Recent reviews by Onyx

a beautiful game that really challenges how much you fear the ocean.

subnautica is a game i have a long history with, going back to its full release in 2018. I remember getting it on my old crappy laptop and the game didnt even run that well, but i still had so much fun with it. the game, at the time, was a huge scale for me and i would never complete it, instead focusing on terraria and other games.

I would play it again in the early 2020's, again stopping around the beginning of the 2nd third of the game - it seemed i would only play subnautica for a short while before dropping it...

that was, until i found out about its direct sequel, subnautica 2, in 2025. the whole krafton ordeal renewed my interest in the game, and when i saw its EA release date in may of this year, i finally took it upon myself to finish this damn thing.

so, I managed to get that done! how did I like the game now, in an older, mature state?

In short, I still loved it, even though it does have a few flaws.

to begin, the visuals of subnautica are beautiful and are very well crafted for the time - the colors of the ocean, the highly diverse landscapes and biomes, the flora and fauna giving life to the alien ocean. its a very, very well done ocean setting for a game that released so long ago now. sadly, this does change OUT of water, though - on the islands, the game's visual fidelity degrades quite a bit and looks like something out of the PS2 or PS3 era. while it isn't BAD per se, it definitely could've used some work compared to the beauty of the undersea environments.

the music is basically perfect, i'd say it captures the water world and its alien nature very well. the ost genuinely has some BANGERS and is worth a listen to outside of the game. the wonderous feel of the earlier tracks you'll hear in the initial biomes are great too. they add to the sense of exploration and awe very well.

the gameplay loop is pretty simple - scavenge for resources, survive against predators, and figure out clues using your PDA and radio to figure out where to go next. the sandbox nature is great: It works, its fun, engaging, and quite immersive. the lack of real combat is a good choice imo - you are quite defenseless against giant leviathans, making them way scarier than if you could just grab a gun and plow them down. though, i will say that the game can be a bit vague in what to do next, and i did have to check a youtube video once or twice. some extra pointers would've been nice.

the story isn't very directly presented, and i think thats fine. it doesnt have to be in your face - it's there in the background and is explained through PDA entries and voice logs. while it is a LOT of reading you'll be doing to figure out whats going on, the story is for the most part well written and wraps itself up nicely. for what writing and voice acting is done in the game, it is of good quality and doesn't feel too forced or lazily performed. the PDA AI's sarcastic and deadpan sense of humor can be really funny sometimes. it can be downright terrifying when it detects multiple leviathans in your area.

of course, this game isn't very graphically demanding and it performed fine on my machine, and i believe you'll be okay too. I know some people said the game stuttered back when the game released, but it seems this was ironed out. I will note that object pop-in is quite noticeable at times, though.

one issue I will also point out is the game's geometry and collision with the player outside of water can be.. terrible. like, you'll run smoothly, hit a slight slope, then just stop completely and have to move to the left a pixel or jump in order to keep moving. it can be annoyingly awkward sometimes, not sure what's going on there. in water, though, the game is fine with collisions and hitboxes.

9/10
amazing game

didn't think you wanted kids? play this game and think again.

pragmata is the newest IP from currently the GOAT of modern AAA gaming, capcom, and oh my god they just keep going and going and going with PEAK. they messed up twice with RE6 and RE3R and just DONT STOP WITH THE PEAK OMG OKAY THATS ENOUGH

you play as this dude, named hugh, who is sent to a moonbase named the cradle (owned by delphi corporation) in order to figure out a signal interference. stuff goes wrong, hugh's crew dies and hes left alone, and that's where he meets the little girl - named Diana by him.

dont listen to what twitter has to say about her - she is not protrayed weirdly at all to me and is a very wholesome, cute, fun child who is not annoying at all. the hacking minigames she allows you to do are very intuitive and flow beautifully with the combat - its a clever system that works well with a dodging TPS-style game. the dodge windows are not super tight (atleast on normal difficulty) and i was able to get into the flow easily. the game does get harder as it goes though - so pay attention if you want to survive.

