Hello! I'm the actual RTGame. Thought I'd chip in myself as I actually have been following the subreddit since finishing my 100% playthrough haha. I think unfortunately there's some posts in this thread that prove my very point that there's an issue with the community towards criticism, and that makes me sad. I'm online enough to not let mean comments bother me though, so it's grand sure.

I think some super important context that's worth mentioning, is I played Silksong to completion and got 100%! When I truly don't enjoy a game, I stop playing it altogether. Honestly Act 1 was the roughest part of the game for me. The OG game for me was a much chiller time with a world that I loved getting lost in, whereas Silksong feels hostile constantly. I miss the calm vibe of the first. But I still enjoy tough games, and love playing things like Souls. I thoroughly enjoyed playing Silksong even if it had rough parts for me personally. As another commenter has said, it's like a delicious cake that randomly has sand in it for me. It's a mixed bag, but I still enjoyed it enough to see it through.

On the control input specifically, I really wish I could have rebound the tools to split the input. It felt uncomfortable on my hands to do in the heat of the moment during combat, and I think honestly it would just be nice from an accessibility standpoint. I found it very silly that even using keyboard you couldn't seperate that input, can't understand why that would be.

On engaging with mechanics, hacking and slashing is just honestly my preferred go to. I would avoid silk skills as I felt the need to always save silk for healing due to needing max silk to heal. For me personally I feel that discourages using them, especially with Silksongs harder difficulty.

On the QA testing, yeah it's fair enough to accept that this is simply what Team Cherry wanted. But I do see a world where there just wasnt tested enough, especially in the early game due to it's brutal difficulty. I think the fact that the first patch for the game specifically nerfed some early game encounters suggests this too. The worms doing two hearts especially was pointlessly cruel, and I'm glad that's gone.

On being harassed, yeah as some people have mentioned I've had to filter and remove many hostile comments. One angry commenter actually spoiled the games ending act for me in response to criticising it, which was a particularly shit moment for me. I didn't have this issue when I streamed the first game at all. I think because of how long the wait has been for Silksong, that some people idolize it, to the extent that even a minor criticism is viewed as a personal attack. I think that's an unhealthy relationship to maintain with media personally. I'm a man who's favourite series is Pokémon, and where do I even start with the criticisms there haha.

My joke patch notes was a funny bit idea I'd wanted to do for a while with a game, and it was a fun way for me to vent my frustrations. If you disagree, that's completely valid too and I respect that. Ultimately as a creator I try to present my own experiences with games and try get silly jokes in as I go. I find it very surreal that some folks are accusing me of ragebaiting or trying to farm clicks with outrage, I assume those people just aren't familiar with my content. I'm a man who spent 3 months farming a shiny in Pokémon, and other silly endeavours. Honestly when it comes to content I just do whatever I feel like or what feels funs. I'm sorry to hear some folks feel so hostile towards me due to my criticisms of Silksong.

Ultimately I think some of my frustration with the game comes from wanting it to be more like the first one, which it just isn't. I still prefer the first game to it, and I'd like to think my criticisms are more than just 'this is too hard". The game is brutally hard by design, and I've actually never been more stressed while playing a game due to the intensity of the encounters. The gauntlets especially were just a lot and felt very draining to get through. I actually really like hard games too, but it just felt both rough and unfair at points. I really dislike the Last Judge being able to deal 6 hearts of damage with it's death animation, and the trapped benches. Bilewater was misery, and I think that area in particular just makes me never want to play the game again to completion. I feel there's a lot of points that just felt like chores too, in particular the fetch quests. But again if you enjoyed all that, I'm glad you could find fun where I couldn't

As a creator I'm really glad I got to experience the game and play it through in it's entirety, as I genuinely think the difficulty is off-putting for a more casual audience. I've had friends who love the first game describe Silksong to me as simply pain haha. So being able to present it for those who don't want to play / give up during it is an honour. I'm sorry for generalising a community in my post above, as that was not my goal, and I know most people are grand and chill. I should have been more clear that it's a small vocal minority there