Blasphemous

[h2] The Penitent One walked so that I could 100% this game and lose my mind. [/h2] Blasphemous is what happens when a game developer looks at [b] Dark Souls [/b] , [b] Hollow Knight [/b], and [b] a 16th century Spanish painting [/b] and says [b] "Yes. All of this. Simultaneously." [/b] The result is one of the greatest games I have ever touched with my sinful hands. --- [h3] 🎨 Art & Visuals — ★★★★★ [/h3] I have seen things in this game that I cannot unsee and I am THANKFUL for it. The pixel art is so disgustingly gorgeous that I stopped moving mid-platforming to stare at the background. I died because of it. I do not regret it. Completely Worth it. The pixel art is so dense with detail, so soaked in dark religious imagery that it feels less like a game and more like a heretical illuminated manuscript that somehow got a Steam page. Bosses look like they were designed by someone who read the entire Bible, disagreed with all of it, and expressed their feelings through art. Extraordinary. Every frame drips with so much detail and intention that calling it "pixel art" feels like an insult. This is a moving painting. A cursed, beautiful, moving painting. [h3] ⚔️ Combat — ★★★★☆ [/h3] Here is my journey with Blasphemous combat: Week 1 — "this is pretty good." Week 2 — "okay the parry is actually insane." Week 3 — "I AM THE PENITENT ONE AND I FEAR NOTHING." The combat rewards patience and punishes greed in the most satisfying way possible. You are not here to spam attacks. You are here to be precise, deliberate, and penitent about every swing. The movement has a weight to it that some people call "Stiff" and I call "Intentional" — this man is carrying centuries of guilt on his shoulders and it shows. [h3] 📖 Lore & Story — ★★★★☆ [/h3] The storytelling strategy of this game is to throw you into the deep end of a lake made entirely of lore and whisper "figure it out, sinner." And somehow it WORKS. Every item description is a tiny short story. Every NPC interaction raises three new questions for every one it answers. I finished the game, got the true ending, and immediately opened a wiki. Incredible. Four stars. Would be confused again. [h3] 🎵 Soundtrack & Audio — ★★★★★ [/h3] I need you to understand that the Blasphemous OST lives in my head rent free and I have never once tried to evict it. It is haunting, it is beautiful, it is the auditory equivalent of kneeling on cold stone floor in a cathedral at 3am. Composer José Miguel Mora Iriarte cooked so hard with this one. Full five stars. No notes. No notes whatsoever. [h3] 🗺️ Exploration & Level Design — ★★★★☆ [/h3] Cvstodia does not hold your hand. It does not give you a map legend. It looks you dead in the eyes and says "explore or perish, pilgrim." And somehow every dead end, every hidden wall, every backtrack feels completely intentional — like the world was designed by someone who genuinely wanted you to get a little lost and love every second of it. Docking one star because a couple of transitions feel like they were designed on a Friday afternoon. Minor. Truly minor. I forgive them. --- [h3] VERDICT: [/h3] 100%. Every collectible. Every ending. Every secret. I have penitenced harder than most people ever will and I feel genuinely spiritually enriched by it. Blasphemous is a masterpiece wearing a grotesque mask — and once you look past the mask you realize the face underneath is also grotesque but in a completely beautiful way. If you like Metroidvanias, punishing combat, lore that makes your brain hurt in a good way, and pixel art that makes you question your life choices for not becoming an artist — buy it immediately. [h3] Buy it. Play it. Suffer beautifully. You're welcome. [/h3] [h2] ✅ RECOMMENDED — The Miracle is real and it made this game. [/h2] [h1] OVERALL: ★★★★½ [/h1]