I adore the graphics of this game too - while its not as definitively next gen as, say, RE9 or SH2R, it is still a very well crafted experience visually with tons of care put into it. the environments feel fresh while keeping a familiar "sci-fi moon" aesthetic, and the lumafilament creations looking like messed up futuristic 3D prints is super cool. I read somewhere that they were trying to go for an AI-generated look that the team hand-crafted themselves, and i can definitely see it. it looks a lot like an AI tried generating actual real-world objects but just failed halfway through. as it would. stupid CLANKERS. GRRRR CLANKERS. not diana tho <3

while the enemy designs may not be the most unique thing out there, they still look generally interesting and give a peek into what a future dominated by AI servants looks like. it feels natural to the timeline of our world, and feels reasonable without being too crazy (tho i highly doubt lumafilament is gonna appear in our world anytime soon lol). IDUS being a rogue AI also gives food for thought on letting AI run things... it wont go well and it WILL fail.

the voice acting is incredible and so is the writing. the characters feel.. real. diana's comments on everything and hugh's constant action lines may grow tiring a little for some players, but, to me, i found them fun and cute. I see this game as family-friendly, and i think those lines only help it feel more engaging for younger kids playing this with their dads for example. there's a reason why people call this "DAD space".

the soundtrack is also quite atmospheric and has tid-bits of sci-fi strung into it. it, again, may not be the greatest thing ever, but it still works very well to me and feels unique enough to lift the experience and make it all the more better. I love the theme for experimental pragmatics the most.

the shelter is another high point - its a cute hub where you can give diana gifts, talk to her, talk to the little Cabin bot to earn rewards, upgrade, and heal up. I like it a lot and gives off a great feeling of safety and respite while fighting through the robotic chaos.

i will warn you also: if you are sensitive to very... emotionally depressing games, just... be prepared.

in a world of AI slop, we have the lumafilament gem.

the game also ran fine for me performance wise with no stuttering, and generally got over 90-110 fps on most areas with highest settings and RT on. frame drops in the lunum mines and other small areas did happen, but it picked back up quick enough.

9/10
I'm taking a trip to the ocean to honor hugh and diana.

this game is an absolute masterpiece.

re9 is one of my most anticipated games, and - to put it lightly - my god they delivered, this is, as of writing, my favorite resident evil. it has both worlds - RE2/7 gameplay with grace, and RE4/8 gameplay with Leon. Grace's sections are among the strongest in the game, beautifully crafted traditional RE sections with tense bouts of action and strict resource management. Leon's sections are also incredibly fun, though short in the first half. killing zombies in hordes as a (hot) 50 year old man is just badass as hell.

the graphics in this game are a near-perfection of modern day computer capabilities. this game feels like the first *proper* next-gen game. its sad its taken us this long in this generation to reach this point, but we finally did it. this game is genuine realism, not that plastic slop so many UE5 games have. the lighting is next level, and is especially great looking on clothing and in outdoor areas. the texturing and detail in the general environment is also crazy. the amount of small things squished into small areas makes the world feel so much more alive and lived in. im not kidding when i say some sections look like a real irl photograph. I do not understand how capcom managed this.

the optimization, too, is honestly an even greater achievement than anything else. this game ran PERFECTLY on my setup - they should be listed below, but if not, i have a 4070 and 32 gb ram. this game, without RT and on highest settings, was giving upwards of 150-180 fps on grace's sections, and around 110-120 fps on leon's sections, with the most intensive portions very rarely dropping to 60-70 briefly before getting back up. i experienced no stuttering at all and the experience was incredibly smooth the entire way through. i have absolutely no idea how capcom did this but... wow, the RE engine absolutely murders UE5 its not even funny. (NO DLSS OR FRAME GEN BTW)

the story is also quite strong. I know some may have their issues with it, especially in the second half, but i think it stays strong throughout. the main villain, Victor Gideon, is a really creepy guy. his characterization is strong and his voice acting gives quite some tension to his scenes. he sounds like hes about to snap at any second when he's "calm". the other villain, who I'll just say resembles a certain RE5 antagonist, may come off as a bit too similar to him but i found him to be entertaining as well.

