Today I've been playing for a couple more hours, where for the most part I've been going back and forth on the horizontal, instead of gaining some altitude, but I've reached a higher area eventually. My journey went to the Deep Docks, the Wormways, the Far Fields, and finally Greymoor. Keep that in mind when reading.
My next major destination were the Deep Docks, which is the other area known from the game's demo. You can quickly find Lace waiting behind a closed gate and since this is an important point in the game, this made me "procrastinate" for a while, where I've been messing around with how far I could get elsewhere, mainly around Bone Bottom.
There is this part of the abyss where Hornet fell down, which can be crossed right away by bouncing off the Vengefly knock-offs there. So, that's likely an intended sequence break, where afterwards you have to face the acid-spitting monster. Since I didn't have the dash yet, this was even a tiny challenge, where you have to find cover between the attacks.
However, my efforts weren't exactly rewarded, because I ran into a dead end with a locked door. I needed the Simple Key from the shop at Bone Bottom, which costs 500 Rosaries, the most expensive item so far. I had been buying out the map maker instead and this early in the game you have to be picky, which is pretty much the identical to Hollow Knight with the key and all.
The other possibility was the big ant guard, called Skarrgard, which is protecting the entrance to the ant colony. After doing a number of radiant bossfights in the last two weeks, I'm up for any boss challenge, especially when there's a bench close by, but this prove to be too difficult at the time, when Hornet still played like a rock. It's doable, but you have to position yourself perfectly on every turn.
It became clear that some sort of dashing ability would be the key to win this fight, so I proceeded into the Deep Docks, where you can also obtain the Magma Bell from the forger. That one protects you from fire, at least briefly, and also haves the damage from falling into lava. It lets you the find the "Swift Step", which is exactly what I wanted. Now the game is already flowing so much more nicely, adding a lot more speed into the gameplay.
This let me defeat the Skarrgard, but this was also not worth the trouble, because right afterwards you need another ability to proceed... But since I wanted to do something "cool" before facing Lace, I went back to the locked door, which also can be reached much easier with the dash.
(By the way, I also first thought that I needed another Simple Key to free Grindle, but you can just smash his cell door. This is why I also didn't have the pins for a while.)
I had to kill a bunch of pilgrims to get the necessary money, but behind the door waited... the Wormways. This is something I always loved about Hollow Knight – you expect some small secret, but end up in a completely new area to explore. This one feels like it's sitting right between Deepnest and the Ancient Basin in gameplay and atmosphere. You have those worms going up and down, enemies popping out of the ground, just like in Deepnest, but visually it's more in that ominous cavern style, with thorns all around, like the Ancient Basin.
Going up from here didn't do me much of a favor. You can go there, but without any double jump or alike it's difficult not to fall down... Maybe it's possible, but it's really in that category of "one misstep and you have to start all over again", including the tour through the Wormways. You can open a shortcut, but this one requires you to have a double jump. And there is no good reason to unnecessarily frustrate myself when I can just proceed elsewhere.
Still, this detour was not for naught, because you can also go down from the Wormways and end up in the westmost area of Bone Bottom, which was locked off before. This let me obtain the Wanderer's Crest, which is a new thing in Silksong – the Crests change how you attack with your needle. The default one is the "Hunter", which lets you do these diagonal down thrusts. The Wanderer is quicker with its attacks, but the range is also reduced. So, in a way it's like the Quick Slash Charm, but you will lose the Long Nail... It also lets you attack downwards normally, which feels a lot more like playing the Knight.
There is another aspect to these crests, which is effectively replacing the old Charm system, where the crests come with a number of slots for tools and skills. The latter are your secondary attacks, which require silk, like the Silkspear. It's basically like the Spells from the first game, except that you can swap them. But there are also spaces for passive and active tools. The active ones give you additional ranged attacks, but they are limited in their number. You will regain them on a bench, but this will cost you the shards that you collect from certain enemies. The spike traps that Hornet has used in her second boss form is one of these active tools, which you can get from the forge, as well as the aforementioned pins, which work like throwing daggers.
