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A Solid Metroidvania With Souslike Elements
This review is from the perspective of someone who 100%s games on Steam
Blasphemous is by all means a good game. It has a great interconnected world that opens up as you upgrade, a solid combat system, a decent story, and some of the most metal enemy designs I have ever seen in a video game. Simply put… there is no one area of Blasphemous I would say is bad or falling behind. Unfortunately though, this game also has a lot of areas that I feel are so close to greatness, but find themselves falling a little bit short. As a certified yapper I will be breaking down all of it. The good and the bad.
Again, I would like to highlight that I think this game is good and worth your time. While my review will be fairly balanced between good parts and bad parts, I would give this game overall an 8.5 / 10. Anyways… I will now go in-depth on several different aspects of the game including Story, Gameplay, MISC, and the Completion Experience. There will be minor spoilers for what the game contains, but I will not go into any specifics that would ruin your experience.
Story
I think the story and lore of Blasphemous is something that could be quite polarizing. There is a lot of lore to the world of Custoida, but unfortunately so much of it is hidden behind cryptic dialogue and item descriptions. I don’t like to make comparisons, but I think saying it is similar to Dark Souls 1 is probably the best way to help you understand what you are getting into. At the same time though, I honestly felt Dark Souls 1 had an easier plot to follow, at least on the surface level.
So yeah, the story is a bit of a mixed bag for me. After beating the game I felt like I knew little of the overall lore and I personally did not enjoy that. After watching some lore videos though I can confidently say there is a rich world here, it just requires a bit more brain power then most games. Thankfully, this is probably something you already know if you personally find it to be a dealbreaker or not. My last point is that this game can easily be enjoyed without knowing the lore.
Gameplay
There are two elements of gameplay I want to touch upon in this review; those being combat and world design. Let's start with combat.
Combat in Blasphemous is a good time. You only have one weapon throughout the game, but you do slowly unlock new skills and “prayers”, which allow you to customize a couple of your moves. For the most part I think this system works. The one weapon is well designed and feels good to use, and the couple of things you can unlock / customize allow for some slight build variety. I do think there could have been more here though. Maybe having different weapons you could choose from or a more fleshed out skill tree is the solution, but as of right now, I just feel that your combat options don’t grow as much as they could.
The other part of combat though is what you are fighting. Enemy variety is strong, with each enemy feeling unique and well-designed. The boss roster is solid, but I also think the game doesn’t have anything that really blew my socks off. The final boss is also, in my opinion, the worst boss in the game. There is one thing going for all the enemies / bosses in the game though, and that is their art design. Like damn did this team cook. I won’t go into too much detail so as to not spoil, but if you are into some messed up designs then this is the game for you.
Moving onto world design.. It's great and I think I would deem this Blasphemous’ strongest trait. The world is fun to explore and it is interconnected in ways that you don’t seem often in video games. Smashing through a wall or dropping down a ladder to reach somewhere you’ve already been is a special feeling, and this game is full of moments like those. You can also access most of the map right away if you know where to go. This makes repeat playthrus a joy as you mess around with ways to sequence break. I do have one complaint though and that is with the relic system. Relics are what allow you to reach areas you couldn’t previously reach. Since this game doesn’t have anything that changes your movement mechanics, the game instead had you equip these relics to shift the world around you and open up new paths. It's a cool system, but unfortunately it has one issue, which is that you can only equip 3 of these relics at a time. I understand what they were going for, but all this results in is having you have to go into the menu to shift around which relics you have equipped whenever you reach a certain puzzle or area. It just is not engaging. For the most part though, the world design slaps.
MISC
I can not emphasis how much the art direction here slaps. Yes, I used slaps two sentences in a row, but simply put… some parts of this game do slap. The soundtrack is also worth mentioning. Its good!
Completion Perspective
It took me around 25 hours to get 100% achievements. This game does require a fair amount to earn that blue badge including: at least 2 playthrus, collecting 100% of various different collectible items, exploring the entire map, completing some pretty complex npc questlines which can be failed, and 2 “challenge run” type achievements.
Most of these are pretty doable, though I would recommend looking up a guide on your second playthru to ensure you progress the npc quests right. The two challenge runs require you to beat the first half of the game in less than 3 hours and beat all the original (no dlc) bosses without healing. I would recommend going for the no healing one first, as it is good prep for the speedrun one when you pursue that. I will say that the speedrun time is fairly forgiving.
Overall, not a bad completion unless you refuse to use a guide.
Final Thoughts
Blasphemous is a solid metroidvania. It gets so much right for a first game and if the sequel can just improve a little bit on this solid foundation, I might view it as one of the all-time greats. Anyways, I hope you enjoy your journey with Blasphemous!
P.S Feel free to friend request me on Steam if you want to keep up on my completionist journey!