the voice acting in general NEEDS to be mentioned, especially for grace. Angela Sant'Albano did a master job at conveying grace's fear and anxiety. sometimes i wonder if they really put her through some of these situations irl just to make her deliver these lines. aaaaaaaanyway, nick apostolides from RE4R returns, and brings leon's aging voice to life as well. still the same witty leon, but older, and even sporting an "im too old for this" attitude at points.

my biggest issues with requiem really only involve pacing and length. the game switching between short leon sections and longer grace sections in the first half has me a little mixed. I loved playing grace, but only getting a little leon section inbetween does get a bit annoying. I kinda wish we played him more, but atleast the second half makes up for that. I also wish that - overall - the game was longer. I finished in about 15-16 hours, but when hearing reports that RE9 was over 20 hours long I was hoping for more, and am slightly disappointed by the length we got. not a big killer though. the last leg of the lab section at the end of game is weaker than the rest of it, too. definitely not as big of a drop in quality as RE7's boat, but you can tell it was a little rushed.

overall, RE9 is a technical achievement, a gameplay masterpiece, and a greatest hits album for RE as a whole. the ending too.. man, the bad one is terribly sad, and the good one is absolutely brilliant.

re9uiem/10

the first game is very good, the second game is nearly perfect.

borderlands 2 is a game i've been hearing tales about for years. stories of how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good it is, of course - a level of praise i always looked at with skepticism. I never really believe people when they say "dude this game is the best thing ever", but BL2 manages to hold itself to that nearly all the way through.

this game is a big step up from BL1 in pretty much all fashions. the game feels bigger, more expansive, smoother to play. you can tell a higher budget went into its production just by looking at it. the gunplay is highly improved - it was already good in BL1, so, this is always a nice thing to see. the graphics are also upgraded; but not too much. you see, borderlands always had its unique comic-book style going for it, and i think BL2 is where it should've stayed. ive seen BL3 and BL4, and eh... BL2 was the graphical peak for the series. BL3 looks cool but BL4 looks terrible for 2025.

the story in BL1 was a side thing that i never really payed attention to. it kept the game going, but the lack of characterization and dialogue for some characters made it kind of hard to care that much aside from its plethora of funny moments. thankfully, BL2 massively builds on the foundation BL1 laid earlier. the introduction of a much better, central villain, handsome jack, allows for this. jack is SUCH a great villain, one of the best i've dealt with. his casual insults and "yeah im evil idc lol" personality is HILARIOUS. it makes him so likeable, and stands out among all the "grr im evil i wanna hurt you grahh fear me" type bad guys. when he gets menacing after a certain boss fight, you really do kinda fear him.

the music, too, is beautiful. in BL1, the music was definitely great, but BL2 just takes it up that notch and produces total BANGERS. stuff that i put in my music rotation.

overall, BL2 is something special - a peak for the series. the only issues that I have are that the geometry can be kind of strange - I'm running and i apparently hit some invisible spike in the ground and stop running, or a step is a pixel too high and i have to jump over it. idk whats up with that. dying can also be a bit annoying sometimes too... killing a wave of enemies and dying to leftover corrosion or flame is so stupid. i know i shouldn't be playing solo but.. uh.. idc.

9.5/10

was writing a full review of this game but steam bugged on me and i lost all i wrote.

so, in short:

I never tried playing borderlands before, but i decided to buy all the games in a bundle a few days ago. i tried bl1 first. it was great, if a bit dated and unpolished. gunplay is great, visuals are unique and memorable, the story is pretty good, and its a great time. also has some pretty good humor in it, too. don't take it seriously and it makes it way funnier. i played solo but i bet playing with friends is a lot funner.

great game, do buy.

9/10

a nice little indie game that is annoying, enraging sometimes, yet keeps bringing me back for more.

i first saw this game back in 2025 when markiplier played it, and i thought it seemed neat. I kinda just watched it and put it to the side cuz - climbing game? nah, not for me. fast forward to 2026 and i thought "oh, what the hell", and grabbed it just cause... and I gotta say, it's hooked me more than I expected it to.

the grimey, gross, low-poly visuals give the world an abandoned, desolate feeling. you can tell a massive catastrophe hit humanity and forced them to live extremely deep underground in these substructures - but you don't know what. you just wonder what went down to cause seemingly everyone to disappear afterwards. it's pretty great visual storytelling.

