Blasphemous 2 (Switch Version)

Last Autumn, I played Blasphemous 1 for the first time and fell in love with it. I've played plenty of metroidvanias with soulslike elements before, but that game adhered the most firmly to the FromSoftware formula. I was won over by the rhythm of the hack and slash combat, the steep penalties for death, and the grim setting that I once saw described as "Christpunk" in a hardcoregaming101 zine. My only complaints about the game were all things I figured could be addressed in a proper follow-up, so finding out there was a sequel thrilled me. I was tempted to jump directly into this next game, but I had seen some concerning reddit posts about the game (and it's DLC) having numerous bugs that many players saw as unacceptable. But by the time June rolled around, the game and it's DLC were on sale for a very respectable price, so I made the leap of faith to find out for myself if it was a worthy successor or not. Thankfully, while there are some bugs that have yet to be patched out and a somewhat noticeable lack of polish, it's still a great game if you're capable of looking past those cons.

The core of the game is very similar to the first one, which is by no means a bad thing. Set an undisclosed number of years after the original, you once again are put in the shoes of the Penitent One in a wretched world inspired by Spanish Catholic art. The Miracle, a worshipped force that seems to randomly and indiscriminately bestow suffering and cataclysm upon the inhabitants of Cvstodia, has returned, and as before, you are the only one who stands in the way of its revival. The game is also structured similarly; the early game is spent getting the macguffins needed to open up the rest of the map, where the game then becomes more nonlinear. To accomplish your goals, you'll need to complete tricky platforming challenges, slay hundreds of enemies, collect dozens of well-hidden items, finish NPC questlines, and conquer bosses that are sometimes large enough to fill the entire screen.

The first big noticeable change is combat - while you will once again balance attacking, dodging, parrying, and casting prayers, you now have three weapons available at your disposal, instead of the sole, ever-reliable Mea Culpa from the first game. You have your pick of a weighty, slow mace that deals heavy damage but is unable to parry, a speedy pair of rapiers that are weak but let you rack up combos quickly, and a sword that sits somewhere between the two. Each weapon also has gauges that increase when you attack enemies that can add an element to your attacks once they're full - fire for the mace, lightning for the rapiers, and mystical for the sword. Lastly, each weapon also has an ability that is necessary for traversal - the mace can ring bells that create liquid platforms for you to step on, striking mirrors with the rapiers will teleport you in a given direction, and the sword can destroy barriers when you plummet from a high ledge to the ground. At the beginning of the game, you are given the opportunity to briefly experiment with each weapon, then choose your favorite. Fear not, however, as you'll find the remaining two weapons early in your quest, so you won't be stuck with just one for long. On top of that, each weapon also has its own skill tree that can be progressed by earning Marks of Martyrdom from killing enemies or opening chests. Overall, I found these weapons were balanced surprisingly well and loved switching between them as the situation called for it. The only punishment for swapping weapons is that your gauges will deplete, which feels fair. I'm sure there will be one weapon in particular players will gravitate towards the most, but you might be surprised by how useful they can each be in certain circumstances. This was definitely one of my favorite new additions.

The second big change is one that will surely have most players breathing a sigh of relief - bottomless pits and spikes no longer instakill. Hallelujah! These mechanics certainly have their place in gaming, but in Blasphemous, it felt needlessly punishing. The game was already plenty hard enough, but the game was littered with difficult platforming sections, and worse yet, fighting enemies on narrow ledges would often lead to you getting knocked off to your doom, even if you parried and dodged when appropriate. Now you can attempt hard sections over and over with the only penalty being a lost portion of health. This is a boon, because oftentimes, your last save point could be quite a way away, so it didn't always feel worth it to try for hard-to-reach collectibles. Elsewhere, there's other appreciated upgrades that improve your experience. You can equip two prayers at once, letting you experiment more with your loadouts, and there's a pretty diverse assortment to choose from. One of the first prayers you'll most likely stumble across acts as a fast travel to the game's hub, the City of the Blessed Name, where a large number of helpful NPCs congregate. This makes confessing (to purge your accumulated guilt, which increases every time you die without collecting the guilt fragment you leave behind, and decreases the amount of fervor you can use to cast prayers) much easier than in the first game. You still collect tears of atonement, which acts as your primary form of currency, but it's no longer used to upgrade your abilities; its sole purpose is for buying items or services from NPCs. You can also still equip rosary beads, which give you various boons. Completely new for this game is the altarpiece of favors, where you can equip figures you either find throughout the world, or from a sculpting NPC in the city if you give him mementos. These figures can only be changed at select locations on the map, and can give even better boons than rosary beads. Plus, you can unlock up to eight slots, and you can get further boosts from pairing harmonious figures together, which makes it a lot of fun to test different combinations. Lastly, by finding sisters behind invisible walls on your journey, you can earn upgrades to the save points, including the option to fast travel between them, which is a godsend.

