Blasphemous

Ive played through the story once now. And with a broken heart I have to say that Blaspemous did not meet my expectations. While the story is super interesting and something I quickly got invested in, the combat leaves to be desired, more specifically the bosfights. Sadly they feel unpolished and very predictable. Every boss has one gimmick which gets overused and quite quickly boring. Which led to the boss fights feeling super unrewarding especially the final boss. Now i have only gotten one of the endings so far so perhaps i still get wowed further down the road. Another fail in my book is the map traversal. Not being able to fast travel from wherever to Teleport stations feels very tidious. Especially since you do not get any real hints on where to go or unlock specific items. So roaming around just to maybe find a new plattform thats been revealed, feels more like a task than fun. I really wanted to enjoy this game especially since i cannot praise this games art style enough, but in the end it left much to be desired for me personally

Mundane stunlock mobs that'll doggystyle you into instadeath spikes with some of the clunkiest controls I've ever touched. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Personally too clunky and tedious, the boss fights are great though.

This game hits the mark on every quality I like to see in a Souls-like. The setting and tone of the story is dark and unsettling. The parry and dodge system, while nothing revolutionary, is engaging enough to keep combat interesting throughout. The the enemy variety is rather impressive, and the boss battles were, for the most part, well designed. Where this game really captivated me, was its art style. From the enemy design to the world around you, every new area I entered, I was enthralled by the marvellous design unfolding before me. While not as difficult as other games in this genre, this is a must play for any fans of Souls-likes.

great gameplay and interesting lore, religious extremism and the glorification of suffering is beautifully portrayed in this game

I got the game for under $5 during a sale, and it took me roughly 20 hours to get (nearly) 100% (I think I'm at 98% right now, some stuff is locked for me because there's an ending that was added alongside the last update, and you CAN get locked out of it. boooooooo). This is also not counting NG+, which has its own new content and bosses, as well as the time trial things. There's a lot here, and a dollar-to-hour value system has this game somewhere between "Solid" to "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥." Obviously, time isn't everything. Anyone can make an enormous walking sim and call it Crimson Desert, but only a really great game will actually feel worth your time. Blasphemous is one of those games. It just nails everything, top to bottom. The art and world design, the story, the level design and progression, the music JESUS ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ CHRIST THE MUSIC. Everything is done with a level of polish and care rarely seen in AAA games, much less indie games. It's an honest to god rollercoaster from the first cutscene to the very end of the game, and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ was I seated and locked in for the whole playthrough.

The game looks beautiful and the exploration is fun, but combat and platforming are garbage. A lot of the moving platforms make you wait around for the cycles to line up and a lot of the bosses just spam you with random ♥♥♥♥. Combat against normal enemies is literally just waiting for them to attack, so you can parry them, since attacking them normally just takes too much time. Trash mobs shouldn't need 7 hits to kill while posing 0 danger to the player.

I love going through my penitence and dying over and over until I cry tears of blood 10/10 game :D