The gameplay is based on climbing, of course - grabbing ledges, jumping around, throwing rebar sticks to swing from, and most importantly: going UP. getting out of the substructure that is thousands of meters deep - so deep that life would be incredibly difficult to sustain properly. there is some combat, too. you can use your hammer or throwable objects and fight back bugs, barnacles on the wall and their tentacles, and other horrors that stalk you. it is not a combat focused game, but it's there to help bring some variety and add suspense and tension.

the music is a good touch too - it's dark, slow, and hit hard. I like it, it fits the world perfectly. some tracks are slow bangers like the menu theme, whereas the ambience is quite creepy and unpleasant.

for some dislikes.. I will say movement can be really strange at times. I swear, idk if im just going too fast, but sometimes when i jump up from a handhold i just go flying back and i fall like 20 meters. it's really stupid sometimes. the constant prodding from flying bugs in pipeworks is also pretty annoying too, and isn't exactly something I look forward to. I'd honestly just prefer it not being in the game at all. also the controls can be confusing atleast for me; especially when trying to use different items in different hands it's kinda messy.

another issue: the game likes to crash when restarting a run or going to the main menu off the failed screen, idk why.

all in all, a solid indie game that has quite a lot of atmosphere, hidden lore, and replayability. the skill ceiling is also very high, i can imagine.

good stuff.
8.5/10

played at the very end of 2025 and my lord this was one of the best gaming experiences i've had (with a game of this size) in... a hot minute.

it's incredible in basically every aspect: graphics, art direction, story, music, gameplay, character design, it's unreasonably well made. every pixel of this damn game OOZES passion and love that it puts basically every AAA game nowadays to shame.

the world is alive, vibrant, colorful, and tragic. the color usage in this game's various areas is gorgeous - each area has its own unique palette and identity. the spring meadows with its glowing blues and lush greens, the crimson forest with its reds and whites, the monolith with its golden yellow hues and basalt grays. even areas that are just there for you to be at for a few seconds to pick up a side item are beautiful. no stone is left unturned in this game - and yes, I personally think this is the best art direction i've seen in a game this year. my close second is silksong if you were wondering.

the gameplay was the biggest surprise... specifically my love for it. I was never big on turn-based games: ive played UT/DR, a vulgar fnaf fangame series named Five Nights At F-ckboys, but other than that, such games were a rarity for me. When this game initially released earlier this year, i looked at it with much skepticism, and ignored it and thought everyone was just glazing it. turns out, it went on to sweep the game awards, and amid the controversy, i decided to try it... and man, i shouldn't have ignored the fact this game had turn-based combat. the fact you can dodge/parry attacks in real time is the glue that holds it together. no longer do you have to rely on crappy RNG to survive a round, or grind for 90 hours just to get an edge over a boss. this game is balanced, for like 98% of the time, very well and progression feels natural. you can beat every boss in this game even unleveled if you just parry everything correctly... don't expect it to be easy though. it's really fun.

i like to call e33 "turn based elden ring" and thats with the utmost positivity. it's not easy even on normal difficulty - it's quite fun how some bosses will kick your ass with tight timings and high damage. I haven't played on expert yet... but I will soon.

the story is sad and powerful. I'll try to avoid spoilers, but this is not a story that you will leave feeling happy and proud. it will break you in just the first hour. when there's a bit of hope, expect tragedy to follow. the cast of characters - Gustave, Maelle, Lune, Sciel, and the others... all so well written. Esquie is hilarious, too. dude sounds like he smoked too many bowls. their voice acting manages to demonstrate emotion expertly. they feel like real people rather than NPCs. I had shed a good amount of tears by the end, not sobbing but DAMN if it doesn't hit hard. the music connects with the story so well, the woman's singing is so magestic and the instrumentation.. god, I can't glaze it enough. Lorien Testard is a genius.

the game ran surprisingly well too for UE5, with almost no traversal stutters at all; making the entire experience very smooth for me. I never went below 60 fps in low performance areas and usually hit about 90-100 fps with my 4070 and 32gb ram. I used epic/high settings and quality DLSS.

there are a few annoyances I had with this game, but nothing major: in cutscenes, there was some ghosting/artifacting around character's hair during close-up shots. a handful of enemies and bosses have very weird timings that aren't telegraphed well at all. the facial animations are... not great, either. there's also a bit of noticeable pop-in while exploring the continent, too. none of these ruined my enjoyment at all, though, and were just things I generally noticed.

all in all, this game is an achievement for the game industry. it's a masterpiece ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
love you sandfall,
9/10

For Those Who Come After. <3

from an extremely ambitious doom 2 mod to a full game.

my god, it was worth the wait.