I don't know how big this game's map is compared to the first ones, but it definitely feels bigger. The world of Cvstodia is sprawling, and with the exception of Mother of Mothers (which is notably different from the first game), all the locations are new. Even without the DLC, there's over twenty areas to explore, some ranging from short transitional levels to vast labyrinths. As typical of the genre, you will spend quite a bit of time backtracking, but there's almost always something you can reach with your latest abilities to make the trip feel worthwhile instead of repetitive. The inclusion of markers you can place on your map is extremely useful to keep track of anything noteworthy that you can't access yet. Even late game abilities will have plenty of uses throughout the world, opening up more areas. While you'll definitely want to get the save point warp upgrade and the prayer to return to the city as soon as you can, there are plentiful shortcuts and designated warp rooms that make it relatively easy to get to where you need to go. The unique aesthetic of the first game still shines here, but perhaps because it's a sequel and we've already been introduced to this world, it doesn't feel quite as prevalent. I got DS-era Castlevania vibes overall from the varied environments, which you won't see me complaining about. In general, the levels felt more distinct overall, and several of them rely on a specific ability in particular for traversal or have a gimmick of sorts. While the word 'gimmick' inspires fear in many a gamer, I don't think any of them were bad. The late game area of Two Moons is perhaps the most Castlevania-inspired location, and while it doesn't quite stick the landing, I thought it was a nice change of pace. Another area has select walls that wrap you around to the other side of the screen, like the original Mario Bros arcade game. Elsewhere, you'll find a dense tower filled with fiery foes, abandoned streets with few survivors, a thorn-infested forest, and desert ruins that allow you to change the level of sand. It's a diverse series of locales, and it was a treat to progress through them, wondering what could possibly be in store for you in the next room.

Unfortunately, while the combat is fun and the levels are interesting, the enemies you face are a letdown. A few are repeat foes from the first game, and I think they did a good job of picking which ones to return, but some of the new ones are a bit less inspired. Some enemies are exclusive to certain biomes, while others will turn up again and again, and considering the amount of backtracking you'll be doing, you'll probably get sick of them by the end of your adventure. There's three in particular - all elemental variants of a mace-wielding titan - that you'll be facing quite a bit and get old quickly. There's also a handful of enemies that are stationery and deal damage from faraway, then teleport once they're damaged, which I found to be more annoying than actually difficult. Perhaps worst of all, the executions have been significantly downgraded. When you hit the displayed action command that pops up occasionally when an enemy is low health, you'll perform a gory finishing move on them. They were never as over the top as, say, Mortal Kombat's fatalities, but there were a great many of them to witness in the base game, and it was rewarding to see your vanquished foe sliced vertically in half, or their bones dramatically divorced from their flesh. Here, it seems that only a few enemies actually have unique execution animations, with the vast majority just being consumed by a thicket of thorns and splattering blood, which isn't very exciting by any means. I can understand why there might be less unique executions overall, primarily due to the weapon-changing mechanic so they can't rely on whatever the player has equipped at the time, but there's still a lot of creative ways to finish foes using their own implements, for example. It may be a relatively small detail in the grand scheme of things, but it's very lackluster.

Sadly, that's still one more complaint I have about the enemies themselves, and it's the one that irritated me the most. Many of the enemies simply have too much health. Sure, the early game monsters will go down pretty quickly, as to be expected, but as you get further and further into the game, you'll find yourself frustrated by how many blows it takes to subdue one. It feels like a grind, particularly when you don't have the means to cross a room without taking them down. Even with my weapons abilities maxed, I was still shocked by the number of attacks needed to kill some of them worst offenders. The bosses, at least, are fantastic, often having multiple phases to their fights that will give you a false sense of triumph. While they don't quite hit the high of the first games, they're still glorious fun, even the ones that aren't as impressive visually. The NPCs are also fascinating, many of them afflicted by the miracle with some very cool body horror or trauma. Their quests are mostly optional, but usually have worthwhile rewards, and some of them (particularly the father you'll find in the later portion of the game) will leave a huge impact on the player. The plot isn't quite as enthralling as the first game, but is still fairly good, although the cutscenes are no longer pixel animations, which is a bit of a drag, as they were gorgeous and used to great effect. The music, at least, is just as good, full of Spanish guitar noodling and melancholy.