Depois de alguns anos, finalmente vim fazer a análise do que se tornou o meu metroidvania favorito de todos os tempos. Blasphemous apresenta um universo destruído e sombrio, onde uma entidade conhecida como O Milagre pune justamente aqueles que demonstram a maior devoção. Em vez de recompensar a fé, ele transforma a culpa de seus seguidores em maldições agonizantes eternizadas em seu ser ou em criaturas grotescas, perpetuando um ciclo de sofrimento infinito. É um conceito perturbador, mas executado de forma brilhante. O que mais me marcou foi a forma como o jogo utiliza a cultura espanhola e o catolicismo barroco para construir sua identidade. Essa inspiração está presente em praticamente tudo, seja da arquitetura aos personagens, dos inimigos aos chefes, e até na maneira como a história é contada. Poucos jogos conseguem criar uma atmosfera tão única e, sinceramente, eu adoraria ver mais obras explorando essa temática com o mesmo cuidado que Blasphemous. Os cenários também merecem destaque. Cada região transmite a sensação de que aquele mundo já foi próspero, mas acabou consumido pela influência do Milagre. Ruínas, igrejas, montanhas e cemitérios retratam sua própria história sem precisar de muitas palavras, enquanto a direção de arte em pixel art transforma cada área em um lugar memorável e perturbador. As cutscenes também são um espetáculo à parte, todas produzidas em pixel art e mantendo a identidade visual do jogo do início ao fim. Mais do que um simples metroidvania, Blasphemous constrói e aborda um mundo que desperta curiosidade a cada passo. Explorar Cvstodia não é apenas encontrar novos caminhos ou melhorias, mas tentar compreender os mistérios de uma terra devastada pela culpa e pela fé com as promessas de um falso deus. Outro aspecto que merece muitos elogios é a trilha sonora. Carlos Viola fez um trabalho excepcional, criando composições que combinam perfeitamente com cada região e cada chefe, reforçando a atmosfera melancólica e grandiosa do jogo. Minha única reclamação fica por conta da movimentação do Penitente, que em muitos momentos parece extremamente engessada. Às vezes ele simplesmente se recusava a agarrar numa escada ou na quina de uma plataforma, o que acaba por resultar em mortes muito frustrantes. No geral, Blasphemous é uma obra marcada pela culpa, pela fé e pelo sofrimento. Sua narrativa, direção de arte, trilha sonora e ambientação se complementam de forma brilhante, criando uma experiência única e difícil de esquecer. Além disso, o jogo ainda recebeu três DLCs gratuitas que expandem a aventura com novas missões, chefes e um novo desfecho para a história. Recomendo fortemente para qualquer fã de metroidvanias ou para quem procura um jogo com uma identidade verdadeiramente única. Nota final: 9,6/10 OBS: Se você pretende platinar o jogo, saiba que será necessário concluí-lo mais de uma vez. E sim existem conquistas perdíveis, então vale a pena ficar atento para não precisar repetir uma campanha apenas por causa de um único objetivo ou item (acabou acontecendo comigo...) .

It annoying that the cloud saves on steam deck don't work on pc. They should not be fully verifying games with compatability issues.

Seems good at start but after a long time i realize im playing this out of spite. Most bosses i clear on first try but keep dying to stun locks, crappy jump platforming with enemies who either oneshot you or push you on spikes to die instantly or into the abyss to die instantly. With this in mind I spent most of the time doing runbacks. All equpiment i find exploring doesnt really do anytning you need and you can keep progressing without it making exploring or finding stuff feeling wasteful as you dont need any abilities or powers to progress. Annoying and irritating game and i recommend trying other metroidvanias/actionplatformers.

Genuinely ♥♥♥♥ and ball torture simulator. This game is BRUTAL. If you enjoy that kind of game then have fun with it. But no fast travel around means you have to manually backtrack to EVERY location unless you unlock something thats SUPER expensive. The music, and designs of everyhting are amazing, but honestly I despise this game. I played Hollowknight and many many other metroidvanias but this one takes the cake as the most annoying to play. Genuinely feels like a chore, but hey maybe you love that.

Almost gave up on this one. After playing for couple hours it just clicked. The artstyle is my fav. The boss fights were challenging, the hardest was for me the second boss and the final boss. I love the platforming. It was defineity challenging. What i hate most is back tracking. Thankfully there is shrine near the boss fights otherwise this would be hell. Beside that i dont really know the story, for this kind of game...gameplay comes first so i really dont pay attention or read lores but they do got cool cutscense and dialogues. Overall i had fun. 85% completed 4/5

