Picked up another game on sale and finally set aside time to play it. BACKGROUND:
I've seen a little bit of this game and thought it looked interesting, but I never looked enough into it to feel compelled to buy it. Thanks to a generous sale and a surplus of points, I was able to pick this up digitally, so now I'll get to see what it's all about. PLOT: Blasphemous is set in the world of Cvstodia, a religious land whose design is heavily inspired by Spanish Catholic tradition (the developers of this game are based in Spain). Cvstodia is governed by a phenomenon known as the Miracle, which manifests itself by either blessing or cursing the land's inhabitants. You'll see more of the latter as you play, as numerous characters have been transformed into horrible monstrosities, apparently befitting some sort of penance they must undergo. You play as the Penitent One, a warrior who took a vow of silence, who must go on a pilgrimage to reach a certain location at the far side of Cvstodia. His quest takes him across the land where he meets various characters who have their own stories, fight against many enemies who oppose his mission, and complete trials that will permit him to reach his goal. Admittedly, this is about as much as I can glean from my playthrough, as a lot of the lore involves going out of your way to inspect the environment and decipher optional dialogue/item descriptions, many of which can be rather esoteric. While I personally found some enjoyment in trying to interpret certain elements (like the reason behind why the Miracle twisted certain characters the way it did) or trying to figure out why particular elements exists, it's undeniably a lot of effort to even understand a fraction of what's going on. I've said it many times before, but this kind of storytelling is obviously not for everybody given the effort involved. You'll get your fair share of world-building by interacting with NPCs and taking on their side quests. It's through these characters that you see how the Miracle punishes people, and there are some truly grotesque curses in here. Helping these people is a 50/50 on whether you feel good or bad, as you either help them pass on or something worse ends up happening. This game has three endings, with two of them requiring the player to accomplish optional tasks. Simply finishing the game without doing any of these is considered the "bad" ending, while the other endings feel like more of a triumph in comparison. The hints to getting the "good" endings are a tad vague, however, so it might be irksome for some players to find that they actually got the "bad" ending even after all the effort they put in. That said, I did like how this vague process involved interacting with a specific game element in an unexpected way. Frustratingly, it's entirely possible to miss out on some endings depending on how you play, so if you want to see all three in one playthrough, you'll have to follow particular steps. If this is not an issue for you, I recommend going for what's called Ending C (also referred to as the true ending), because it reveals a key truth about the Miracle. To my surprise, New Game Plus has an exclusive side story that adds another facet to the game's complex lore. In my experience, New Game Plus adding new story content is uncommon, so this was a pleasant surprise. PRESENTATION: The art of this game is achieved with some impressively intricate pixel art. This isn't some facsimile of the games of yesteryear, because the attention to detail is mind-blowing. The backgrounds feel almost painterly, even seemingly imperceptible elements are visible (like the Penitent One weeping tears of blood, which is only visible if you squint at his sprite), and the animations (of which there are plenty) are incredibly fluid. Even the cinematic cutscenes are done in this style, and those are a true showcase of meticulously crafted pixel art. More specifically, the game's style feels like a Romantic-era painting come to life, between the moody colors, plenty of shots set in large landscapes, settlements that look like 1800s Europe, and a level of detail that pushes the visuals a step closer to realism (in the parts where there's no freaky monsters, anyway). Perhaps unsurprisingly, there's a lot of religious imagery scattered about the game, between all the churches, characters in monk robes, and more. All this is contrasted by the wide variety of horrors you will witness as you play, from all the bloody, twisted enemies you face, their unique death animations, and the brutal acts of gore you commit as you execute these enemies. If you think a game with the pixel art style can't be graphic when it comes to its violence, think again; the Penitent One disembowels enemies on a regular basis, and you will see actual innards be removed in surprisingly disturbing detail. The Penitent One himself has quite the striking character design, with armor that reminds me vaguely of the Templars, as well as a distinctive pointed helmet that looks a lot like a capirote (a pointed hat worn by penitent Catholics who follow Spanish Holy Week traditions, fittingly). In terms of music, the soundtrack is as moody as the visuals, fitting the bleak setting of Cvstodia very well. I noticed the prominence of the guitar in many tracks, which I suppose is fitting given this is a Spanish-made game. There are other instruments as well, like a good helping of haunting piano, the occasional intense beat of drums, and what I think sounds like violin. GAMEPLAY: Blasphemous is primarily a Metroidvania, which means a big map to explore and lots of secrets to find. Its combat takes heavy inspiration from soulslike games, which I'll get into shortly. As the Penitent One, you explore Cvstodia by running, jumping, sliding, hanging onto ledges, and clinging to marked walls with your sword. Apart from slide jumping, you're not going to get fancy movement mechanics here, and apart from occasional, brief platforming gauntlets, most of