Blasphemous is a pretty decent Metroidvania that, while not innovating a whole lot, keeps your attention with its grim and bloody aesthetic and world-building.
Set in the fictional land of Custodia, a country scared by fanatical piety, Blasphemous pits you against all manner of deformed zealots and self-flagellating bible bashers. The pixelated graphics are excellent, with horrendous monsters looking as if the Italian Renaissance masters interpreted Hieronymus Bosch‘s bizarre hell-scapes.
The storytelling might be a little too vague for the game’s own good. Like, sure a wall of text on every item description is all par for the course if you’re going for a semi-optional story that players can investigate at their own leisure. But setting up the story with a comic book tie-in is taking things a bit too far. A fan-made lore video shouldn’t be necessary to watch just to get the basics.
Gameplay-wise it's a solid 2D-action platformer, with a plethora of upgrades and items to tweak your character. While not necessarily offering different builds to try out, it at least gives some sense of progression as mid-to-late-game items significantly boost your stats.
One of the more obvious FromSoft influences is the block/parry function. The problem here is that, while not a bad feature at all, you kinda don’t need it for most of the game… until you hit a late-game brick wall that you won’t smash without it. It’s one hell of a difficulty spike during Blasphemous final stretch that would feel less out of place and brutal if the player was more incentivized to use the game’s various features more. Imagine if you could easily cheese most of Sekiro without touching the parry button, only to be bottlenecked at the tail-end of the game.
It would be easy to dismiss Blasphemous as an even Edge Lordier FromSoft game (but in 2D) because, well it kinda is. But it’s a pretty enjoyable one at that.
Set in the fictional land of Custodia, a country scared by fanatical piety, Blasphemous pits you against all manner of deformed zealots and self-flagellating bible bashers. The pixelated graphics are excellent, with horrendous monsters looking as if the Italian Renaissance masters interpreted Hieronymus Bosch‘s bizarre hell-scapes.
The storytelling might be a little too vague for the game’s own good. Like, sure a wall of text on every item description is all par for the course if you’re going for a semi-optional story that players can investigate at their own leisure. But setting up the story with a comic book tie-in is taking things a bit too far. A fan-made lore video shouldn’t be necessary to watch just to get the basics.
Gameplay-wise it's a solid 2D-action platformer, with a plethora of upgrades and items to tweak your character. While not necessarily offering different builds to try out, it at least gives some sense of progression as mid-to-late-game items significantly boost your stats.
One of the more obvious FromSoft influences is the block/parry function. The problem here is that, while not a bad feature at all, you kinda don’t need it for most of the game… until you hit a late-game brick wall that you won’t smash without it. It’s one hell of a difficulty spike during Blasphemous final stretch that would feel less out of place and brutal if the player was more incentivized to use the game’s various features more. Imagine if you could easily cheese most of Sekiro without touching the parry button, only to be bottlenecked at the tail-end of the game.
It would be easy to dismiss Blasphemous as an even Edge Lordier FromSoft game (but in 2D) because, well it kinda is. But it’s a pretty enjoyable one at that.