Blasphemous is a marriage of Castlevania and Dark Souls, and often times it reaches the same highs as those two IP. But, it also hits the same lows, sometimes even more so than the inspiration it borrows from. I haven't been this frustrated playing a Metroidvania in a long time, on one hand you get visceral combat, arguably the most gorgeous pixel art ever put into a game, and a hauntingly macabre world on the brink of total desolation with the Miracle to blame. The music is stellar, the character models and sprite work make Hotline Miami seem amateurish, and the gorey and brutal combat feels punchy and impactful. But my God, this game doesn't want you to have fun with it. At times, I felt like the developer actively hated me. 1) Fast Travel is locked behind a 20,000 Tears tithe at the church. Prior to saving up this obscene amount, you have to rely on a paltry handful of portals dotted around the map. This game came out post Dark Souls THREE, by then FROM figured out nobody wants to do Lost Izalith-tier runbacks when the game arbitrarily kills them with Bed of Chaos' trash hitboxes. Blasphemous has no excuse for how long, excruciating and tiresome many of the runbacks are, which even when you can afford the upgrade like I did around the halfway mark, it doesn't take away the sting of having to run all that way back to collect your Guilt because you got stunlocked by gas and fell into a pit of spikes that instakilled you. 2) Enemy design is the best and worst of this game. You get some really simple but effective gimmicks like flying enemies, stationary hazards, a Bell-wearing enemy that behaves like a raging bull. All good. What isn't good is the f*cking retarded ♥♥♥♥ like a corridor full of projectile spamming enemies with ghosts that fade in and out along the way that chip damage you on contact with no way for you to jump out of the way because their sprites are so tall. The amount of deaths I had to being stunlocked, knocked down and then continuously tick-damaged as the Penitent one fails to get up made me want to strangle myself like David Carradine, minus the orgasm. 3) Crucial upgrades are many times too far out of the way of the beaten path, and worse yet, you only have 3 of these crucial upgrade slots at one time. There's no need for this. All the abilities are absolutely necessary especially in end and post-game. We should have them autoequipped as passives the moment we find them. 4) No auto-marking of collectibles you pass by. This is QoL you got in ORI in 2014, Blasphemous has no excuse. 5) Many questlines are vague and obtuse just because Dark Souls is vague and obtuse. You don't need to copy EVERYTHING Fromsoft does, especially when their quest design is one of the worst aspects of their games. I got all the items I needed for the true ending by playing normally, but turns out I killed a certain boss too early, so I'm locked out of getting a key that allows me to use those key items to get a Mea Culpa upgrade and access to said ending. 6) I had to play this with a controller about 1/3 of the way through. The game, despite being in full screen, does not lock your cursor to the window and if you play KB/M you are GOING to end up clicking off the screen, especially mid-jump and end up dying. This is terrible for any PC game and shouldn't be the norm any year past 2012 when PC ports started to get refined. If I have to use a controller for a non hack-n-slash like DMC/NG, you failed. Is Blasphemous worth your time? Absolutely. It has a breadth of unlocks, cool bosses (except the Snake, that boss is awful), great music, brutal combat that feels like DOOM married to a Priest on a crusade against wretched Abomination, and a real feeling of progression as you play. Would I replay it again? Maybe sometime in the future. Just be prepared to be very, very frustrated. The game itself is easy. I cleared most bosses on my first attempts, but traversal with the gank squads of stunlocks and chip damage are so bad I'd rather play Hollow Knight when it gets bad, and I think that game is the most Epstein-coded trash out there. Ninja Gaiden 2 on Warrior dookies all over this game's difficulty, and not one time in that game did I feel like I was devoid of any control over my victories and defeats. 7/10. I don't know anything about the sequel and hope it addresses the majority of these issues.

[h1] Brutal, artístico e extremamente prazeroso. [/h1] Blasphemous possui [u] identidade[/u], jogabilidade gostosa, desafio moderado, arte incrível e animações belíssimas. A história, como "todo souls like de qualidade", é interpretativa e difícil de ser compreendida em sua totalidade. No mais, metroidvania+souls like de extrema qualidade. Recomendadíssimo e platinado.

Before I played this game, I had a small wee wee, no friends, no girlfriend, depression and absolutely no will to live. None of these things have changed, but the game is pretty good.

[h3]Overall I'd give this an 8/10.[/h3] I've completed the 100% achievement, finished the speedrun achievement, and am currently cleaning up the last few achievements for full Steam completion. That is to say I enjoyed the game enough to go for completion. As someone who comes more from Souls games than Metroidvanias, I ended up enjoying Blasphemous a lot more than I expected. I'd easily recommend it to both fans of Metroidvanias and Souls-likes. What stood out most to me was the very detailed world design. The darker, gory tone of this game was conveyed really well through the art and sound design. I also really liked the emphasis on exploration. The map felt surprisingly open, with multiple paths available throughout different stages of the game. I loved finding new items and abilities that opened previously blocked routes, encouraging backtracking and rewarding exploration. That's obviously a staple of the genre, but Blasphemous does it well. On my first blind playthrough I was constantly impressed by how the map kept expanding, and every area felt visually distinct. Some of my favourite moments were reaching the upper parts of the world and getting glimpses of the kingdom stretching out below. Combat feels like a 2D take on a Souls-like. The parry system stayed engaging throughout the game, and I enjoyed experimenting with different prayers. Some of the spells felt incredibly powerful, not just mechanically/gameplay wise but also because of their visual and sound design. The bosses were also consistently memorable, with unique designs and enough variety to keep encounters feeling fresh throughout the whole game. There were a few gimmicky fights, and Tres Angustias in NG+ nearly drove me insane with how often I got knocked into the fire, but overcoming those frustrating moments made the victories feel even more satisfying. Progression felt well balanced. By the end of the game my character was noticeably stronger than at the start, but upgrades were generally incremental rather than game-breaking. Collecting all the rosary beads, relics, prayers, sword hearts, bones, and cherubs was a fun scavenger hunt on a first playthrough, although it's not something I'd personally want to repeat from scratch. Thankfully NG+ lets you keep most of the important collectibles. As a completionist, I found the achievement list relatively forgiving. If you're willing to do a couple of playthroughs, getting everything isn't too bad. That said, I do think most players aiming for 100% will eventually need a guide. By the end of my blind run I only had a small percentage left to find, but tracking down some of the remaining hidden rooms without outside help would have taken a very long time. My biggest criticism is the fast travel system. It wasn't immediately obvious to me how to unlock it, and I spent a significant portion of the game assuming it simply didn't exist. I would have preferred a clearer introduction to that mechanic. The map could also feel a little clunky to navigate with a controller when selecting fast travel locations. One final thing worth mentioning is that the native Linux version worked flawlessly for me from start to finish, which is always nice to see.