Blasphemous II Review
Blasphemous II is one of the best games I have played this year and I have to admit, I was surprised by just how hooked I became after playing for a mere 20 minutes of playtime.
Blasphemous II is a direct sequel to the original released back in 2019. Even though Blasphemous was recommended to me many times, I unfortunately, never picked it up. The good news is that you do not need to have played the first game to understand what is happening in Blasphemous II. The other piece of good news is this second title in the series has left me wanting more and I’m toying with the idea of picking up the first game as I write this!
Blasphemous II is an exploratory action-platformer with a heavy emphasis on backtracking and item collection, or simply a ‘Metroidvania’ as all the cool kids call it these days. We play as the Penitent One, whom is tasked with preventing the cursed rebirth of ‘The Miracle’. There’s a fair bit of lore if you take the time to read item descriptions and various letters you find through the lands of Cvstodia but the main motivation is putting a stop to ‘The Miracle’.
As the Penitent One awakens, we are given a brief tutorial and the option to choose from one of three unique weapons. While this initially left me feeling a tiny bit of decision paralysis, my mind was put to ease as the other two weapons unlocked a few hours into gameplay. Speaking of Gameplay, Blasphemous II is essentially a 2D Metroidvania leaning more toward the ‘Vania’ side of things and less on the Metroid.
The land of Cvstodia is pretty horrific and filled with a ton of brutal enemies that the Penitent One will have to cut their way through. There are a ton of systems in Blasphemous II which will help you guide the Penitent One across the various locales with the most important being the map. It’s the typical map you’d expect from all good Metroidvania-style games and that is no bad thing, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. As you explore more, more of the map gets filled in and each area is colour-coded making for easier distinction between different areas.
There’s an option to leave markers down on the map so you can easily remember a certain dead-end or an item just out of reach, Personally, I found the marker system to be a little cumbersome so I opted for committing everything to memory, for better or worse.
After the tutorial area, we end up at the City, this acts as a hub area and is pretty much the centre of the game’s world with various branching paths leading from it. In and around the city you will find various merchants and useful NPCs as well as our first Prie Dieu, an altar of sorts. As we progress through Blasphemous II we will find numerous of these altars and it’s worth resting at each as it fills the Penitent One’s health and fervour (for magic casting) and acts as a checkpoint when you eventually die, you’ll respawn right back at the last Prie Dieu you rested at. Upon death, you’ll accrue some guilt, which will, unfortunately, eat away at your fervour bar unless you decide to repent and confess your sins to an NPC in the hub area. This, unfortunately, is not free and gets quite expensive as you progress through the game, it’s a great system by can be a pain at times.
Speaking of Fervour, I need to discuss spells and chants. These are found throughout the game and can be used to damage enemies. Spells act similarly to subweapons in a Castlevania game usually being small projectiles that cost a little bit of your Fervour bar whereas Chants act more like an Item Crash dealing a large amount of damage but at a much greater cost.
The structure of Blapshemous II has an awful lot in common with a game like The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. You start tasked with killing three bosses which almost serves as an introduction to the game’s mechanics which in turn unlocks an additional five bosses to track down and fight. Only after defeating these 8 bosses will you be able to take on the game’s final bosses and they are a true step up in difficulty.
With all this boss talk, I’m slightly getting ahead of myself. Each map area pretty much has one or two bosses, usually deep within that particular level but getting there is the fun part. As I mentioned earlier, the Penitent One has access to three weapons, A large dagger-type weapon (Ruego Al Alba), twin rapier swords (Sarmiento & Centella) and what is essentially a large flaming mace (Verdicto). As you defeat enemies you’ll earn Marks of Martyrdom which can be spent on each weapon’s skill tree meaning the further you get ingame, the more Marks and more powerful your arsenal will become.
Certain areas will be locked off until you find weapons and abilities with each weapon having its ability to aid the Penitent One, the Ruego Al Alba has a downwards thrust ability that can be used to destroy barriers, Sarmiento & Centella allow for brief teleportation between mirrors and Verdicto can be used to chime the various bells scattered throughout Blasphemous II which allow temporary platforms to be formed.
