This is a Kickstarter-borne Metroidvania I heard a LOT about last year, and seemed to be right up my alley, but I didn't end up picking it up until the winter sale on Switch this year. I'm always one to take joy in playing a new Metroidvania, so I knew this was one I couldn't miss out on. I did nearly 100% of the collectibles and stuff in the game, and it took me a little under 15 hours to do so on the English version of the game.
Blasphemous is a game whose art style and setting are heavily inspired by European Medieval and Renaissance paintings and writings on the nature of hell, the afterlife, penance, and the day of reckoning. The game isn't explicitly Christian in a diegetic sense, but that's clearly where the inspiration comes from. The land of Custodia, and perhaps the entire world, have been ravaged (or blessed?) by a phenomenon called The Miracle for quite some time. They bring divine retribution and penance upon sinners and twist reality and pervert their bodies in order to have them serve out their due punishment. You play the role of The Penitent One, a warrior wielding a blade forged from guilt, whose own penance is to walk the world silently. You embark on a quest whose initial goals are quite unclear, but will ultimately carry you to meet with the biggest names around in the god-forsaken land of Custodia.
The narrative of Blasphemous is, like its mechanics, very much inspired by Dark Souls. The natives of the world have odd, cryptic ways of speaking about things, and every item has a long description to give you little glimpses into the wider lore of the world you're questing in. You'll meet all nature of twisted and strange people along your quest, both friend and foe, whose motives you often only have the vaguest ideas of, but the Penitent One cares little of things that don't relate directly to advancing his quest. The game has a lot to say about the nature of penance and guilt in religious thought (and how it extends to everyday life), as well as just how much of that guilt and punishment is deserved, necessary, and actually even divine.
While the effects of the Miracle are ever present in the world of Custodia, I often found it difficult to take every character at their word regarding how worthwhile their perverse punishments often were, and it makes for a very interesting and intriguing adventure. I really didn't get into the lore of the world very well, but just trying to navigate a world trying to eke out your own semblance of justice and judgment in a universe where divine punishment literally exists everywhere. The game has two endings, and I got them both (first the bad, then the good), and I think they also say interesting things about the nature of sacrifice (especially in the case of the player character). I found the sheer amounts of lore a bit overwhelming, but it's nice that they're tucked away behind a "Lore" button for each item, so you thankfully need not bother yourself with them if you don't want to. I don't really care for these kinds of "hands off" narratives like Soulsborne games tend to do, but I think this game does it pretty darn well.
The mechanics of the game are very Dark Souls inspired, but thankfully a bit more forgiving than that. It's a 2D melee-focused Metroidvania not unlike something like Hollow Knight in how your character wields his sword. You have bonfires you can light and revive at, you have blood vials (estus flasks) which refill at these bonfires and you use to heal yourself when you're out fighting stuff, and you even leave a mark upon death. Thankfully, you don't lose any of your hard earned money (used for buying items and new moves) when you die. Instead, more like Demons Souls, you lose some of your max mana until you go back and retrieve the marker at the place of your death. You actually gain back a lot of health when you grab one too, and I even used them as mid-fight free heals in a couple of the harder boss fights XD
The bosses are all really unique and cool (as are all the enemy designs), but I didn't find the game especially hard. There are about 10 or so bosses in the game, and only 3 of them even killed me once. Blasphemous doesn't have a level-up mechanic, but it does have tons of passive charms you can equip to boost your defense to certain elements or augment your abilities in some other way. Between that and finding more blood vials for more healing, powering up my blood vials for better healing, and finding new spells and max mana/health upgrades, I overall found that I didn't have much fear of dying even as I barely used the parry mechanic. I overall found the level of challenge very satisfying, and you could certainly make the game harder by trying to finish it with less loot, and if that isn't enough for you, you even unlock a harder mode (with more content) after you beat the game once~.
The game is also a little bit of an unconventional Metroidvania in that all of the mobility items you ultimately find are actually optional. Making hidden platforms appear never actually gates your path in any meaningful way, so unlike Hollow Knight where you gradually get more abilities to help you both traverse the world AND fight stuff, this game largely just has you powering up as you explore and fight things. Doing quests for NPCs and finding new items always involved some element of careful platforming and/or killing stuff, and the world is just so well designed that I always wanted to see more of it. This game is definitely focused more around its combat than its exploration, but that definitely isn't a bad thing.
The art design is absolutely stellar. The pixel art is highly detailed and animated to really make the world come to life, especially on larger characters. Seeing all the grotesque things in the game brought to life so deftly really made me wanna uncover every possible path I could to see what cool thing could be behind it. The music is orchestral and slow, and very atmospheric. Not really anything I particularly remember or would wanna put on an MP3 player, but it's all very well done and lends to the game nicely. The game is also a pretty hard M-rating, having a fair bit of nudity and a LOT of blood and gore. Very well animated blood and gore, but blood and gore nonetheless. It's not quite the 2010 Splatterhouse reboot, but the occasional executions your character can do at times are particularly nasty, so I'd at least be ready for that going in.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is an absolutely excellent Metroidvania and a must play for fans of the genre. The combat feels great, the bosses are fun and challenging, and the world is beautifully crafted. It's not my favorite Metroidvania of all time (I'd personally rank it just below Iconoclasts), but it's still an excellent game and definitely one of the new greats of the genre.
