Blasphemous

I felt immersed in the world and story, but basic exploration became a real chore, especially in the later hours of the game. Metroid Dread is my gold standard for post-2010s games in this genre. Blasphemous is more of a 2D Dark Souls than a Metroidvania, to be fair. It's enjoyable, but only if you're willing to deal with brutal and sometimes unfair combat, glitchy platforming, and instadeath spike pits and chasms. Also, you absolutely need all the weapon upgrades for the final two bosses.

So, their first games were The Last Door games, which were phenomenal point and click adventures that had a mix of vibes from Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. Loved every second of both seasons. Now, imagine my surprise that their second game jumps into the metroid-vania realm! Completely different type of game, and they still killed it. This has quickly become one of my favorite games. It is heavily inspired by Spanish Catholicism for it's art style and music, but it creates its own warped, corrupt religion that you're character must confront. The Miracle has it's beauty, but also has created grotesqueness beyond description. As the Penitent One you wield a magical/blessed sword and face off against the terrors that The Miracle has created. The music is beautiful, the atmosphere is very gothic and dark, with a mix of moments of beauty thrown in. The controls are perfect, with abilities increasing as you progress and new abilities to learn along the way. Also, lots of hidden stuff! Religious relics, rosary beads, and now with the DLC's plenty of hidden rooms where other events occur. The collector inside of you will have a field day. Such a beautiful game! I can't say that enough. I know some might be concerned with the subject matter... Like, "Is it really blasphemous, though?" My answer to this is you must follow your own convictions. I have my own religious views, which do not coincide with Spanish Catholicism, and I don't disrespect others who may hold to that, but even though at times this game felt like it was hitting a little too close to home when it used certain words to describe certain aspects of the false religion portrayed in the game, I reminded myself that it is a made up religion used in the game. Despite it's inspiration, it does not seem to be poking fun at anyone's beliefs, just borrowing terminology and situations as inspiration. I really enjoyed the game overall. If this sounds interesting to you at all you really should check it out!

So in short this is Dark Souls+Shinobi+Dantes Inferno+Castlevania Symphony of the Night, with other various influences. The ambience, although not for everyone, is gorgeous and unsetingly captivating. The lore is mysterious and fullfilling. The music is a visceral ambience/drone/orchestra that fit this game so well. The sound effects are just what you expect in this type of games, great overall. This game is long and the maps are giant with tons of secrets, enemies and upgrades so as you advance you can and will upgrade your character and collect items in a Dark Souls way but a tone down. It has potencial for maybe 3 runs replayability because if you have tha patience you can almost see it all in one run but there are somethings that only other paths reveal and you can easilly miss them. The gameplay is deep enough but still needs some ajustments on the controls as no upper diagonal slashing, somtimes dificult ledge grabing release , and some minor bugs as saves sometimes disapear, enemies pop in or out and when you die sometimes places your recovery point in lethal places... need fixing too. The game is heavilly inspired in Symphony of the Night(Gameplay/Presentation) and Dantes Inferno(Lore/Presentation) Dark Souls ( Items and Lore) but presented in a "sidescroll/platformer dark souls combat" kind of way, if that makes sense. This game is very solid, very well imagined, very dificult for the impatient and overall a great game. It show that more and more the developers are doing the right thing...learning from the past. When the issues are fixed it becomes a 10/10. A no brainer buy.

This is one of the best games I've played for a very long time, and one of those games that really shows the love and attention of its creators. The graphics are gorgeous, of course, and the atmosphere is the kind of exquisitely macabre baroque Catholic-flavoured gothic horror fantasy that's rarely executed so well as this. It's a combat-infused exploration/puzzle platformer with a definite Castlevania vibe, but probably the closest thing in terms of meta-game that I've played recently is Hollow Knight - also an excellent game in its own right, but I think Blasphemous may be even better. The balance and difficulty level is also near-perfect; it's challenging right from the outset, so you never feel like you're just going through the motions and getting bored as with so many recent games, but none of the combat ever feels unfairly frustrating either, and even the bosses feel fair throughout the game and never feel like a progress bottleneck. I've made one complete playthrough so far, and my only tiny criticism is that there are two puzzles required to achieve the best ending that I simply couldn't figure out despite knowing what I was attempting to do and trying everything I could think of. After completing the game with the (still very cool) "bad ending", I gave in and looked up what I'd missed (which I never like doing), and found that the solutions were (I think) just a bit too obfusticated, or at least felt like they really needed slightly better or more consistent hints to be completely fair. Save for those two puzzles though, this is an almost perfect game, and one I may even replay again to explore the extra modes in recent updates, which is something I rarely if ever do. I've currently rated 4/5 stars, but I should contextualise that to say that this is only due to rounding; it's just a few tiny details away from being a true 5/5 game with zero flaws, and in any case it's a game that I'd 100% recommend. Absolutely superb.

good game but where is the dlc?