Editing Phoenix here! I'll be adding a few things right now, but the rest of the post will continue as normal when I get around to that.
I've just finished silksong, and let me tell you, it is fantastic.
Game of the year material, if that wasn't a rigged competition, and also I'd prefer for Expedition 33 to win it since that one wasn't anticipated for literally years.
When I first started the game I was a little annoyed by most of the enemies doing 2 hearts of damage and the down attack being what it is, but I quickly overcame that adversity. If I'm known for anything it's my tenacity. That's why I'm called Phoenix.
In my current playthrough, I've been using the Hunter's crest a lot. It might now be my favourite!
It was when I got to the far fields that I first thought, "Woah, this game is massive, so much bigger than hollow knight".
I'm not convinced that's entirely true, but you'll have to forgive me since it's been a while since I last dipped my toes into that game.
In hindsight, I shouldn't have tried to force my way through hunters march before even visiting greymoor but the enemies aren't that hard.
Savage beastfly can suck it though. I died so many times to both iterations of that guy, despite it being easy as hell when I look back at the footage.
I was quite excited to see the reward for my efforts was a new moveset. What a shame that it's the worst in the entire game.
The crests in this game are awesome. There isn't a single bad one. All have their pros and cons, though some pros are better than others, and some cons are debilitating enough to make the weapon unusable in the majority of scenarios.
Take the wanderer's crest for example. It has a super high attack rate and the same damage as the rest of the crests. The devs have clearly tried to compensate for this by making the attack range for this really short, but it doesn't work too well. Personally, I don't like this crest because the fights end too quickly with it.
For my playthrough, I mainly used the Reaper crest. It's slow, but has a lot of range and it's attacks are easy to land. This crest has the ability to cause enemies to drop additional silk when hit for 6 seconds after binding. I think the idea of this is so you can get a lot of silk skills off, but that doesn't really end up happening, at least not for me. I think when I play the game again, probably in a few months from now, I won't use this crest at all and instead use something else.
Lol, yeah. Hunter's crest is now my new best friend. Not hate to Reaper's though.
The main reason I used this the most is because of the dash/sprint attack - an upper cut that launches you above the enemy. Great for dodging, and it puts you into a spot where you can pogo over them if there's a second attack in their combo to damage and dodge twice.
The attack set you start out with (Hunter's) can upgrade as you unlock the other crests in the game, that might be what I'll use instead. The hunter moveset does up to 40% more damage if you can lead 5 hits without taking damage. Pretty easy.
Beast crest, this one I hate, grants lifesteal after binding instead of a heal, but the damage it deals increases massively. I've already seen speedrunners wreck some foes with this.
I hate this one because the down pogo is replaced with this really hard to control and finicky 'n' kinda shaped thing. This makes getting back to any boss arena really difficult if it requires parkour, and in general use and exploration it's worse.
In act 3 the shaman crest is available to you.
This one is very, very unique. It has long range attacks and THREE slots for silk skills.
I never used it though. If you want to heal with it you have to be on the ground, the most dangerous place to be in a fight.
I think that there are some cool tool combos you could use with this one though.
Flea charm would be good for using even more skills. Volt filament would increase skill damage and weaverlight would give you the silk required for a skill with flea power.
Hypothetically, if you can go without getting hit, you could easily output a shit load of damage.
The witch crest was the most fun to get and also has huge range of build potential. It has a really fun moveset, similar to Hunter's, but you can only heal if you're next to an enemy, because it's an AOE kinda thing. And if you kill the enemy the lifesteal might only be partial.
This pairs quite well with claw mirror(s) and possibly multibinder, which I never tested. Quick bind is practically a requirement however.
To get this crest you'll need to find a baby in the swamp.
Unless you're stupid, it's obvious what to do next, it looks just like it's mother - and she won't shut up about it either. Then you get 'cursed', and need to find an NPC to remove the 'parasite'. Also easy, because there's only one NPC in the whole game who talks about removing parasites.
After that you're told what to do through the quest descriptions. I might try using that one for my next playthrough too.
There's also the architect's crest, the last of the 7 in the game, which allows you to use your silk to generate more tools instead of healing. This one is good for some of the minor bosses in this game where you might want to get it over quickly with a lot of damage, but getting the silk for crafting and healing in major fights is nigh impossible because of it's attack pattern of thrusting and stabbing. Not great.
But speaking of tools...
Tools are great. It honestly shocking how just having a handful of throwing knives on you can change how you approach certain situations.
The tale unfortunately ends here. Which is sad, because I know I would've loved to talk about all the tools in the game and their uses. I wonder what distracted me?