I may be a master edger because I didn't play this (despite owning it) until about two weeks before Silksong's release. Since then, I've finished it completely, and I got to tell you, it was perfect. Perfect. Everything, down to the last minute details.

Silksong might be the greatest game I cannot recommend. Hollow Knight is one of my favorites of all time, and I wanted to love this one, but it was just really hard to do. By the end I had more or less accepted it with all its flaws, and the game does eventually shape up to be enjoyable, but I still wouldn't recommend it. In order to critique this game without it being a skill issue, I'd need to complete it right? So I 100%'d it trol.

There's genuine stuff to like here, so let's start with that.
Visually this game is stunning. There's a variety of regions, each with their own look and feel, and the art direction is just incredible. Some areas feel reminiscent of the first game alongside completely new environments, and both work really well. Enemy designs look great, the visual effects are clean, and the whole aesthetic meets the bar the first game set.
The world also feels more alive this time. There are a lot of entertaining NPCs, and the addition of proper questlines makes interacting with them enjoyable if you want to fully immerse yourself in the world, though they don't always feel worth doing.
The gameplay takes some time to ramp up, but when you reach that flow state after unlocking more abilities, it feels great. Silksong builds on the first game's moveset through the introduction of Crests, alongside expanded movement options. It makes movement faster and allows for levels of skill expression.
The boss fights are a lot of fun for the most part, there's a good range of them and some are genuinely great. That's kind of where my positives end though, and that's the frustrating part.

The most straightforward way I can put it is that a lot of Silksong feels designed to be annoying first and challenging second.
Enemies hit considerably harder than feels fair (with double mask damage) right from the start while your own damage feels very underpowered, basic enemies take too long to kill, and the world is densely packed with them. Staggering enemies is also practically non-existent, so unless you dodge in time you're almost guaranteed to get hit from a lunge attack.
Getting around makes everything worse. The game is more linear than its predecessor, so when you don't know where you're going you end up grinding through the same areas while you try to figure it out. Exploration feels unrewarding more often than not, and if you're not heading in the right direction you've just put yourself through a gruesome journey for nothing.
The region layouts are a pain to navigate, bench placement can be punishing featuring some of the worst runbacks known to man, and the game has a habit of throwing in cheap traps. Bilewater in particular may be one of the most frustrating areas I've played through in any game. It wasn't fun, I wouldn't even call it difficult, it was just tedious in the most unearned way possible.
Then there are the bosses. In isolation a good number of them are solid and some are excellent, but compared to the first game they fall pretty flat. Hollow Knight's best fights had a real sense of grandeur that made certain encounters feel like genuine milestones. Silksong doesn't. The ceiling of what Team Cherry can do is on full display in a handful of late-game encounters from the first game, which just makes the lineup of endgame bosses in Silksong feel like an even bigger missed opportunity.

This game really feels like it's playtime padding with annoying design choices disguised as difficulty. When it works, it really works. The problem is that it doesn't work consistently enough, and the stuff that doesn't is too frequent to overlook.
I completed it, I wouldn't recommend it, and that sucks to say. If you want to play it, find a friend to suffer through it with. Then it's not so bad.