to waste time, to lazy damage values (more on that soon), Silksong struggles to maintain pace with it's older sibling.


Starting with the obvious, complaints of levels and parkour, and perhaps more commonly of balancing and mass damage, Silksong seems to try and root itself as a straight up harder sequel to Hollow Knight. While it's successful in that goal when appraised in a vacuum, the combination of methods used to achieve that goal can be frustrating at times. To clarify, I have no problem with mass damage as a concept. In fact, I think it's cool and have been enjoying the feel of movement in combat. However, I find it's implementation in Silksong to be lazy at best. I'd like to suggest that it's this implementation that is the root of most other complaints. And yet, I'd like to propose another factor as the root of "mass damage spam."

If I had to give one word to describe the size of Silksong's map, it'd definitely be fair to say "large." In the vain of a classic RPG, there's an absolute ♥♥♥♥ ton of space to explore in Silksong. And yet, in the vain of recent RPGs, I can't help but feel like something is missing. Looking at recent titles in the RPG genre, it's fair to say that bigger is NOT always better, and that a small paradise is often far more entertaining than a large wasteland. As is normal for Hollow Knight, Silksong is a literal wasteland, being a crumbling kingdom and all, and yet I feel that the word fits less literally too. There's a common experience in Hollow Knight, one I'm sure we've all had. You accidentally hit a destructible wall, find an area, and within that area find something. Charm? Perhaps. Pale Ore? Maybe. Hidden Lore? Quite likely. And certainly not least, Rancid Egg? Regrettably. Maybe you don't care for each of these things, but there's definitely a level of excitement when finding a secret area. What could possibly be there? In my experience, this is a feeling that Silksong has inadequately captured or has outright failed to produce at all. Every side tunnel, every destructible wall, every nook and cranny... often just leads to rosaries. Combine these 15 rosaries with the fact that it seems at times that there's more purchasable benches than there are enemies (or, if you're particularly unlucky, a nice Netflix subscription bench) and exploration can feel kind of disappointing. By no means am I saying the areas are completely uninteresting, the concept is there! But... it feels kind of thin. In this way, I'd describe Silksong as a really large piece of bread. I certainly like bread, I'd like some as I type this, but with little to nothing around, condiments, anything really... it's ultimately just bread. Decent bread, but bread nonetheless. And it's for this reason that Silksong feels off to me. Team Cherry certainly produced an enormous project in Silksong and it's a pretty decent game, but because of toppings spread thin over an impossibly large loaf, it ultimately feels barren at times. Combine the massive undertaking of the map and art and the seemingly lazy choices I brought up earlier and you get a pretty clear picture of what development might've looked like. I propose it's the map, it's size, the detail of it's art design, that produced the other problems, that lead Team Cherry to sacrifice detail of damage values and smoothness of certain levels.

Admittedly, I haven't completed the game yet, and I look forward to doing so. It's a good game, and if you're a fan of platformers and metroidvanias, than of course you'll enjoy it. But I find my experience marred by an undertone of emptiness, only somewhat alleviated by Team Cherry's beautiful set pieces. A game of highs and lows, Silksong is ultimately an 8/10 game at the time of this review, but I cannot in good faith claim that it "defeats" the original Hollow Knight and the far more rounded experience it offers.

Colony's dog got killed by some weird scorpion snake thing and the colonists proceeded to immediately eat their own dog... 10/10.

dogma balls or something idk

good game jumpy shoot (wo)men of varies degree beat up bad touches

idk funny souls game :)