Blasphemous

Аn important thing when approaching Blasphemous is managing your expectations.
At first glance it's easy to mislabel Blasphemous. It's a soulslike! It's a metroidvania! It's worse than Hollow Knight! It's not what made Souls good!
The description of the game paints it a "punishing action-platformer", and it's important to treat it as such. It falls short of a few important Metroidvania expectations, it (deliberately) doesn't have the very mobile combat of Hollow Knight, and it's definitely not the Dark Souls of anything, though it does borrow familiar elements.
If I absolutely had to come up with a genre description, I'd go with something silly like "atmospheric platformer". Do try Blasphemous if the thought of immersing yourself in a beautiful mysterious world appeals to you, a world that takes some mental effort to piece together. It is by no means style over substance, but it's not the amount of mechanical "substance" you expect coming from games like Dead Cells, or Hollow Knight, or maybe Valdis Story.
It's a fairly simple game in most terms, but with a slight tinge of 90s game design mixed in. Expect great music, an interesting setting and a strong presentation, and let the rest speak for itself without prejudice.

Blasphemous is a metroidvania with more style than substance—but enough of the latter to be a great experience for lovers of the genre. It's also surprisingly easy to break into aspects, so here goes:
Art: Stellar. It's not often that you get to immerse yourself in a pixel art world inspired by Goya and medieval religious art. Every second is a delight, and some visual imagery is mind-blowing (you don't want to know what happens to that bull).
World/Narrative: Obscure and intriguing—more Darkwood than Dark Souls, really, although all of these games feature people inexplicably turning into trees. I very much appreciate how heavy the Catholic inspiration is, going well beyond the common dark fantasy fare with the many-headed seraphs, flagellants, genuflection, torture devices... and lack of any actual crucifixes. It's dark, insane, pious, and filled with pain. I love it.
Gameplay: Fine, but clunky. I died way too many times to the game not registering the jump command, and some puzzles/challenges become silly because of this. The game would have benefiited greatly if instant death was replaced with health loss, a la Hollow Knight, because it's infuriating when you die because your command didn't click with the geometry.
The level design is your standard metroidvania fare. It makes you lose yourself in the world successfully, and secrets are plentiful enough to warrant attentive exploration. The bosses are imaginative, different, and relatively easy. The music is great.
All in all, this game is simpler yet more beautiful and sadomasochistic than most fellow souls-like-ish metroidvanias (Salt and Sanctuary, Death's Gambit). It will most certainly be a delight for those who love the genre. For those who don't... perhaps it might be better to start with Hollow Knight.

What happens with you combine Dark Souls, Castlevania and Christian mythos? This game, and it's badass. Go buy it now.