The passive tools are exactly like the Charms. They are split into two categories, blue and yellow, where the blue ones seem to be for defensive options. The Magma Bell is one of those, but there is also one that refills some silk when you receive damage. The yellow tools include a magnet that attracts Rosaries and of course the compass, which shows your position on the map... Which you mostly want on your first playthrough.
Well, this was at least something, so now I could go fight Lace... though, I don't recommend the Wanderer's Crest for this fight, it was much easier for me with the Hunter for me personally, so I had to swap back.
Lace feels a bit like this game's equivalent to Hornet, so you actually talk to her before the battles and you will have to face Lace multiple times. And it feels like she could become your ally eventually, once she has given up on killing you. But when Hornet is imprisoned in the round cage at the beginning of the game, one of Lace's butterflies sits down on it and this breaks the seal... So, she might have helped Hornet already. She is a bit of a nutjob, however.
Afterwards you can enter the Far Fields and what starts out like a Greenpath rip-off turns into this hot-air balloon scenery. The visuals of the giant, floating tent reminded me of the Grimme Troupe, but the character inside doesn't have red eyes... Instead you get a fetch quest, where you have to collect 25 spines in the neighborhood in order to upgrade your cloak. This was a bit odd that you had to do this and it took me a little while to understand that those were the projectiles fired by the Hoker enemies. But once you realize this, it's easy enough.
It's also interesting that you can only collect these things when the quest is active and not yet fulfilled. There is a similar quest about collecting the scarfs of pilgrims at Bone Bottom and once you receive it, you can loot all their corpses for these scarfs. But this stops right once you get the necessary amount... I don't think I've ever seen a system like this, usually you just collect all the plunder and loot in Adventure games, until you eventually need it.
Anyway, at the Far Field this activity gets you the Drifter's Cloak, so you can now play as Princess Peach. But it also enables you to go up the air streams, where the Far Fields finally let you gain lots of height in the world. But before that you have to get through another boss first...
I love how you could already see it lurking in the background. This gave me Diggernaut vibes, but here you're getting straight to it. The "Fourth Corus" is very well staged and by far the largest boss so far (including everything from Hollow Knight), but it's similar to bosses like the Diggernaut or Experiment Z-57 from the more recent Metroid games, where you attack the head, while it attacks you with its limbs, and the rest of the body is in the background. I also died at the end of the fight twice, because I struggled with hitting the magma bombs. The hands also do double damage, which might even result in three masks of damage should you happen to fall into the lava right after getting hit... But there were always good windows for healing yourself and the fight felt very manageable.
After clearing the path, you can soar up and reach Greymoor, a swamp-like area right out of a horror movie. It's home to the Craws, which are basically crows, but probably still bugs posing as crows. And this is where I got a bit frustrated for the first time...
I had to return to the room above a number of times, after dying in battle. The larger Craws tank a lot more, where it's time for a needle upgrade, and the swooping attacks of the small crows can be irritating. I kept jumping into them for some reason... This is where the Wanderer's Crest finally came into play. For me it made the fight more intuitive and it also makes it a lot easier to bounce off all the balloons, which are spawned afterwards. So, it's good that I already had this, but I wouldn't mind a needle upgrade nevertheless.
What you get instead is the Thread Storm skill, which is Hornet's second signature attack from her boss fights. It's curious that you seemingly won't be able to use it and the Silkspear during the same battle, like Hornet could in Hollow Knight. But the crests can be upgraded to unlock more slots, so maybe it's possible...
And since this game is clearly meant to be a prequel, it's okay if Hornet can't do everything of what she was capable of in Hollow Knight. Though, it raises the question how she lost her new abilities, like the Drifter's Cloak.
Eventually, I got to Halfway Home, a hostel in the middle of the dread lands. Here you meet Nuu, the funny character from the latest trailer, who tried to give Hornet a smooch. Turns out that this is where you get the Journal from, which stores all the monster information. And exactly like in the first game you need to defeat each monster a number of times to learn more, but this time the comments come from Hornet herself.
It also speaks of the "Haunting", which is this game's version of the Infection and the reason why certain pilgrims are attacking you. I must have missed this when skipping through some dialogue earlier in the game... Some visual indicator as to what bugs are haunted and what bugs are still sane would have been nice, but maybe there is one and I'm not seeing it. :D
