Blasphemous (2019)

I would recommend anyone who gave up while playing this game to try again sometime in the future. I played the game in 2020 and while I really liked it, I didn't keep playing. A month ago, I installed it again since they already published the second one and damn, this game goes hard if you give it some time.

Probably the movement isn't going to be that appealing at first if you have tried games like Hollow Knight, but with time and some weapon and abilities upgrades this game really shines. The lore is deep and if you are into it, I'm sure you are going to love it. And I think we all can agree that is one of the best pixel art directions of the last decade, it's amazingly good. The music is really good, and the voice actors went crazy with this one, I played it in Spanish and is just fantastic what they did. Also, there is NG+ and a boss rush so that's good for replayability.

There are a couple of downsides like the 'pogo' mechanic, it obviously wasn't conceived in the beginning of the game development, and they had to implement it later, so it feels really odd (if you play on controller use RT instead to hit down, is way easier). Also, I think some bosses were a little too easy and I'm not a hardcore game. Other than that, I would say this game is almost perfect.

I gave it 5 stars because overall I really enjoyed this journey.

P.D.: Just for reference, because I've read that a lot of people give up due to its difficulty, is way easier than Hollow Knight once you play it for a while, but at the start the aesthetic of the game makes you feel like it's harder. Also avoid the snow mountains section at the beginning, the first time I played it I went that path, and it is noticeable harder than if you go down. Have fun!

I've been enjoying my second attempt to play through this very much, though I'm surprised at the number of glitches I've been hitting. It's fine most of the time but there was a time I fell through the floor mid boss fight, which thankfully didn't soft lock me and instead just gave me the death screen after around ten seconds. There was the time I lost the ability to use my bile jars and dash while also not being able to keep momentum while jumping?? Weird as hell. Had to reset to main menu and reload my file to fix that. And I've also been getting stuck on ladders mid-jump. Like not climbing them, just hanging there mid air in a fall animation until it finally lets me go and I drop.

Great game overall but I'm kind of shocked it's still so buggy after so many updates and extra content drops.

Game #9/200 Blasphemous is a 2D souls-like metroidvania (original, I know) that borrows a lot unabashedly from Dark Souls and Castlevania. I usually find the metroidvania/souls fusion to be fun but awfully derivative, and this game is no exception, but something about its execution takes it to a slightly higher level. I have played all of the From Software souls-likes and many metroidvanias, so I had an idea of what to expect with Blasphemous. It has a lot of both worlds: backtracking and unlocking abilities that allow for traversal of previously gated areas, frequent death and a reason to return to where you died, convoluted lore and cryptic old English, “souls” currency, challenging bosses, etc. Like games like Salt and Sanctuary and Hollow Knight — because it's a 2D game — there’s a greater emphasis on platforming than you’d normally see in a 3D souls title, but the platforming in this title is rather easy. I didn’t encounter many challenging puzzles or platforming sections. In fact, the entire game was pretty easy. I think a relatively new gamer could pick this up and beat it without much trouble. There are bosses whose patterns I learned on the first attempt and flew through them. Unlike Dark Souls 1, bosses did not hit hard and you could tank quite a few hits before dying in plenty of spots in the game. Your healing flask also works automatically - there’s really no tension of beating your opponent to your heal before they strike. With all this being said, I am not a difficulty purist and really enjoyed the game’s “medium-ish” level of challenge. Something like Hollow Knight is significantly harder by comparison. Hollow Knight is also much more successful at carving out its own identity through its game world, visuals, and mechanics, while Blasphemous is a bit cookie cutter in all of those departments. But it seems like the developers were at least self-aware of that. The game plays like a solid, comfy experience with no attempts to redefine, but rather to build on existing games in its co-genres, and that’s perfectly OK. Attacks are chunky and satisfying. Combat has limited variety but enough of it to be strategic without being overwhelming. It’s not an “everything but the kitchen sink” kind of game despite borrowing almost all of its mechanics; it’s selective and that helps it be good.

I will say that I didn’t care at ALL about any of the lore or flavor text, but I typically don’t in any Souls games, so I can’t really knock it for that. Another point of discussion is the map. It’s pretty small but was overall satisfying to play in. There are warps for convenience. I’m not the kind of player who wants a large, sprawling, secret-filled map so that worked for me. Instead of tons of secret rooms, the game incorporates lots of side quests with unclear requirements, once again not unlike Dark Souls. I found this to be fun and blended nicely into the normal progression of exploration. The extra rewards really incentivized looking out for random quest items or speaking to every NPC. There’s a counter mechanic that’s fun but extremely generous. Also, dying never results in losing your currency, so it’s not too frustrating to die. Instead part of your magic meter becomes inaccessible until you regain your dead spirit. This penalty is basically negligible though.

Man, the art style and theme of Blasphemous are so cool.

It's a shame that I just don't like the Dark Souls formula that it draws so heavily from. I'm not a fan of the slow combat, cryptic story, corpse runs, limited magic/special abilities, etc. It's all just not for me. I wish I could learn to enjoy the Souls influence since there are so many cool games in the 'genre', but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. I got a couple hours into Blasphemous and it felt like an absolute chore. I wasn't struggling with the difficulty, I just didn't want to deal with any of the things it was throwing at me.

I'm think I'm just gonna outright avoid any game that tags itself as Souls-like going forward.