I originally played total chaos in 2022 after watching Pyro's video on it. I mostly enjoyed it, even though it had its issues of jank combat, and annoying difficulty at times. the game was very atmospheric, the visuals were groundbreaking for the engine it was made on, and the game proved wadaholic (the dev) had a lot of skill with game dev. I heard about this unity remaster in the end of pyro's video and began waiting.

over the years, I saw wad post little tidbits of the remake on twitter, but nothing much more. I kept seeing new areas, updated visuals, and it all excited me. In 2025, after I played the demo - and damn, it was SMOOTH. excatly like how I imagined it would be. the same game, but updated visually, more smooth and fluid combat, and even some new small areas.

once the delay to Q4 was announced, i was disappointed but understanding. I just didn't expect a shadow drop in november, that was amazing to see.

hopping in, this game has a lot of strengths and a few, mostly fixable, downsides. the visuals in this game are strong - with the unity engine, the game looks better than ever with greater lighting, higher res textures, more detail in the foliage, better modeling, and so on. while it is not as much of a technical achievement as the doom 2 mod was graphically, it's still a welcome upgrade. I also am very happy that it's on, again, unity and this didn't turn out to be overdetailed UE5 realism slop.

the combat is a massive improvement. melee feels way smoother and more responsive, and the new parry mechanic helps take the edge off of cheap hits. dodging back and forth feels good and generally there are no issues like input delay or general jankiness. the game gets quite difficult in the last few chapters so this is a much needed upgrade. The end areas of the original mod were a PAIN IN THE ASS to get through.

the music is also very, very well done. I did not expect akira yamaoka - the silent hill music guy - out of all people to come help with this project. as a big fan of the silent hill games, I was VERY happy to see akira's name in the roster. he does a great job with the music he did. it manages to stick well to the original OST of the mod (which I believe is still in the game), and doesn't feel like a silent hill ripoff. The credits song is an absolute banger - kind of sounds like it could fit in SH2R. usual akira-rock gem.

the performance is also surprisingly great. on maximum graphics, with a 4070ti and 32 gb ram, I generally got a range of 120-160 fps depending on the area, with rarely dips below 120, and sometimes even hitting 200. reminder: this is without any upscaling or frame gen, both of which are not available in this game, too. honestly a plus. this game is incredibly optimized for 2025. like, one of the most optimized games i've seen that look this good lmao

the story is generally unchanged from the original, thankfully, and it's still a great one. It follows themes of sickness, isolation, depression, and su!cide. I love it, feels like a nice side-grade to silent hill 2 - except if james got sick and left everyone in his life instead of killing his wife. it's definitely one of those "all in le head" games, so if you're tired of those, this game may bore you.

the radio voice is also changed from the OG, a much more human and natural sounding voice, rather than the deep, ominous voice that you originally heard. It grew on me, and I honestly like the new one more.


now, what are some issues?

the pop-in. so, you know when you're walking through an area and some geometry or object kinda just spawns in and disappears when you walk away? that's pop in. certain objects are rendered and unrendered depending on distance, to help with performance. problem is... this game is FULL of little objects popping in at a close distance. I play on max FOV (yes im that guy) and it's very, very noticeable. It doesn't break the immersion TOO badly, but it can be incredibly distracting in some areas.

there are bugs i wanna point out too - some small cutscenes (like the one with Ryan at chapter 5's end) were entirely broken when I got to them initially, though I heard they were fixed. some enemies, like the ceiling crawlers, can walk on the air if you lead them outside. some chasms dont kill you if you fall in them, too, even though you probably should. there's probably others I didn't catch.