the focus in this game is on the combat. You wield the sword known as Mea Culpa, and at the start, it can't do much. You can slash both on the ground and in the air, and you can perform an upwards slash by holding up. If you hit an enemy, you can keep hitting attack to perform a short combo. As you explore, you'll find Mea Culpa shrines that will both level up your sword's damage and allow you to spend Tears of Atonement (the game's currency) to unlock more abilities like a charged slash, a lunging strike, a downward thrust, and even a projectile attack. In terms of defense, you can use the slide as a dodge to get through most attacks, but the cooler option is the parry. When pressing the parry button, there's a small window where you'll deflect an attack, and in some cases, this activates an automatic counterattack that you can enhance by pressing a button during it. The parry makes fighting almost everything utterly satisfying, because you're handsomely rewarded for learning attack timings. Certain conditions can put an enemy into a dazed state. If you go up to them and press the designated button, you can perform an Execution. These are gruesome finishers that show the Penitent One absolutely eviscerate the unfortunate victim. Each enemy has a unique execution animation, so I had a morbid desire to see how the Penitent One slaughters specific enemies. In addition to the sword, you have access to spells known as Prayers, which use a resource known as Fervour (your equivalent to magic). You'll have to find these hidden around Cvstodia or complete some quests, but they're often worth the trouble since they can do serious damage or be helpful in some other way (like the various protection Prayers). Each Prayer has a different Fervour cost, which you can charge by hitting enemies (with bonuses granted for executions) or pressing a specific button that gives you Fervour at the cost of some of your health. Speaking of health, the only way to heal is to either visit the Prie Dieu (shrines that are equivalent to your Dark Souls bonfires and serve as checkpoints) or to use your Bile Flasks (which you can liken to the Estus Flasks of Dark Souls). Bile flasks only restore a portion of your health, and they're a limited resource you have to refill by visiting a shrine. Some of the upgrades you can find while exploring include adding to your max health and max Fervour, as well as extra Bile Flasks to increase your healing opportunities. Interestingly, you can trade some of those extra flasks with a certain NPC, who in exchange will increase the potency of your remaining Bile Flasks. This is an interesting tradeoff of quantity vs. quality in terms of your healing. In addition, you also have a rosary, which can be equipped with beads that give you a wide variety of passive buffs (e.g. slight buffs to movement, added damage resistance, bonuses like higher Fervour charge, and more). At the start, you can only equip two beads at a time, but you can find Knots of Rosary Rope to add more slots to your rosary. It's a neat system that reminds me of Hollow Knight's charms mechanic, though it'll take considerable effort to find a lot of the options available to you. Mea Culpa also has what are known as Sword Hearts, which can be equipped for bonuses. What makes the Sword Hearts notable is while their buffs are potent, they always come at a cost. For example, one of them increases your damage output, but at the cost of defense. Again, cool take on a time-tested mechanic. Lastly, you can equip Relics, which are special items that help with platforming. These include Relics that allow you to cross toxic gas safely, Relics that reveal hidden platforms, and even Relics that allow you to fall without dying (unlike most Metroidvanias, falling into an abyss doesn't send you to the zone below; you just die). Sadly, there are very few Relics to collect, but I suppose that makes sense since there aren't many areas that are locked off without them. Personally, I'd have loved more stuff like it, because one of the things I enjoy about Metroidvanias is finding items that open up more of the world to me. You'll also pick up various key items that you'll need to give to specific NPCs or place in certain locations to unlock more stuff. It's easy to discern where most items are meant to go, except for a certain item you get at the beginning. Without giving it away, the purpose of the item is explained (albeit in a cryptic manner), but the method in which to activate it isn't immediately obvious. Exploration is fun for the most part, since the map is decently large and there are ways to fast travel if you need to backtrack. There are a good number of secrets to find, including (but not limited to) fake walls, breakable floors, and seemingly out-of-reach places. There are plenty of collectibles outside of the ones I've mentioned as well, like the bones that you return to the Ossuary, and the Children of Moonlight that you have to free. Collecting these are worthwhile, too, since they unlock some neat rewards. Where the fun might end is running into the many enemies of the game, the variety of which is pretty solid. These enemies can be in some pretty annoying spots, but thankfully, enemies stay dead.... until you hit a checkpoint, at which point they respawn. That can make backtracking a pain, but personally, I enjoy this game's combat enough that, besides select enemies, I don't mind whooping their ass again. That said, I can't really say many of them are tricky to fight on their own, especially later in the game when you have stronger gear. When you think soulslike, you think challenging bosses, and this game has a good number of them. I don't know if this is simply my experience talking, but overall, I only found a handful of bosses particularly difficult. Nonetheless, most of the fights are fun, and figuring out their gimmicks/attack patterns (especially to the point that you can parry them) or figuring out the perfect Prayers to use is