Blasphemous

Another good Team 17 game (for those who dont know - they were like early Blizzard of Amiga age - every game they released was fresh and good. I am glad they keep making games). For me there are 3 best 2D hack&slash platformers currenty: Dead Cells, Blasphemous and Salt. The game has great dark climate, interesting setting and opponents. It tends to be difficult and irritating like most roguelikes or platformers. But even I (casual player) managed to survive till the end so its manageable. It could be more replayable though (like Dead Cells are). Perhaps they will just add expansions and equipment in the future.

First off, the controls. I actually found them surprisingly fluid and spot on. Most reviews here are trashing them, but I've found zero issues, both in platforming and combat. Played though the game on a keyboard just fine, but I had to remap a lot of keys (movement to arrows, actions on A,S,D,F,E,Q,SHIFT). The gameplay is usual metroidvania with usual secrets and mandatory backtracking with new abilities. Make sure to mark the spots with hidden paths and unreachable collectibles on the map from the start, or you're going to miss a ton of stuff. Depending on the path you take, it can take VERY long until you get access to all of the navigational abilities. Combat is decent, but also the usual. Every enemy has specific moves and a clear way on how to best defeat them. Once you figure it out, that enemy will basically never touch you again in a 1v1. Dying is pretty punishing, because it reduces the XP you gain and max mana, until you recover your spirit where you died. You lose no XP on death and there can be multiple spirits, so you can always fully recover. If you don't want to go fetch it, there are a few areas where you can pay XP to recover it. The actual combat controls are pretty simple. There is just attack, parry and dodge. You can also unlock a ranged attack and cast spells, which both consume mana. As for the story, there are 3 possible endings. If you're going to be playing without a guide, you are pretty much guaranteed to get the bad ending as the other endings require you to do some arbitrary stuff with some random items and certain activities. NPCs move around randomly all over the map as you progress the side quests so unless you stumble upon them randomly again as you are wandering around, you aren't going to be completing a lot of the side quests either and some of the puzzles can be quite obscure. If you're going in blind, expect to miss a lot of stuff. Overall, a solid 8/10. Metroidvanias are not my usual cup of tea, but I liked this one.

Blasphemous takes the best elements from both Hollow Knight and Dead Cells and makes the perfect hybrid that surpasses them both. So, if you liked those games, but want something that's more mauture and ramps up the challenge a bit more, you'll love this. The parry is such a satisfying mechanic, you rely on it much more than in Dead Cells, where I felt it was under-utilised. This game requires more patience than both Dead Cells and Hollow Knight. It's very much like Megaman or Dark Souls where a lack of patience will get you killed. So when you see people moan about it being 'difficult' or 'cheap' bear in mind they probably tried to spam attack their way to victory and that just gets you dead. There are even puzzles that require some thought to solve and find secrets that are hidden throught the world. I've beaten every aspect of the game and I still want to play through it again just because it feels so good to play.

Art direction and animations are great! The gameplay is terrible though. The platforming and movement is very slow and sometimes non-responsive, resulting in many deaths. The enemies are very tanky while some are outright cheap and not fun to deal with (The teleporting laser ghosts come to mind). Also, this game doesn't respect your time at all. If you get lost, there isn't much of a fast travel system and since your character is slow, you will waste a lot of time slowly moving from one place to the next, trying to figure out where to go. This is more of a slog than a videogame.

Developers disrespectful of players. There's an unmarked, untelegraphed "point of no return" in this game. If you pass it, you will NOT be able to get the various endings. You MUST use a guide to find this out. If you do not, the game forces you not only to replay, but to replay on a higher difficulty (for an already really tough game -- so outside the realm of possibility for many if not most players). There is a work-around to modify your save game. Other than that, the game itself is great. Probably 4/5, but pushed up to 5/5 because of the amazing art.