Later in the game, these weapons skills often need to be used in combination to solve puzzles and progress through some of the levels. They can be pretty challenging also and I’ll be the first to admit some of these puzzles took me more than ten attempts before I was quick enough to perform the precise weapon switching mid-air.
In the second half of the game, beating bosses can slightly alter the terrain or make new areas available to explore, this feels really natural and is nicely done. Blasphemous II offers many systems to help the Penitent One along the way with the most prominent one being the Altarpiece of Favours.
The Altarpiece of Favours is essentially a system for letting you equip various buffs and load-outs. You start out with two slots out of a potential eight and can insert various figures that can be found or purchased from some of the game’s various NPC Merchants.
Each figure offers incremental improvements to the Penitent One such as an additional 10% base damaged when using melee weapons or a 25% increase in the window to block and attack etc.
These upgrades become vital to your success later on and give you a great deal of flexibility in building the perfect loadout.
Two figures from the same family will slightly increase the effects if placed next to each other, a 10% buff may become a 15% for example and it becomes quite fun figuring out what suits your playstyle the best.
Additional slots are purchased with Mark of Martyrdom and they are well worth the cost.
Rosaries are another system with you eventually upgrade to hold more beads. Equipped beads offer various protections such as reduced damage to certain elements etc. These can be increased at an NPC in exchange for a rosary knot which are hidden throughout the lands.
The beads themselves are a common puzzle or challenge reward and often you’ll be locked in a room with three to five waves of enemies to best before you can claim the bead.
Healing capacity can be increased both in the total number of heals and potency by providing rare items usually locked behind a boss or a challenge room. The same goes for your Fervour bar, you just need to track down the relevant NPC and offer the upgrade items.
On top of all these systems, you’ll find various ‘Sisters’ hidden through the game. Find enough sisters and you’ll be able to unlock permanent abilities at the Prie Dieu. They are quite well hidden, usually behind an invisible wall. Later on in the game, you may stumble across an item that can aid you slightly in finding them.
The presentation of Blasphemous II is top-notch, the pixel art style is great and it looks even better in motion. Sprites have many frames of animation and are really well-designed. The environments are varied and distinctive from each other and the game features some of the best parallax effects I have ever seen in a 2D game.
Bosses are usually massive and quite the spectacle all backed by a great soundtrack and rather good voice acting. I can’t say enough good things about Blasphemous II really, however, nothing is perfect and there are a few things that did bug me slightly.
The animated cut scenes are not visually appealing to me and I would have much preferred if they used a different style more in keeping with the game as they come across as slightly odd-looking and a little jarring.
I often found that Penitent One would automatically grab onto a ledge as I was trying to drop to an area below, not a big deal really but this happen frequently throughout the whole game.
Enemies often have the ability to knock back the Penitent One sending them off-screen to the previous room, This has the unfortunate effect of resetting that enemy’s health bar and can be very frustrating, especially against some of the game’s more tanky foes.
My last gripe is that the best ability in the game is unlocked literally moments before the final boss. This may be great if you have more exploring to do but by that point, I had already uncovered 99% of the map according to the in-game map.
In terms of length, Blasphemous II took me 26 hours to complete, with the last 4 being endless attempts at a particular late-game boss. My save file was showing 95% completion at the end of my playthrough so there’s probably another couple of hours of tracking down collectables to reach 100%. Overall I think this is a great length for this type of game and it doesn’t outstay its welcome.
Throughout my playthrough of Blasphemous II, I am glad to report I did not encounter a single crash and the game ran beautifully which seems to sadly be a rarity these days. I played predominantly on the Steam Deck, which although unverified ran flawlessly at a silky smooth 60fps at the default settings. I manually adjusted the TDP down to 6W and still managed 60FPS with a battery life of 4.5 hours which is very impressive for the Steam Deck.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Blasphemous II blew me away. I can’t believe I managed to sleep on the first game as Blasphemous II is now officially my second favourite game of 2023 which is saying something as it’s been a stacked year for gaming. The addictive gameplay kept me hooked from start to finish and beyond. I am eagerly awaiting any future DLC and I highly recommend you purchase your own copy as it’s very worthy of being in any video game collection. A big well done to the developers The Game Kitchen.
9
Steam review code kindly provided by Team17