satisfying. My favorite fight is easily Crisanta, whose second phase in particular is so much fun to parry. In terms of overall satisfaction, going for a full Prayer build can lead to some comically trivial fights, because the lightning spell can shred through enemies even if they're out of range of your sword. Dying at any point leaves behind a Guilt Fragment in the place you just died. You'll want to pick this up, as if you carry on as you are without doing so, your Fervour meter will not be at its maximum, and you'll earn less Tears of Atonement. The more you die, the more Guilt Fragments you leave behind, and the penalties become more severe. Alternatively, there are confessor statues that you can talk to in order to restore yourself back to normal, but you'll have to spend Tears of Atonement for this. Speaking of Tears of Atonement, the only other use they have other than upgrading the sword and relieving yourself of Guilt are paying specific NPCs and donating them to a specific church. The latter is what's called a money sink, and it's the best place to throw your money once you've bought every important thing. It's not a complete waste, either, as the more you donate, the more helpful perks you'll receive. The "good" endings will require you to take on some optional dungeons, which are pretty much horde battles where you take on waves of enemies. These are fun, but they're almost trivial if you decide to do them in the late game when you're all jacked up with upgrades. Apparently, this game received free content updates post-launch, which added some bonus content. This includes the map expansion and a quest that leads to the true ending (I just assumed all this was part of the base game), a bonus minigame where you play a short Castlevania-style 8-bit game, a whole crossover with Bloodstained where you meet Miriam and take on a few challenge rooms, a boss rush mode called Sacred Sorrows, and the addition of New Game Plus (which also adds the bonus story content I mentioned). I'll discuss the latter three at length since they're pretty substantial. The Bloodstained crossover has you take on five time trial platforming challenges, and completing all five rewards you with a bonus Prayer you can use in your adventure. These platforming challenges highlight how Blasphemous is not primarily about platforming, as I felt how certain aspects of its movement are either weirdly inconsistent or require the use of specific Rosary Beads just to clear gaps. I like the idea, but these were just an exercise in frustration. Sacred Sorrows is split into different boss rushes (much like Godmaster in Hollow Knight), so each boss rush has a specific set of bosses. Your loadout is based on what you have in your selected save file, and you get a break room in between fights with a single-use refill of bile flasks and a single-use refill of Fervour. Each boss rush also has a normal mode and a True Torment mode, both of which are timed and graded based on performance. New Game Plus has you start the game over, but a lot of your stuff carries over (namely: your collected beads, Prayers, Sword Hearts, Relics, and Mea Culpa upgrades). What's bizarre to me, however, is not everything carries over. Your health and Fervour return to their base values (so you have to find the upgrade spots again), you have to redo quests, and you have to find and upgrade your Bile Flasks all over again. Sure, it's great that the stuff that they let you keep is still there (the Relics in particular make exploring and re-collecting everything a breeze), but you really feel the loss of your base stats because all the enemies have more health and do more damage. I suppose it makes sense in terms of setting up a greater challenge, but it's still a strange choice to me since you can't re-upgrade your sword to keep up with the enemies. At the beginning of New Game Plus, you can choose one of the three Penitence modes which add challenge modifiers to your run. This includes an overhaul of how health works (instead working on number of hits), making death more punishing by locking your money in Guilt Fragments, and forcing you to rely on spells by halving your sword damage. I like these modifiers as a way to really change the game, and it's really cool that finishing a run with one of these modifiers rewards you with items that you can then use in a future run. The aforementioned bonus story content in New Game Plus adds a few more boss fights to the game, so there's incentive to play again apart from simply challenging yourself. It doesn't add much to the exploration aspect, sadly. Certain achievements in this game also unlock skins for the Penitent One, which is fun. They don't really do anything other than change the color of the sprite and showcase that you've accomplished an in-game challenge, but it's neat that they're there. VERDICT: I quite enjoyed my time playing Blasphemous. While it takes considerable effort to understand what the hell is going on in Cvstodia, I thought the bleak, twisted setting (made all the more impressive with the visuals) was cool, the combat and progression had a lot of fun elements to it, and exploration felt rewarding. While I have my qualms with the platforming and the difficulty spike of New Game Plus, I liked this game a lot, and am looking forward to the sequel (which hopefully adds a whole lot more in addition to polishing what made this one a lot of fun). Many aspects of this game are not going to be for everyone, be it the game's method of storytelling, the emphasis on challenging combat, or the abundance of graphic violence and disturbing imagery. If none of these things bother you, I recommend this game if you're in the mood for a dark Metroidvania with solid combat and mysterious lore. Link to the game's Steam page here: Blasphemous on Steam (steampowered.com) Here's the soundtrack on Spotify: Spotify – Blasphemous (Original Game Soundtrack) - end -
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