Blasphemous is a 2D metroidvania with a lot of religious elements turned into horror. The Miracle manifested in the lands of Cvstodia. This event, or perhaps entity, has spread chaos and supernatural events, aswell inhuman beings, created from humans afflicted by The Miracle. Penitent One is the player character, he is a member of a congregation called Brotherhood of the Silent Sorrow and its members have taken vow of silence as a form of penance.
Enemies are unique, each one with a different weapon and battle moves, the player needs to be precise while fighting, the dash helps a lot, but it doesn't do everything. Monsters look great, the developers connected their story, appreance, name and attacks, in a fantastic way.
The Penitent One starts with his sword, Mea Culpa (My Guilt), and can attack, parry, dodge. There are upgrades to your sword, none of them is really relevant, all simple, but helpful. You can do lunge, plunge, throw projectile, increase the combo hits, or get a charging attack. The player chooses prayers and relics, prayers are spells (they spend fervor, gained from hitting enemies or trading for some blood) and relics are perks to help exploring the world or the lore (like talking to ghosts, creating platforms or growing roots). It's interesting how the game adapted the nomenclature of every mechanic to religious elements, it helps to create the right atmosphere.
Talking about atmosphere, the game has the objective to reveal a world in continuous pain. Enemies, backgrounds and music, everything is made to show suffering and terror. The music is not phenomenal, it fits very well to the game, giving a background to the player, even in boss fights you won't find a predominant song, soundtrack is made to be behind the gameplay. I miss some epic music, at least to boss fights, they are good, but that's all.
The pixel art is beautiful, Cvstodia has a spanish gothic theme, that age fits very well in the game, from architecture, sculptures and other artistic elements. There is a lot of blood, you can see the suffering while enemies are moving, the levels are very well made with great connections and design. Backtracking is used in this game, while progressing the story you get some things needed in previous maps to explore new areas. The map is big, you have a quick travel feature, but there are few points to teleport (I would add at least one more). You can find Prie-Dieu, or the good old bonfire from Dark Souls games, a place to set a spawn point, recover you health, refill your flasks and respawn minor enemies.
Blasphemous is tagged as "Souls-like" game, you have bonfires, weapon upgrade, timing-based combat and you drop souls on death. If you like challenges, the game offers you hard achievements to get, they go since gathering all collectibles until defeating bosses without using health flasks or getting hit.
It's not that sweet...
I had problems "platforming", first of all the game is merciless, there are a lot of spiked pits everywhere, if you fall, you are instant killed. To jump between platforms you need to be precise, some of them are too far from each other, making you fall easily. There is a climbing feature, when you fall close to the edge of the platform, Penitent One holds the platform and you can force yourself up, but some platforms don't have that feature, probably because they are located in easy places and don't need precision. That is bad, I started to doubt everytime, I didn't know if a platform that I was ready to jump could be hold on the edge. Another bad thing is that you can't jump down a platform if you are too close to the wall, that is really annoying.
I miss a clear story, I know it isn't necessary and it helps to keep the mystery in the game, but the story is so interesting, the enemies and characters are great, I'd like to know more about them. We have to collect a lot of items to read their description and try to link those fragments to a part of the story, that is a puzzle.
Blasphemous is "rigid", the few upgrades and lack of diversity of weapons or playstyles doesn't let you create your own way to play. I played Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, so I miss a good customization, in Blasphemous you have spells, but it's almost impossible to use them in a boss fight, while casting the spell you are too vulnerable. There aren't stats (you can increase defense, magic power or attack with Rosary Beads, but you don't know the exact amount), most of the weapon upgrades aren't needed and the game is not so fast paced like Dead Cells. I see Blasphemous as a combination of all games mentioned previously in this review, it's not spectacular in any genre, but satisfactory in all of them.
Overall, Blasphemous is a good game, not epic, but everything is decent (like the combat) or very good (like the levels design or story). You really should try it.
Game reviewed with a key provided by the developer.
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Impressions after 5/6 hours:
This definitely feels a lot more like the classic Castlevanias from the NES/SNES than the Igavanias. While there is a sizable interconnected open world, areas aren't gated by abilities. Much like the progression of Dark Souls prior to Anor Londo, you have free reign to explore the different zones before you can proceed to an ultimate destination (not sure if this is the "final area"). Platforming is fine, but I do find the ledges to be quite sticky. There are instant death spike traps that are annoying, but nothing like the bullshit from the old Castlevanias with enemies knocking you off platforms.
Presentation: gorgeous animation, I love the running animation, it's the little things that count
Combat: Some of the best death animations I've ever seen make combat a great joy. Lots of neat variety with monsters and well thought out enemy placement.
Environmental Hazards: there's a zone with high winds that makes for fun platforming sections, toxic areas in sewers that will tempt and murder unsuspecting players
More classic Castlevania than Igavania, more "basic" gameplay than Hollow Knight (no fancy platforming or air dashing here). Definitely enjoying my time and looking forward to finishing this and clearing the map. Also, this isn't punishingly difficult either, I would say medium with some boss fights swinging more to the Hard side, but not by a whole lot.
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Final Thoughts
Blasphemous is a solid metroidvania that shares more DNA with the classic Castlevanias than the Igavanias. Core progression is never blocked by abilities and the mechanics are quite simple. Ther aren't any real fancy platforming moves, in that sense it fells very old school. That being said, the first thing you'll note is the setting and the artwork. What impressed me the most are the fantastic death animations and sound work that went to the combat and death cries. The soundtrack is also great, which should come as no surprise if you've played The Last Door. Also, I think it was very smart of the devs to not make this an overly difficult game. Checkpoints are plentiful and many enemies can be skipped past with the slide. Bosses aren't nut crushingly difficult either. I hope this becomes a good seller b/c I'd definitely love to see more content or new projects push this formula further. Some weaknesses and personal gripes I had with the game: platforming ledges are way too sticky, when explorign downwards the camera can become really troublesome and doesn't reset for you to see what's directly below you (usually death spikes), in the final zone fo the game I found that there are too many transition points that begin with too little floring (this hurts backtracking since I would usually just fall to my death), I really wish there was some consumable to teleport to the mirrors, I wish the map included an NPC symbol (one symbol could be re-used for the NPCs spread across the world), it isn't 100% clear which enemy projectiles you can and cannot deflect (I think I saw at least two boss fights where it was possible to deflect projectiles), I wish there were FEWER but more gameplay altering relics (defense buffs are kinda boring).
All in all, another great kickstarter success. Really happy for the devs and I truly believe this will have strong legs for people to check out in the future. Not a instant classic like Hollow Knight, but a damn fine first attempt at this, especially considering the type of game this dev was known for prior to this project.