in conclusion, this game is an enourmous passion project made mostly by one guy, and I couldn't be happier with the end product.

absolutely amazing work wadaholic,
9/10

i wish steam added a "mixed" or "yellow" option in reviews because thats how i feel with silksong.

this game has a lot of ideas. not all of them are executed well for me personally.
prepare for a category 5 yappicane... and im making landfall on pharloom at peak intensity.

i'll start with what I fully like.

first, the visuals. this game is absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gorgeous, the hand-drawn environments are beautifully crafted and its clear that years of love and care went into them. the color range is great too; the depressing blues and greys of greymoor, the vibrant greens of moss grotto and verdania, all the way to the golden yellows of the citadel. they're pure pleasure to look at and soak in. all the enemies are animated masterfully too; like how cuphead was purely hand-drawn animation too.

the sound design is great. I love the noises of fighting, enemies, the environment all mixed into one package. the world of pharloom feels alive, some areas feel dead and desolate, some areas feel chaotic and scary. it's definitely a step up from hollow knight and proves team cherry's still got it... and have only gotten better.

the music is also a highlight. while some of the tracks didn't hit as hard for me as, let's say, the crossroads in HK, they were still overall great. it's obvious that there was a much higher budget for the music, and i think that is a blessing and a curse. some of the tracks feel a bit too orchestrated for me personally, but others really do help bring a certain scene's impact to the forefront. i don't think any of the tracks are misses - i just sometimes prefer HK's musical style.

moving on to things im more mixed on...

the gameplay. it's quite noticeably more tight, with more thought put into its mechanics. however... this doesn't always mean its better. the diagonal downward slash is honestly just really annoying sometimes and makes me sorely miss the directly downward slash from HK. it feels like an overcorrection that didn't need to happen honestly. the silk skills all have their uses, and i mainly found myself using the thread storm and that parry one, both are quite good. i didn't care much for any of the others though. the silk storage for healing and skills is confusing to me. I honestly think it's a downgrade from HK - instead of being able to heal once or twice whenever you wanted, you have to build a full charge. this, again, feels like an overcorrection. I understand needing to adjust healing for the increased difficulty, but removing that freedom to heal how much u needed whenever just feels dumb. you can increase how much silk you can store with spools, but again, this just doesn't work as well for me as extra storage did in HK. in HK, if you healed twice, you can get those two heals back right away if you had extra stored. in silksong, you instead have to build a full charge to heal again, which just feels cheap to me.

I also am not a big fan of the tool system. in HK, you had charms that you could mix and match however you wanted to fit your playstyle. this was a perfect, easy, simple system that allowed for many ways to slay enemies. in silksong, you have crests (I'll get into later), which have little slots for different types of tools. the problem is... you have a very limited amount of slots to fit your tools. you cant just place any certain combination of them in, you have to specifically pick and choose. again, just like with the different healing, it's a strange switch-up of player freedom. you can use memory lockets to increase these slots, but still, they didnt make much difference to me personally. i wish we could just get the charms back. it'd make this so much better to play. like 90% of the charms in this game are just useless to me and getting them feels so pointless, like just padding to make this game longer.

the story. yeah, i don't know what was going on that much. I have a basic idea - hornet goes to pharloom, gets trapped, has to go to the citadel to free it from some silk thing idk, and then, the big bad silk mother gets vored by the void, and hornet has to free her from that void to save pharloom. I know im missing a lot - but i just didn't really follow the game as well as hollow knight. maybe i need to play again, idk. the games storytelling doesn't feel as strong as HK's and it left me feeling a bit lost after a while. some people seem to think it's great, and that's fine; but, as said many times, I like HK more. the story is fine to me. not great, not bad, just good/fine. nothing really made me tear up or make me go "holy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" like HK did with it's endings. the endings I saw (act 2 and act 3 endings) didn't evoke much in me. I was just relieved to be done with this honestly.

now, what is a hard dislike for me?

