Blasphemous - In Review

Imagine for a moment the most divine picture you can. No doubt you’d be envisioning objects such as a holy grail, or a celestial group of beings whose mere appearance opens the heavens, or maybe a spontaneous miracle or intervention in a time of great need. Now imagine this as what we would consider the opposite of beautiful, a parallel universe where suffering in physically tortuous ways is considered penance for one’s own guilt. A world where the general ideas of what is considered a miracle are in fact something much more extreme, in order to help attone those who wish it upon themselves. You may now be able to visualise some of the unique ideas behind Blasphemous.

This is a rather satisfying largely combat-based adventure, that makes you feel every strike and parry. With the enemies far from being crawlers as in other games of the same genre, it throws you straight into the deep end against a backdrop of some of the most glorious sprite work to grace your screen, with imagery that is certainly not for the faint of heart. It’s time for us to take our pilgrimage through the beautiful yet grotesque world of Cvstodia.

Arise From the Pit

It all starts with a ritual that manifests all sides of the soul, in a somewhat nebulous start to the game. The main protagonist (perhaps?) rises from a pile of corpses, eerily similar to themself. You’ll find your character referred to across the land as the Penitent One. You make your way forward through the first area; Brotherhood of the Silent Sorrow. The immediate aspect you will notice is the astonishing artwork. You have a vast hand-painted, yet pixelated backdrop that creates quite the foreboding landscape.

Heading into the next area, the corpses continue and you are met by your first opponent which just so happens to be a mini boss. You have only just awoken and played for a few minutes learning how to jump and slide, and are already face-to-face with the Warden of the Silent Sorrow. This is a baptism of fire and although you may perish a few times, this will awaken your senses. Healing using biliary flasks, and reviving using your nearest prie dieu (I still had to Google the spelling of that), you finally defeat your quarry. The Penitent One fills his helmet with the blood of his fallen foe and sits it over his head. Heading further still you come across a character who will narrate at various points by the name of Deogracias. You learn that your character’s penance is that of silence, which explains the blood-filled helmet (and also means your character will not speak for the duration of the game rather tidily). You are tasked with undergoing three humiliations to progress through a sacred door. By the way, if you are having trouble following any of the terms used in the game, bear in mind this will continue to be a common theme. While highly immersive, you may be prone to forgetting things on occasion.

Road to Albero

We head onwards and immediately notice that this stretch feels a lot like the Castlevania franchise. Here, the smaller enemies start to present themselves. Combat is generally great, with a fair few options to take down your foes. There are a few types of enemy present to practise attacking from the right angle, using low attacks and practising the highly satisfying parry counterattack, which requires good timing. You can slash in nearly every direction - except downwards. Coming from Hollow Knight, this may have thrown me a few times. Sliding can be used to enter small gaps or dodge away or even through some opponents, which is really well executed for the most part. My favourite move is found slightly later, where you thrust through your enemies with your blade while sliding to take them out, even from across the room. Makes you feel like a badass when pulled off. 

If you’re a bit lucky, your foes may enter into a stunned state where you will be able to then perform an execution. These are satisfyingly gory and varied, not unlike fatalities from the Mortal Kombat series or glory kills from the rebooted Doom franchise. It is worth mentioning though that these have sometimes resulted in being hit by another opponent or falling down a hole due to the animation playing out. A bit of care is needed for these. 

You have a few aspects to consider in combat. First is most obviously your health or vitality. A blue bar also measures your fervor, used for special moves mainly. There is also the number of biliary flasks. You can use one of these at any time to heal by smashing one over your head, which takes a short time to execute. If you find yourself lacking in fervor, you can always hold the secondary move button to slice yourself. This sacrifices a little vitality; a hail Mary for when you need that little bit extra to pull off that move. Should you perish at any point, a guilt fragment is left behind which keeps a bit of vitality and also reduces the fervour bar a bit until collected again.

