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Guuuuhhhh another souls-clone in 2D format. Why do I keep buying these?
Blasphemous is just another game riding the coattails of Dark Souls theming, and metroidvania nostolgia all the while sporting an incredibly bland platforming, combat, exploration and upgrade system. You get sword. Sword goes wack. That’s about it. You get your standard ground pounds, aerial strikes, slides–all the kinds of things you’d expect to see from Castlevania… 15 years ago. And that’s probably a good way to put it. If this game came out 15 years ago, it would be par for the course. Maybe not great, but acceptable. Today however, it’s a re-hash of tired old mechanics done in a completely simplistic and uninspired way.
Heck, I recently reviewed and had a lot of similar complaints about the theming of Dark Devotion, but I finished DD because the mechanics were semi-decent and felt “good” in most instances. Blasphemous on the other hand, just feels bad to play. Something about the movement, combat and just overall feel of the game is wrong. I guess that’s vague; let’s break it down a bit better.
You have a slide mechanic. Nothing new for a 2D game like this, but you’re told in the tutorial that you should use this to slide through enemies. Okay, okay, that makes sense. Again, nothing new, but this can often be a fun inclusion. There’s only one problem though. It’s inconsistent. Some enemies can be slid through. Others can’t. This is made worse by the fact that some enemies can be slid through *sometimes* and *sometimes* they can’t be. There’s no indicator, there’s no audio clue–nothing. You just have to guess.
Similarly, some enemies immediately damage you when you touch them. Others don’t. This is made worse by the fact that *sometimes* some enemies will damage you when you touch them and *sometimes* they…
You see the problem, right?
The bosses have been uninspiring. Movement and dodging through sliding is so limited that most just involve, “Go to boss. Wack. Walk away. Jump over their attack. Repeat.” Exploration is nothing new either. It’s your standard box-room-dungeon with things blocking your path that you have to remember to go back once you get an upgrade.
There’s no weapon customization, no stat growth customization, no… anything. The best you have are a simplistic set of equippables and a single spell slot at any given time. The spells, what little of them I’ve seen, are also lackluster.
The only thing going for the game is its unique art design. The problem is, it’s trying so hard to be like Dark Souls in its theming that I just can’t appreciate it. It comes off as incredibly pretentious. A wild extravagance of bizarre pixel art with absolutely no substance. I reviewed a game with a similar problem years ago, “Hyper Light Drifter.” The difference is, I have slightly more (but not much more) respect for HLD, since at least its pretentiousness was rooted in a setting more or less crafted by its own design, instead of copying another’s.
I may pick it up and try to make a bit more progress if I muster the mood to do so, but there’s a good chance I just leave it here. Ultimately, Blasphemous feels like a game that had a strong, devoted art team behind it, but not much else. And hey, maybe if you like looking at (admittedly gorgeous at times) pixel animation, then this is probably your bag. Otherwise, I can’t recommend it at Tier 3.