the crests. wtf was team cherry thinking? a lot of these crests can just be ignored and you can use the default HUNTER** crest like all the other ones don't exist. I understand the point, gameplay variety, but, again: THE CHARMS IN HOLLOW KNIGHT ALLOWED FOR DIFFERENT PLAYSTYLES ALREADY. again, to me, this is an OVERCORRECTION! I don't know why team cherry thought it'd be a good idea to shove all these strange crests when the answer was already there: simple charm system with new fangled charms that allow for even more wacky playstyles instead of... this. crests that change your fighting style with a very limited amount of tool slots that add up into an underbaked loaf of bread that looks nice on the surface, but is still doughy and uncooked on the inside.

now.. my biggest issue: the difficulty... for the most part. call me ♥♥♥♥♥, say git gud, idgaf. yknow what, for what its worth - ive beaten dark souls 1, 3, elden ring, and SoTE (AND consort radahn pre-nerf). I'm not a stranger to difficulty. but silksong does it really stupidly.. i'm sorry. having 90% of your enemies just deal double damage feels incredibly lazy and like a last-minute decision to make things more difficult. the bosses in this game are generally... fine. but bs like savage beastfly (ESPECIALLY the second one) just make me wonder what type of coke team cherry was snorting while developing silksong. enemies almost always having this double-hitting attack is just so cheesy and annoying. there's so many flying enemies too that throw ♥♥♥♥ at you and fly away when you try to hit them. it's really dumb and just makes fighting them a chore. I should've known this bs was gonna happen when one of the very first bosses dealt double damage. it's disappointing. hollow knight was not an easy game, not at all - but it started off easy enough and got harder and harder as you went, feeling like a natural progression to guide the player. silksong just throws double damage at you in the first like... hour or whatever, and just says "♥♥♥♥ you lol have fun" while you suffer through pharloom trying to get stronger. a sequel being harder is understandable, perfectly so, but jesus team cherry, you could've been a little smarter. this made playing silksong feel like a genuine chore sometimes. Act 3 is VERY guilty of this - after the void takes over pharloom, its just constant double damage. literally every single ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ enemy deals double damage and just has their HP ballooned by like, twice the amount. it's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ it makes me cry.

also gauntlets suck lol (character limit, so...)

to conclude..

silksong is.. fine. but disappointing to me. I don't think it was worth the stupidly long wait and radio silence from team cherry. I don't really think team cherry is perfectly innocent after seemingly abandoning us for literally ever and only giving us CRUMBS to follow on for so long. I'm glad the price is low and that it sold super well, but I'll just go back to hollow knight.

I also didn't hear a single ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shaw... did I miss it somewhere? I must have...
WHERE'S MY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ SHAW, YOU STUPID AUSSIES???

6/10, and i was hoping to give it the upside down of that number.

one could say it's soulslop. i say its an actually creative and fun idea with dinos and souls-like gameplay.

this game feels like a combination of dinos, sekiro, and dark souls. the gameplay centers around swinging big swords, dodge rolling, and parrying a whole lot to kill bigger dinos and get stronger, at least for now. the game is very rudimentary as of right now - the terrain its not as detailed as other games, dino SFX tend to be pretty repetitive, gameplay is a bit clunky at times, and there are some bugs present.

but thats okay!

as far as i know, this the dev's first game - and for a first game, this is a really good product honestly. with more love and care, and a proper team, this game could be a GREAT souls-like with a unique setting in a pool of increasingly saturated soulslop. instead of fantasy medieval knights you've seen 90,000 variants of, you get dinos, 70 million years ago, fighting with firey magic swords and cool combos.

some things i do wanna point out for the dev if they see this:

- better tutorials: one thing that was not communicated to me at all was the dodge roll. I managed to run away and block/parry most attacks but the final boss was just unbeatable... then I went into controls, found the dodge roll, and the dino was history. a better explanation of the roll's existence would be nice, and of future mechanics that will be introduced later on.

- easier readability: some attacks feel a bit hard to react to for parrying or blocking, the timings are inconsistent. some feel easy, others feel sekiro level. a bit of adjustment to make them feel more equalized would be nice.

- fix the camera too: this isnt a big deal but i do wanna let the dev know... the camera can clip underneath the ground and into walls. it's not a gamebreaker but its funny lol

other than that, just polish the general terrain, SFX, and all that, and you're golden! def paying attention to this next year.