~ DIFFICULTY ~
🔲 My 90 year old grandma could play it
🔲 Easy
🔲 Normal (can vary depending on which difficulty you play on as well as how good you are at video games) (And to clarify, i played on normal difficulty)
✅ Hard
🔲 Dark Souls
🔲 Understanding Dark Souls' story
~ GRAPHICS ~
🔲 MS Paint
🔲 Bad
🔲 Meh
🔲 Graphics don't matter in this game
🔲 Good (nothing special)
✅ Beautiful
🔲 Masterpiece
~ MUSIC ~
🔲 Bad
🔲 Not special
✅ Good
🔲 Beautiful
~ Audience ~
🔲 Kids
🔲 Teens
✅ Adults
~ STORY ~
🔲 Bad
🔲 Text or Audio floating around
🔲 Average
✅ Good
🔲 Lovely
~ PRICE ~
🔲 Free
Cheap
✅ Acceptable price
🔲 Could be cheaper
🔲 Overpriced
🔲 Complete waste of money
~ REQUIREMENTS ~
✅ You can run it on a microwave
🔲 Average
🔲 High end
🔲 NASA computer
~ LENGTH ~
🔲 Very Short (0 - 4 hours)
🔲 Short (4 - 10 hours)
✅ Average (10-30 hours)
🔲 Long (30-50 hours) (if you go for everything in the game)
🔲 Extremely long (50-100+ hours)
🔲 No ending
~ FUN ~
🔲 I'd rather watch paint dry
🔲 Hard to enjoy
🔲 Repetitive
🔲 Actually pretty amusing
✅ The kind of fun you'll remember
🔲 Ride of your life
~ REPLAYABILITY ~
✅ It's a one-time experience
🔲 Only for achievements
🔲 If you wait a few months/years
🔲 Definitely
🔲 Infinitely replayable
~ Bugs ~
🔲 Never heard of
✅ Minor bugs
🔲 Can get annoying
🔲 ARK: Survival Evolved
🔲 The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
~ WORTH BUYING ~
🔲 No
🔲 Wait for sale
✅ Yes

this game understands the difference between fun hard and trash hard. the best way to explain Blasphemous would be if a castlevania was made 5x harder. my only real complaint is that the map does not show collectibles or turn in places on the map after you find them but can't collect them yet. this makes backtracking painfully tedious untill you memorize the game. the second to last boss could also use a closer save point but out side these i really enjoyed the game. it captures the "i just need one more try" mentality down so well.
p.s. the game has lots of sprite nudity