Silksong reviews drop to mostly negative for Chinese players due to confusing translations

For most Hollow Knight: Silksong players, the combat is challenging and the boss fights are punishing. However, there's another layer of complexity for anyone playing the sequel in Simplified Chinese: the bizarre translations. On its Steam store page, Silksong currently sits at a "Mostly Positive" rating across reviews in all languages. Once you filter for the Simplified Chinese reviews, the Metroidvania-style game plummets to "Mostly Negative."

There are plenty of complaints about Silksong being too hard and not rewarding enough, but the translation issues are a common theme across the reviews for Simplified Chinese. In the reviews and comments, players compared the translations to a jarring mix of ancient and modern Chinese. Tiger Tang, who worked on the Simplified Chinese translation of an indie RPG called OMORI, posted on X that the "translation reads like a Wuxia novel instead of conveying the game’s tone," referencing the ...