After watching the industry destroy itself with a focus on DEI, hamfisted commie propaganda, and predatory systems designed to squeeze every penny they can from their customers, I have become pretty cynical about every new game coming out. I was definitely worried that Silksong would become a victim to this same cancer, but am happy to say that it is amazing.
I'm not that far into it, and I am in no hurry to get to the end, but I can already tell that I am going to love every minute of it. I am relieved that Team Cherry can be counted among Fromsoft and very few others who still understand what matters in a good game, and give us something that is worth every penny. Other developers are losing their minds over a game this good being only $20, and they probably have a point. Just like with Hollow Knight, they could have charged $40 or more and nobody would have felt ripped off.
I am thrilled to see them doing so well that it crashed the servers for the stores on every console and on Steam. I hope they make absolute bank and keep on killing it. I just hope their next game doesn't take quite so long to come out.
Anyway, it's nice to have some good news for a change. If you haven't played Silksong (or Hollow Knight), you should definitely pick them both up. They are as close to perfect as games can get.
I'm into Act 2, did all of the optional stuff in Act 1 that I could find, my observations so far:
If you liked the original style and atmosphere, you'll like this one too. Though I preferred the dead bug motif of the original to the "bells everywhere" motif in this one.
People who don't like difficult boss fights will not like this game. People who don't like long corpse marches to re-attempt difficult boss fights will not like this game. I would put several required bosses at at least Soul Master or Lost Kin, or even Hollow Knight difficulty, ignoring optional ones which are well into the difficulty of the dream bosses from the first.
So far power-ups (mask shards, thread spools, pin upgrades) are extremely limited, so there's really no "go find everything and come back when you're stronger to beat the boss."
Far more female characters. I never liked the Hornet character from Hollow Knight. Maybe I'm too sensitive, but she always came across as a girlboss to me. And she still is in this one; fortunately there's not much dialogue to suffer through, but still enough to be eyeroll-inducing on occasion. There's a balance between "bugs aren't human" and "they're anthropomorphic bugs that are human stand-ins" to make the number of female bug NPCs in human male jobs kind of jarring. Team Cherry is clearly very gender egalitarian and Pharloom's engaging in a lot of DEI hiring.
The map is very large. Act 1 is close to the size of the original map and Act 2 appears to roughly double the size again, though I'm not done with it yet.
At first, I was happy because it looked like perhaps the rosary currency was tied to exploration and there would be no grinding for it. That is not the case, and you need it for everything. Save point? Yup. Travel point? Yup. Opening/enabling random stuff in the world? Yup. Far more than the original game. I haven't run into problems with not having fund to open stuff as I explore, but it never leaves me with anything to spend on the expensive stuff from vendors. I think grinding for money in a Metroidvania is stupid kills the pace.
I don't like the quest/wish boards. I want to complete them just to see what happens when you've done everything, but most of the rewards are very underwhelming. Most of them require you to revisit areas that you've already finished to pick up X of thing Y from an enemy you've already killed dozens of times, or to find NPC Z. (for that matter, some of the kill totals to complete your bestiary are ridiculous. I didn't like this about the first game either.)
TL;DR: I'd give it a solid 8/10. If you liked the first, especially if you liked the technical boss fights, you'll probably like this.