When you reach the end of the first stretch you enter the central hub, a small sanctuary called Albero. You will notice more and more as you return from your adventures that this appears to be the only place focussed on healing rather than penance. It is here you find a few rooms, starting with an altar. Here you are able to purchase combat upgrades using any tears of atonement (the in-game currency) received from slicing enemies. You learn of your weapon’s name, the guilty blade known as Mea Culpa. “The virtue of Mea Culpa hath ascended” will appear after a haunting animation of handing over the blade to the altar statue. Once again, sometimes the game may get lost in the lore and doesn’t explain some terms. It took me until I found a few altars to realise that as well as increasing the amount of upgrades available, my blade also got more powerful with each one found.

Into the Beyond

It’s now time to venture out deeper into the world of Cvstodia and progress our mission. We’ve already covered how beautifully illustrated the backdrop is, and this carries with the areas you now have access to. For example, you have a basement area, altitude-pushing snowy peaks and a rather large almost canyon-like area. There are also a number of others. 

For the unversed, my recommendation is to first travel to the basement area; Mercy Dreams. This will introduce you to various traps, combat and agility tests. If not already that is. Particularly in this game, you have the freedom to choose which path you take first, as there are many areas even before the sacred door. This is a good time to talk about the dexterity of the character; the general agility of the character is great in most cases, if slightly awkward in others.

While exploring, unlike many other adventures you can perform ledge grabs. On the surface this seems like a good idea in case of a misjudged leap, or maybe to accentuate those held breath moments. This can however cause a few problems during combat, which the game has in abundance. In the heat of battle your main instincts to get out of danger will be jumping or sliding, with the latter not always possible in the case of, say, a shielded foe. On accidental ledge grabs from a jump, you are left open as you cannot attack while hanging. 

Ladders are a welcome addition in any metroidvania and they perform their duty here; you can indeed ascend or descend comfortably. There are a number of issues here as well however; first is that you cannot slash or use any ranged moves to take out enemies that may be beside you. This means you need to jump off to slash and risk falling into potential unknowns. Like spikes for example. And unlike a game like Hollow Knight, you will die instantly if you are unfortunate enough to become impaled. This can be a regular annoyance when exploring, as each time it sets you back to your last prie dieu. And on occasion the guilt I left behind was on the spikes, meaning spending tears of atonement to resolve them as they were otherwise irretrievable. But going back to the ladders, there is another strange glitch whenever a flea-like enemy leaps into one or if you were to sword slam through one. In both cases, there is significant sticking.

Another annoyance initially is pitfalls, which also equate to instant death. You run into a lot of these in the altitude-pushing Graveyard of the Peaks. Again, there are other 2D adventures that simply place you back just before you took that jump, such as Guacamelee (another combat-based outing). In all fairness though, there is actually some clever reasoning behind this one. More on this later.

Trinkets & Curiosities

Each area on the map presents its own set of challenges, from inaccessible places to challenging boss fights. It stands to reason you will also come across some trinkets along the way to help out. And there are a lot more trinkets here than in most adventures.

Along the way you will pick up special moves, which are known as Prayers in game. You then have Relics which change the way the world is perceived, which helps in traversal. Rosary Beads are a set of abilities that can be combined in many ways to augment your character based on the amount of empty bead slots available. Quest Items are a mixed bag of curios such as keys and other items that could potentially be blessed to grant new abilities. Mea Culpa Hearts can be inserted one at a time as a sort of deal with the devil, usually making the blade stronger but at a cost. Abilities are, in a rather ambiguous manner, relating only to abilities that can be upgraded at the Mea Culpa altar. Collectibles throughout the playthrough are only bones, quite a perplexing name as it implies there are different kinds of items.

The way your inventory is laid out is imperative in any metroidvania. Ideally it would be something that is quick and easy to reference as the map tends to be quite large, and you have to remember where to go to make the most of new items or abilities. As such, you’d usually have two menus as a base; a map and your current abilities. Blasphemous handles this differently given its item mechanics, with a mixed level of execution. I’ll elaborate on this more.

All of the above menus are present in separate tabs, nice and clear to see in this way. The abilities (not just the ones under the abilities tab) are plentiful and provide some nice interactions. The rosary beads are not unlike Hollow Knight’s charms system; you will pick up more and be able to expand the string with rosary knots to combine more abilities. Relics are interesting in that they can alter the world; for instance one relic grants you the ability to fall through those pesky pitfalls and into other (sometimes secret) rooms below. However I would have liked to feel like it was the character doing this on occasion. An example is in another metroidvania; Axiom Verge. You can use a grapple to swing or fire an address beam (a bit like a pulsing ray gun) to glitch world blocks out in order to make them disappear and traverse through.