Blasphemous is a game whose art style and setting are heavily inspired by European Medieval and Renaissance paintings and writings on the nature of hell, the afterlife, penance, and the day of reckoning. The game isn't explicitly Christian in a diegetic sense, but that's clearly where the inspiration comes from. The land of Custodia, and perhaps the entire world, have been ravaged (or blessed?) by a phenomenon called The Miracle for quite some time. They bring divine retribution and penance upon sinners and twist reality and pervert their bodies in order to have them serve out their due punishment. You play the role of The Penitent One, a warrior wielding a blade forged from guilt, whose own penance is to walk the world silently. You embark on a quest whose initial goals are quite unclear, but will ultimately carry you to meet with the biggest names around in the god-forsaken land of Custodia.
The narrative of Blasphemous is, like its mechanics, very much inspired by Dark Souls. The natives of the world have odd, cryptic ways of speaking about things, and every item has a long description to give you little glimpses into the wider lore of the world you're questing in. You'll meet all nature of twisted and strange people along your quest, both friend and foe, whose motives you often only have the vaguest ideas of, but the Penitent One cares little of things that don't relate directly to advancing his quest. The game has a lot to say about the nature of penance and guilt in religious thought (and how it extends to everyday life), as well as just how much of that guilt and punishment is deserved, necessary, and actually even divine.
While the effects of the Miracle are ever present in the world of Custodia, I often found it difficult to take every character at their word regarding how worthwhile their perverse punishments often were, and it makes for a very interesting and intriguing adventure. I really didn't get into the lore of the world very well, but just trying to navigate a world trying to eke out your own semblance of justice and judgment in a universe where divine punishment literally exists everywhere. The game has two endings, and I got them both (first the bad, then the good), and I think they also say interesting things about the nature of sacrifice (especially in the case of the player character). I found the sheer amounts of lore a bit overwhelming, but it's nice that they're tucked away behind a "Lore" button for each item, so you thankfully need not bother yourself with them if you don't want to. I don't really care for these kinds of "hands off" narratives like Soulsborne games tend to do, but I think this game does it pretty darn well.
The mechanics of the game are very Dark Souls inspired, but thankfully a bit more forgiving than that. It's a 2D melee-focused Metroidvania not unlike something like Hollow Knight in how your character wields his sword. You have bonfires you can light and revive at, you have blood vials (estus flasks) which refill at these bonfires and you use to heal yourself when you're out fighting stuff, and you even leave a mark upon death. Thankfully, you don't lose any of your hard earned money (used for buying items and new moves) when you die. Instead, more like Demons Souls, you lose some of your max mana until you go back and retrieve the marker at the place of your death. You actually gain back a lot of health when you grab one too, and I even used them as mid-fight free heals in a couple of the harder boss fights XD
The bosses are all really unique and cool (as are all the enemy designs), but I didn't find the game especially hard. There are about 10 or so bosses in the game, and only 3 of them even killed me once. Blasphemous doesn't have a level-up mechanic, but it does have tons of passive charms you can equip to boost your defense to certain elements or augment your abilities in some other way. Between that and finding more blood vials for more healing, powering up my blood vials for better healing, and finding new spells and max mana/health upgrades, I overall found that I didn't have much fear of dying even as I barely used the parry mechanic. I overall found the level of challenge very satisfying, and you could certainly make the game harder by trying to finish it with less loot, and if that isn't enough for you, you even unlock a harder mode (with more content) after you beat the game once~.
The game is also a little bit of an unconventional Metroidvania in that all of the mobility items you ultimately find are actually optional. Making hidden platforms appear never actually gates your path in any meaningful way, so unlike Hollow Knight where you gradually get more abilities to help you both traverse the world AND fight stuff, this game largely just has you powering up as you explore and fight things. Doing quests for NPCs and finding new items always involved some element of careful platforming and/or killing stuff, and the world is just so well designed that I always wanted to see more of it. This game is definitely focused more around its combat than its exploration, but that definitely isn't a bad thing.
The art design is absolutely stellar. The pixel art is highly detailed and animated to really make the world come to life, especially on larger characters. Seeing all the grotesque things in the game brought to life so deftly really made me wanna uncover every possible path I could to see what cool thing could be behind it. The music is orchestral and slow, and very atmospheric. Not really anything I particularly remember or would wanna put on an MP3 player, but it's all very well done and lends to the game nicely. The game is also a pretty hard M-rating, having a fair bit of nudity and a LOT of blood and gore. Very well animated blood and gore, but blood and gore nonetheless. It's not quite the 2010 Splatterhouse reboot, but the occasional executions your character can do at times are particularly nasty, so I'd at least be ready for that going in.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is an absolutely excellent Metroidvania and a must play for fans of the genre. The combat feels great, the bosses are fun and challenging, and the world is beautifully crafted. It's not my favorite Metroidvania of all time (I'd personally rank it just below Iconoclasts), but it's still an excellent game and definitely one of the new greats of the genre.