Blasphemous is a metroidvania with a number of strengths and very few weaknesses. It has fantastic visuals, both in cut scenes as well as during gameplay. It also has a great overall mood, incorporating quite a bit of religious imagery into its world building and characters. It creates an eerie aesthetic that fits with the brutally difficult gameplay. The visual design of both enemies and bosses are great, adding a lot of weight to the combat.
Combat itself is usually challenging yet satisfying. It feels great when you defeat 5 or 6 enemies without taking a hit, but it also feels fair when you aren’t as successful. The combat mechanics aren’t particularly complex, but given the game’s difficulty, it feels like the right choice.
There are a decent amount of RPG elements, but they are largely simplified. You can upgrade you sword with 10 or so different techniques and you have 10+ gear slots that can provide a variety of bonuses. These pieces largely serve to keep the game feeling fresh, without being the main focus of the game. Most bosses feel like they would be beatable without any upgrades to your character at all, provided you are good at the game.
Exploration is an important element of the game, which the game frequently rewards you for. There are a huge number of secret rooms, hidden platforms, and puzzles to help add some variety to the game. Unfortunately, while the basic framework for exploration in Blasphemous is great, the platforming and world design leave a lot to be desired. Platforming certainly doesn’t feel bad to me, it just feels lackluster and run of the mill, as opposed to all the other great parts of the game.
The bigger negative is the backtracking and lack of fast travel points. The world is designed with many branching paths that usually loop around and connect to another area. Normally, this would give you some options in how you want to explore, but there aren’t enough points on the map you can fast travel to. It gets worse because when backtracking, every enemy will have respawned and they tend to be fairly challenging, even late in the game. It can become very tedious to 100% the game, simply because of the amount of walking that’s required.
Overall, a great game with only a couple points against it, which most players will happily ignore, aside from any that feel compelled to 100% the game.