There are a lot of nice ideas here. However, when changing out rosary beads, mea culpa hearts, etc. the writing underneath each ability or item is a mixture of lore and function. To the game’s credit the lore is immersive and beautifully written, but this does mean that if you happen to forget what an ability or item does (which is often due to the sheer number of them), you have to re-read the entire passage to recall what does what. Making the lore entirely optional here for convenience would have been a better option. As well as this it’s difficult to know other important factors such as which items can be blessed or subtle hints as to which character accepts them, as this has not been written into the appropriate passages under key items.

Journey of Atonement

Let’s talk about the map for a moment, which is separate from the other menus. It marks out any prie dieu, altar, or any other point of interest automatically just like other adventures. I do feel however that the map in this game could have represented the topology of the landscape more like Hollow Knight or Axiom Verge 2 rather than squares, as each individual area can look quite similar throughout with the exception of boss fight stages. It usually fits in other more sci-fi metroidvanias rather well, but for some reason can throw you off here when trying to find that elusive trinket or character. 

This brings us onto our next issue; that non-player characters around the map do not mark themselves automatically for the most part. This is pretty critical here, as there are key items that require you to find the correct character to trade for abilities or purchase from (notably the merchant). It’s easy to get distracted initially as you are trying to comprehend what each character says and means, and the map marker function isn’t hinted at. By the time you realise you can use them it’s already too late and you will need to explore entire areas again to locate characters once more. As a side note, I will say that the characters are beautifully voiced. It honestly is a joy to the ears and I wanted to make sure to take it all in (I know there are text captions but still…).

While travelling through any world, the auditory experience is important for capturing the mood. Here the theme of music felt for me as having a Hispanic or Latin American feel. Considering the central hub is called Albero, this fits nicely. You have the pleasant guitar strums creating a sense of the area you are in. Only small catch to this is sometimes the music can feel repetitive across an area while exploring. A bit more evolution could be necessary here, although there are a few times where the boss' music and approaches to certain pinnacles in the adventure start to make your heart race. On a more visual note, I also feel that a bit more movement in the environment may be needed other than the enemies or crumbling platforms, whether it’s something like particle dust effects, tremors or small creatures flying off when you are near.

Now, we can’t talk about combat-based adventures without bosses. The bosses in this game are probably unlike most you have faced before in other games. In fact they are some of the most interesting designs I have seen personally since Okami. As an example, in one of these you are fighting a skeletal snake while there is a giant, blindfolded baby adorned with a crown of thorns who is constantly trying to grab you. Incidentally, if it does you get dismembered and predictably you are dead. Another is an exhumed emperor being held up by 5 pairs of hands. 

I’m happy to report that these boss battles are highly satisfying. The difficulty (or pinch) grows as the boss’ health lessens, more gradually than in most games. They do for the most part feel like they are trying to end you and that feeling when you finally vanquish them is not of relief but of elation. The only slight downside for me is that it may not always be clear when you can and can’t dodge through bosses, but this is slight and infrequent. If you are having trouble with a boss, there is a handy character next to the nearest prie dieu that will make your life easier should you accept their help. They will assist by recovering you if you hold out at low health for long enough. Boss battles are a great joy overall.

Summary

Blasphemous is brilliantly conceived and a great adventure through an otherwise tortured world. It is a feast of visual goodness with the outstanding and graphic art style. The combat is highly satisfying and permeated with rather gratifying fatality-style executions. And those boss fights, although there are more in other games, are memorable and highly enjoyable. Sometimes this is hampered by the game being a slave to the theme a little too much at times with the lore, which can obfuscate the objectives, the map or how your inventory is managed. The character’s agility in the environment can also conflict with combat, mainly with the ladders and ledges. Overall however, I can highly recommend this game and believe this is very much a journey worth taking on account of its unique view on the genre.