Blasphemous (PlayStation 4) review "This game made me repent sins I haven't even (yet) committed!"

Jjust a few months ago, I started up Blasphemous simply because I’d read that it was a well-done combination of Metroidvania and Souls-like and I thought that’d be a fun diversion. Instead, it became an obsession that I feverishly slaved at until I’d done virtually everything attached to its quest. I might not of obtained every single bit of treasure hidden in its world, but I battled through every region of the land and somehow managed to overcome all of its bosses, including some super-tough ones you’ll only see if you’re really determined to access its best ending. Starting up a game on a whim and quickly realizing I’m playing something really special that just might have been the best game I experienced in 2023? I truly am living in a Golden Age!

Blasphemous was created by The Game Kitchen, a Spanish studio, and got its start as a Kickstarter campaign, which was successful enough that a few free DLC packages were added to the mix. It takes place in a land called Cvstodia that has had something called the Grievous Miracle inflicted upon it. Imagine a land ruled by a religion revolving around the repenting of sins. Now, imagine if that penance was able to transform people into bizarre creatures. Three sisters prayed for release from undesired arranged marriages, so they were combined into one hideous being. A kind woman who didn’t like to see others suffer offered to take their pain upon herself, only to be cursed with unending agony. All in all, a very uplifting place to reside. If the monsters don’t get you, some completely senseless and random curse will cause an elderly man to gradually form upon your body before bursting through it.

And that’s where you come in. Known as The Penitent One, you take up your sword and endeavor to put an end to this “miracle”. You’ll travel through a number of side-scrolling areas, each with its own challenges and traps. The Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage has a number of nuns pulling on ropes that dump molten liquid on anyone unlucky enough to be standing in the wrong place, while The Sleeping Canvases is littered with swinging blades that might not cause much damage on their own, but are quite likely to send you flying onto a bed of instant-death spikes. On the other hand, to fully explore the maze-like prison known as Wall of the Holy Prohibitions, you’ll need to find (or purchase) a few keys to unlock its doors.

Regardless of the hazards, it pays to be very thorough while exploring this world. Blasphemous is not an easy game, but some of that difficulty can be mitigated if you collect enough goodies. Gaining more healing flasks definitely helps, as does the ability to sacrifice a flask in order to make each of the others more effective. There are a number of rosary beads that offer various boosts and resistances, as well as prayers that grant you several spells. You’ll be able to raise the amount of health and magic you can possess, as well as increase your sword’s power, while also unlocking a number of special attacks that can be performed.

While getting all of these things can make the game easier, it will be a lot of work to find them. Scattered through the land are seven relics that can be used to access places that are normally out of reach. One causes red platforms to appear in certain places, while others allow you to walk on swampy surfaces or not be damaged by poisonous gas or cause large roots to turn into either bridges or climbable surfaces. While these things aren’t necessarily mandatory to beat the game, a lot of those useful goodies require the use of one or another.

And some of them are not exactly easy to find. For one, you have to follow an NPC’s story arc to its final room and then equip three specific rosary beads there to cause a secret location to unlock. Another requires you to take three particular items to a different NPC, take the item you receive in return to a certain location and leave it there, so the relic appears the next time you visit that screen. Good luck finding these things without some sort of help!

Regardless of whether you’re the sort of gaming savant capable of ferreting out the most off-the-beaten-path secrets or you just sort of caved in and ran to the Internet, this is one rewarding game to play through. Visually, it kind of reminds me of a darker, more depressing Symphony of the Night with its pixilated graphics. While some challenges might be similar to those in different parts of the game, each area still manages to have its own vibe, so I never really felt things were getting a bit repetitious. And, man, this game made me WORK to get its best ending.

To do so, you’ll have to do a number of additional things that you won’t have to bother with if you’re simply trying to finish the game. Included among these challenges are a pair of optional bosses — one with an immense amount of health and the other with a lot of really deadly attacks that come at you with little warning. After beating the game’s penultimate boss, you’ll then immediately fight her again, but this time, she’s moving and teleporting so quickly it can feel near-impossible to connect with attacks at times. And when the final boss was beaten, well, there winds up being another stage to that fight. I was grateful that dying there only sent me back to the beginning of that stage instead of forcing me to fight the entire battle from the beginning. REALLY grateful.

That sort of difficulty is the Souls influence, much like the finite number of healing flasks that can be refilled at checkpoints, the ability to parry foes and, if successful, issue a counter-attack and the way you can be penalized by dying. On the other hand, the Metroidvania influence is more than simply giving players a large map that encourages mass amounts of back-tracking whenever one finds a new ability in order to collect a bunch of goodies that previously were inaccessible. Like many of those games, with the exception of those “best ending” additional boss fights, Blasphemous can be most difficult in the early going when you have little health, only a couple healing potions and few abilities at your disposal other than your basic attacks, dodges and parries.

I mean, it wasn’t until I’d gotten to those additional bosses that one gave me as much trouble as Ten Piedad, which is only the second one you face in the game — with the first being a really easy tutorial battle. There’s nothing special about the dude: He’s a big guy with a few attacks that get more range as the battle progresses, but I was really lacking in power and the vast majority of upgrades were locked behind him, meaning my only option other than simply sucking it up and enduring would be to survive a treacherous mountain region littered with bottomless pits while hoping I could obtain a few goodies during that hazardous trek.

Most future bosses didn’t give me nearly as much trouble as that early gatekeeper, but it was almost always a challenge getting from one to the next due to the deadly nature of Cvstodia’s terrain. The sort of challenge that felt good. For me, games like Blasphemous are the best sort of fun. The kind that combines exploration with a high degree of challenge and allows players to find the best way to overcome its difficulty. Few things in gaming are more rewarding to me than figuring out how to overcome a brutally tough opponent or realizing I just discovered an item that’s going to allow me to reach a whole bunch of stuff I couldn’t get to previously. This game started as a diversion, but when I picked it up, it was a safe bet that a few hours would melt away like minutes. It’s the sort of thing that has me eagerly wondering what the next “at least I didn’t know about it” hidden gem I’ll unearth will be!

Staff review by Rob Hamilton (January 05, 2024) Rob Hamilton is the official drunken master of review writing for Honestgamers.