Blasphemous

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

That totally metal aesthetic you see in the trailer doesn't quit for the entire thing. It's just short of unbelievable that there could be so much exquisitely gothic and hypnotically gory pixel art in a single indie game, but devotion can accomplish great things indeed -- case in point, the hero of this fine production, who routinely takes down baddies several times his size in pursuit of his religious (and totally metal!) pilgrimage. The gameplay is as good as the graphics, if you can believe that; it's not slow, not fast, too dynamic to be "deliberate," highly responsive on the dodge/parry front, and has a fair amount of wiggle room for failure. Blasphemous is a more than serviceable metroidvania that won't stress you out too much with its platforming, exploration, or boss fights -- but it's not exactly a cakewalk, either, and of course you can replay the thing in "torment" mode if you feel like it. The game is fairly short -- just take a look at my playtime, and shave off an hour or so for when I had to ALT-TAB for other things -- but with something interesting and fun every few seconds, it's an experience well worth paying for.
"Ye olde mysterious Soulsborne breadcrumb lore" is there in plenty, but I couldn't really connect with it; it's a device I've grown quite weary of, and I think it might even be a little more incoherent in Blasphemous than in other games. Suffice to say that the Grievous Miracle raped the land of Cvstodia and its people one eventful day, transforming many of them into self-mortifying mutants with a quasi-Catholic theme. Got it? That's really all you need to know, as far as I'm concerned. But though the story is sadly non-existent for me, the excellent gameplay and strong visual themes more than serve their purpose.

Catholic school has prepared me for this journey

Do you like metroidvania?
Do you like Dark Souls?
Do you like pixel art?
Do you like graphic violence against religious institutions?
Then this game is perfect for you

~ 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

First of all I'd like to say I've got more hours than Steam has recorded due to offline mode. Sitting at around 60h atm, thanks to the "recent" free DLC that added NG+, with 3 optional challenge modes that change the playstyle. A much needed and refreshing DLC. Worth mentioning the devs confirmed new DLC will be coming too.
I've played this since release week, and I can confidently say the gameplay has been polished and the bugs ironed out over its updates. Anything you might've heard about the game being a buggy mess or having janky gameplay is mostly untrue by now (bugs still remain here and there but they aren't too frequent anymore, and certainly not game-breaking like before).
Gameplay: Tight and responsive, can quickly cancel almost any animations to slide away or block an attack. Polished over the updates it's received. Difficulty is just right for those familiar with videogames and platformers. New NG+ and challenge modes have easily doubled or tripled the replayability of the game. Allows some diversity in playstyle by equipping different items and NG+ challenge modes. A fair number of quests of varying difficulty.
Plot/lore: Plentiful item descriptions to read, filled with lore. Very mature plot. Different from your repetitive old dark fantasy tales, this takes inspiration from religious and Spanish themes.
Art: Absolutely phenomenal and detailed pixel art. Smooth animations. Cutscenes could do with a little better frame rate but there aren't many anyway.
Voice acting: You HAVE to play it dubbed in SPANISH (just turn on English subs to understand), because the cast this game's got is AAA quality, despite being an indie game. I'm impressed with how they managed to gather all that talent and money. English dub was recently improved, but you'd be a heretic to play it that way.
Bosses: They're pretty challenging and generally feel good to fight, with only a few exceptions.
Soundtrack: It's both amazing while you're playing, and outside of the game. You won't hear such fantastic Spanish tunes in any other game. Loved it.
Map: A pretty well thought-out map, allows you to take it on from different sides, true to the Metroidvania genre. However, you don't need to find new abilities to gain access to following levels, but instead they allow you acquire more loot, upgrades and find new shortcuts. NG+ especially lets you keep your abilities so you can take on even more radical routes around the place.