A shadow of the original with many, many, many flaws. The mystery, intrigue and awe of the first game are gone and replaced with familiar areas, enemies and a very mouthy female protagonist instead of a silent mysterious male protagonist. The angle down thrust and increased difficulty pacing makes it very very hard in the beginning compared to the original. Too far between upgrades. The tools/tool bag replacing the pins system is a big let down. Two currencies and the irritating rolling of the beads has you lose half your currency when trying to farm it. An actual quest and journel system is cool, the fast travel is similar but a little less cool than the previous. The lack of save points in key places and the amout of treking you have to do to recover a dead body at a boss is infuriating. Theres difficult bosses with NO save point anywhere near them making the trek back and subsequent attemps less fun thanks to the insane walk around times trying to get back to where the boss is and you died. It's like they took the OG game and took active steps to make it less intriguing, charming, fun and increased the difficulty and controls for no reason. I expected more from my top 3 Metroidvania game. Metroid dread is better than silksong, axiom verge is better than silk song, hell even environmental space station alpha and the little known zexion are better than silksong. What a bummer from team Cherry.