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.
This is the first Metroidvania game I have played where the way you engage with the enemy and move through the level is constantly changing, and I mean constantly. In any given room the player is likely to have discovered a new move, weapon, technique, or encounter an enemy that causes them to change the way the fight. Spells and weapons are aquired faster than anyone could learn how to use them. Every time you revisit a room, the most effective way to deal with it has changed. The variety extends beyond combat to pretty much every aspect of the game. Multiple paths lead to the same objective, so the equipment and spells a player has can differ. The player can optionally go to town to craft new gear or search for it in the labyrinth. Player appearance it totally customizable and affected by all pieces of equipment. I do have a few caveats. "Fun" is the overriding theme here. The story and characters are intersting, and the voice acting is good, but temper your expectations if you were hoping for a lore-rich drama or a terrifying exploration of hell. The most serious and scary moments are always undercut by the appearnce of a giant kitten demon or your character earnestly confronting an evil villain while wearing a pirate hat, bunny scarf, and sunglasses. For me, all of that was a plus. There are a few glitches with the version I'm playing. The worst is some enemies simply will telegraph one move and then do another. This results in some pretty frustrating cheap shots but the health system is balanced enough that it can be dealt with. Also if you only love doing zero-item speedruns of metroidvanias you will probably find this game extremely frustrating.
I think the Crimson Court does an excellent job of expanding on absolutely everything Darkest Dungeon had to offer - artwork, atmosphere, combat, and management. The new dungeons are absolutely huge and done very complementary to the base game. I think old veterans will find it a very fresh experience and new players will find that they offer meaningful progress at a more satisfying pace than the "all-or-nothing" dungeons of the base game. At its throbbing, pulsating insect heart, Crimson Court adds yet more madness to what you already have to manage. This makes the game more complicated and arguably more frustrating, although I don't think it makes it harder. I believe anyone can master Darkest Dungeon, but a great many people have made it clear they don't have fun doing it. Perhaps even fewer will be up to the challenges Crimson Court has to offer. If you're a die-hard fan of Darkest Dungeon and just want to support Red Hook, or you've heard about the fabled Darkest Dungeon experience and just have to see for yourself, you shouldn't be disappointed with Crimson Court. This game will always stand out from the rest, but it will never be for everyone.
I sometimes wonder if all the negative reviews about the difficulty aren't secretly a grassroots advertising campaign to get more people to play this game. In this game, you alternate between maintaining a stable of heroes, preparing them for battle, and sending them into the dark depths beneath your accursed ancestral home in order to scourge the evil that now dwells there. Your goal is to eventually raise a team to take on the Darkest Dungeon. Survive just a few trips to it, and you win the game! Sounds easy enough, but only the most battle-hardened veterans stand a chance in that insane gauntlet, and it's a slim one even then. What seems to frustrate a lot of people is the permanent loss of progress one suffers if heroes are lost during a mission. Personally I never cared. To me, every dungeon crawl requires careful preparation and winds up truly thrilling between the uncertainty, brutal characters and moves, spot-on narration, and creepy graphics. The game does get repetitive - there are different "dungeons" and "quests" but the execution of a dungeon crawl is basically the same every time. What keeps it fresh is the fact that you always have to choose who to send in each week, and it's almost never the same. Between classes, quirks, variable skills, and position dependent roles, the number of possible parties and strategies shatters my fragile human mind to comprehend. Then there's all the other stuff that just makes it a one-of-a-kind game: stress, affliction, madness, resource management, Lovecraft, and blind lepers jamming meat cleavers into 2-story tall blind pigs who also have meat cleavers. If you enjoy one dungeon in this game, I think you'll enjoy them all. The fact that so many people have openly rebuked it for its difficulty is just icing on the cake (albeit, a cake you will not likely taste until you have filled a cemetery with heroes and put several dozen hours into this game). This is one of my favorite turn based RPGs ever.
