Blasphemous

It has some charming music and a well crafted raw and gory atmosphere that suits the story - but that is everything positive I have to say about this game. I really gave it a fair chance, while playing it for 27hours to reach 100% completion rate, which included all endings, moonlight children, collectibles, gear and achievements. https://imgur.com/a/hMeFK7k One would think that it must have made fun when investing so much time in it, but that was just my "autism". I was actually happy when it was finally over - that was the best part of it. Ignoring major flaws in game design like... - cryptic, meaningless documentation of quests, and items - or only being able to equip 3 powers at the same time to examine the game world, even though you can change them any time ..there was one thing that really broke the game for me: The combat. It's pacing is clunky and the controls feel unresponsive in a sheer overwhelming amount of occasions that killed me more times than the actual boss mechanics did, ranging from not being able to turn and hit, doing a combo-move or stop from running into spikes, or just to get up when hit so you don't get hit and hit and hit one after another. "Ladders" are the real bosses in this game.

When I first heard about Blasphemous being a pixel art cross between Metroidvania and Dark Souls I wasn't sure how to feel. After sinking multiple hours into the title and completing the story I must say this is one of the best indie games I've played of late. I also like that it's Dark Souls-ish but not in that crappy FromSoft way where its like 50 ogres in a 5x5 room and any given enemy can 2 piece you. Combat is fair, but does certainly punish you for messing up. Exploration is great. All the little hidden knick-knacks and easter eggs are fun to collect. I like that even collectibles have a function if you want to solve later game puzzles. I give it 8/10 and it.... kicks ass!

This is an action-platformer with a heavy combat focus in a world inspired by medieval catholic imagery. The land of Cvstodia is governed by the church that worships a divine force knows as "The Miracle" which dispenses both curses and blessings onto the inhabitants, turning them into often grotesque-semblances of humans, according to their inner sins. As the last surviving member of the Brotherhood of the Silent Sorrow, you, the Penitent One, take on the task of traversing the land to confront the Head of the Church about the Affliction that's twisting the land. The game is fairly non-linear with several avenues to explore. Each one end up leading you to a boss. Defeating several bosses gives you "keys" to unlock the next open-ended portion of the map, and so on. The game emphasizes combat, which is based around parrying or dodging enemy attacks (depending on the enemy type). As you find certain altars throughout the world, you can unlock additional attack moves for your sword. There are also prayers (spells) to collect, as well as passive bonuses you get from various beads you can add to your Rosary, and an extra "core" you can slot into your sword- overall, there's quite a few ways to customize your "build". The game doesn't really grant you extra traversal abilities, but you can find relics that make invisible platforms visible, or trigger vines to uncoil so that you can climb them. The element of "backtrack to access these areas" is there, and so is secret-hunting, but its not necessarily as prominent. The combat is fairly well-balanced, and your worst enemy will be the instakill spikes and bottomless abysses- at least until you find a relic that lets you survive falls. The artstyle is gorgeous, the music is quite nice, the exploration is fun, because there's a ton of secrets to find. There's a ton of lore in item descriptions, and if you enjoy exploration, this is a no-brainer buy.

Blasphemous is a game that was clearly made with the utmost care. The problem is that some of the inspirations they borrowed from Dark Souls and apparently worked hard to implement in a 2D format just make the game painful. The "satisfying combat" was the most frustrating part of the game. Absolutely everything knocks you on your ass for about a full second, including simply contacting the enemy. Since this is a 2D game most of the fights wind up being bullet hells or waiting for enemy invulnerability cycles to end. Same thing with the platforming - the Souls games are infamous for their deadly traps and pitfalls, but in a 2D game with lots of backtracking these are NOT as fun the second, third, foruth times you have to revisit them. You also don't get any movement options that make revisiting old areas fun, instead you get a teleport that lets you skip some of the punishing backtracking. Even the detailed pixel art works against you - platforms are elaborate isometric objects and it's easy to jump right through one because you missed the magic grabbable pixel. The environmental storytelling is also a weak point in my opinion. For all its obscurity, the main point of Dark Souls is pretty clear - you're an Undead, locked away at the end of the world, somebody lets you out and you take this opportunity to learn how to break your curse. There's no shortage of interesting and grotesque figures in Blasphemous but they don't come together to make a cohesive whole. By far the best part of the game is the map. There is no filler here. Secrets are everywhere, feel very rewarding to find, there are some environmental puzzles. As frustrating as the game was I always wanted to see what was next. The environment is also disturbing and menacing - and I mean that in a good way. If you like the macabre it does not get better than Blasphemous. I have to say they definitely commited to what they were going for in Blasphemous but I'll take Super Metroid over this any day.

The good. Art style is fantastic, with heavy inspiration from multiple sources yet unique and reconizable. Animations are gory and beautiful to look at, they don't get old thanks to how well they are made as well as how they don't get in the way. All the good things you'd expect from a metroidvania are there: exploration is mostly rewarding, the game provides a fair amount of puzzles and collectibles. Locations are varied and are not too large. Bosses are varied, well balanced and feel like a proper challenge. Beating every one of them was a delight and felt properly rewarding. Combat is mostly fair and predictable. If you fail, it is your mistake. The meh. Map is surprisingly useless for a modern metroidvania. Collectibles are not marked at all. I don't know why they keep doing it, looking for that one collectible you somehow missed is tedious. Platforming is mostly serviceable, but the camera does not provide enough ability to look around, falling down to your death because you haven't seen the pit can happen. The way they implemented the DarkSouls-like 'collect your corpse' mechanic is kinda cool, kinda bizarre. It provides a benefit, but as for the punishment, not so much. The bad. Combat is very much a mixed bag. It is fair, yes, but dodging does not always work as expected: some attacks cannot be dodged and it is never obvious which ones. Enabled an item that prevents collision damage? Nah, you're still getting it, but slightly less often. Most of the stuff you find are collectibles. It doesn't feel rewarding enough. Large map is really suffering from the lack of means to fast travel. Navigating can and will be tedious if you aim for the 100% completion. Quests. Dark Souls is a good game, but can we please not borrow bad things from it?.. Quests should be more obvious and better explained. Occasional bugs. I had to restart the game a couple of times because of getting stuck or losing most of the control over the character.