As I mentioned, the game has both free and paid DLC, which was included in my bundle, and... It's a mixed bag. On one hand, the rewards were exciting enough I wanted to 100% complete it, it opens up a couple new areas and significantly expands on previous levels, some nearly doubling in size, and introduces new enemies and a couple of vicious boss fights, as well as platforming challenges. On the other hand, the paid DLC is pricy if you buy it at full price ($12), a couple of the new elements actually make the base game worse, and remember all those bugs I mentioned Redditors were discussing? It seems a great many of them were part of the DLC campaign specifically, and though I'm certainly hopeful they've all been patched out, releasing a game in this state is unacceptable, because of one specific glitch in particular...

But let's back up a bit. The two primary new areas in the DLC are a snowscape beneath which is a sprawling labyrinth, and a set of floating citadels that require the usage of a large crow to travel between. The former is reached through normal means, while the latter has the crows dotted across the map, so you'll unlock one piece at a time. The questline follows an NPC who grants you keys to open up doors that previously didn't exist, culminating in multiple boss fights that will put your skills and reflexes to the test. Look, since the official DLC page for the game is pretty upfront about it, I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that the reward is the Mea Culpa, the weapon from the first game, but it's even better now. There are some new abilities that make it the ultimate weapon, although there will still be situations where you will favor the others in your arsenal. There's a new item required to upgrade its power that can only be found in challenges that are based heavily around platforming, as well as another type of collectible that can be turned in for another reward... and that's where the worst of the bugs comes into play. Until this point, I had only experienced a couple of infrequent graphic glitches, and one or two game freezes, where the game just never finished loading. They were annoying, but I could almost forgive them. Not this one, though. Due to a major oversight, it's possible to lock yourself out of earning the reward from this sidequest if you hand the items over in the wrong order. I couldn't find any information on whether this was patched yet, or if the developers had ever even responded to it in the first place, but rest assured, I made sure to wait until I had all 20 of them in my inventory just to make sure I didn't get locked out.

Now, assuming those glitches were completely patched out or never existed in the first place, there's sadly some parts where the DLC falters. Firstly, it brings new enemies, which you'd think would be a good thing since I had just earlier expressed frustration at the lack of variety, but most of them fall victim to having way too much health once again. The worst of them all is a ghoul who hovers across the room and swings a lantern at you that has a deceptively large hitbox, making dealing with it a pain. And, unfortunately, this enemy (as well as a couple of the others) isn't restricted to just the new areas; it turns up in the base game, too, actively making your quest more annoying. If you're like me and buy the DLC bundled with the main game, you'll also find yourself suddenly hitting major bumps in difficulty without warning, because you won't have any way of knowing if an area you find yourself in is one of the DLC additions. To be blunt, I found the base game to be easier than the previous one, though I had just finished Dark Souls shortly before booting this one up, so I may have just 'got good' by now. But the DLC really threw me for a loop, and not always in a way that felt fair. Still, I liked the environments, the platforming sections were fun now that you don't have to worry about instakill falls, and the Mea Culpa is a treat to use. If you're on the fence about getting the DLC, I recommend playing through the base game first, then deciding whether or not you're hungry for more challenge.

Rating Blasphemous 2 is hard, because there's a lot to love about this game if you're a fan of soulslikes or metroidvanias, but there's just enough blemishes that it sours the experience. In some ways, it's better than the first game, but it's disappointing knowing that most of the issues I have could be fixed if only it had some more time in the oven, with just a bit more polish. Still, I'm glad I got the game while it was on sale for around $10, and at that price, I definitely think it's worth it. Even at full value, I wouldn't regret the time I spent with this game, truthfully, as it really is great, it's just a shame it was released in this state. Altogether, I put over 30 hours into the game to 100% it, using guides to aid me towards the last few hours, and you could probably beat it in half that time if you're just going for an any% playthrough. If it weren't for the bugs and all the blemishes I mentioned, this could have been a 9.5 for me! Alas...

Final Rating: 8.0