Blasphemous

The Penitent One walked so that I could 100% this game and lose my mind.
Blasphemous is what happens when a game developer looks at Dark Souls , Hollow Knight , and a 16th century Spanish painting and says "Yes. All of this. Simultaneously." The result is one of the greatest games I have ever touched with my sinful hands.
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🎨 Art & Visuals — ★★★★★
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.
⚔️ Combat — ★★★★☆
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.
📖 Lore & Story — ★★★★☆
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.
🎵 Soundtrack & Audio — ★★★★★
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.
🗺️ Exploration & Level Design — ★★★★☆
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.
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VERDICT:
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.
Buy it. Play it. Suffer beautifully. You're welcome.
✅ RECOMMENDED — The Miracle is real and it made this game.
OVERALL: ★★★★½

This game made me realize that I had been spending years not being satisfied by the games I was playing. I got in a loop of only playing games that rewarded a very consistent amount of dopamine whenever I played them, cough cough Fortnite cough. Or chill games like minecraft that don't necessarily direct you to do anything.
I picked up Blasphemous on sale because the artstyle was up my alley. But the tone, the story, and especially the gameplay were all so top notch that I had to keep playing it.
I realized exploring the dogmatic world, getting my ass beat, and powering through the pain gave me the kind of experiences that I had as a kid. (I was raised Catholic.)
Overall amazing game, challenging but very rewarding and extremely fair game design. Art style sells it. My only thing was the music could have been more interesting.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☑ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☑ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☑ Dark Souls
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☑ 10

Indie developers once again putting the entire AAA industry to shame. Atmosphere, music, locations and bosses are on point. The pixel art is beautiful, the NPCs are really good and finding the collectibles is actually rewarding. The progression is good, you gradually feel like you're becoming stronger, and the combat is fun. I have no bad things to say except F*CK the time trials and the Shipyard, thankfully they're optional.
This game is a masterpiece and an instant classic

A very fun but very flawed experience. I have the same praises as many other people: the aesthetic and the music are heart-stopping, the lore is excellent, and the world is very dense and well designed. I disagree with others who say the controls and challenges are not good, they do a really great job of emulating the classics and did not shy away from showing it. Watching The Penitent One jump just like Arthur in Ghosts n Goblins when I played the secret 8-bit minigame told me these guys know ball.
However where this game falls flat is that it feels very, for lack of a better word, "loose". The power ramp feels really weird, as in the beginning of the game is pretty difficult, and by the end you are so strong that everything feels baby-mode easy. There are tons of sidequests and characters you can meet but nothing pointing you towards them so its very hard to see everything without looking up a guide. The teleport system doesn't make any sense, and getting the upgrade that lets you teleport between save points is pretty much mandatory or you will be absolutely miserable. The animations are very lengthy and lock you into them for far too long, and mixed with the very obviously wrong hitboxes with some enemies/attacks, this leads to a lot of deaths that just don't feel fair. Very important traveling upgrades are locked behind lengthy quest chains instead of bosses or locked doors like other Metroidvanias. Lastly, I think the DLC bosses are way too overtuned, which is a shame because the main game bosses were quite good and fair. Isadora was as hard as everyone else says but the second phase of Crisanta is REALLY something else. Her first phase is the best fight in the game, so it hits you like whiplash. Even with every upgrade you can get, it just feels like everything is stacked against you, from parries pushing you too far to giving you no time to heal ever, and it feels even worse once you play the final boss afterwards and it's extremely easy in comparison.
This game feels like a squeaky shopping cart or a car with two bad wheels: it's functional, but very annoying and your attention is constantly drawn towards it. There are so many unsanded corners and untightened screws and they are constantly making everything uncomfortable. The multitude of things wrong with this game aren't enough to make it not fun, but they were enough to take the fun out of it a few times. I stuck with it to the end and was glad I did, but this game really pushes you to both try your best and look past its glaring flaws for the moments of glory it gives you. I'm not sure if there's something to be said about suffering for glory here, but I don't think that was the game's intention. I say it's a solid 7.5/10, but be wary that it will test your patience just as much as it will test your skill.

Very fun, very christian, very violence.
"Just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ parry, oh Penitent one."

My dear Blasphemous:
My favorite metroidvania and one of my favorite games.
It's hard and unforgiving, as the world of Cvstodia is.
The pixel art, realistic and gory got me speechless my first time playing.
The music goes so hard.
The voice acting is great, English and Spanish both sound amazing and really help deliver this religious and dark tone to the game.
Since I played Blasphemous whenever I get into a church I just can't stop thinking about it while in my head I keep hearing "hasta que las campanas me doblen". The game has such a strong presence practically creating a whole new religion in its lore.
The metroidvania mechanics were done perfectly, I really felt like the world was huge and full of things to explore but also not hard to understand what way to go next or making you feel completely lost and having to look for a guide.
All in all it's one of the best, I praise the art again and I hope everyone can enjoy this beautiful game.
"No amanece el sol, sino nuestros pecados"