Blasphemous

 PlayStation 4
User Score
7.8

Generally favorable reviews- based on 204 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 153 out of 204
  2. Mixed: 26 out of 204
  3. Negative: 25 out of 204
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  1. KrakenOfPepsi
    Jan 7, 2020
    7
    Blasphemous boasts an incredibly gorgeous and intricately detailed pixel art-style which gives the likes of Hyper Light Drifter and Owl Boy a serious run for their money. The setting is horribly violent and depressing, and it never lets up once in the time you’ll have with it. The story itself takes a great deal of inspiration from The Bible and the Holy Inquisition, but doesn’t exist toBlasphemous boasts an incredibly gorgeous and intricately detailed pixel art-style which gives the likes of Hyper Light Drifter and Owl Boy a serious run for their money. The setting is horribly violent and depressing, and it never lets up once in the time you’ll have with it. The story itself takes a great deal of inspiration from The Bible and the Holy Inquisition, but doesn’t exist to advocate or protest The Bible, but simply just take a great deal of inspiration from its themes and narrative. The narrative and lore actually ended up being my favorite part of Blasphemous, I loved how twisted and unrelenting its tale of suffering was, and how it intertwined with its different gameplay mechanics. Upon looking into the games story and world, so much of the games seemingly obscure requirements for beating the game and getting the true ending became far more apparent and made much more sense. The savage world and its enigmatic characters were all interesting and enjoyable, and I was always itching to find out more about while playing.

    Initially the game opens up, letting you tackle three bosses/areas in any order you’d like, but once you’ve completed all three bosses there’s one last big area to complete. But unfortunately that’s where Blasphemous’ important choices end. There are heaps of different abilities and pieces of equipment to try out, but I never found any of them to crucial to beating the game, or even really that fun to use and I have a few specific issues with them;

    - Rosary Bead and Mea Culpa Heart affects were usually pretty minute, and not all that helpful. Most of them had affects that were just not useful at or, or that were so minute in their affects that I didn’t even notice them. The only Rosary Beads that I ended up using consistently were the ones that gave you more HP, MP and defense, which are arguably the most boring.

    - I believe there are only seven Prayers (spells) in the game, and considering you can only have one equipped at once there is simply just not enough variety to make them fun to use. The abilities are fairly fun to use at first, but combined with the fact that you have a very finite MP bar, the abilities have fairly limited practical uses and only being able to have one equipped at once means you’re not only barely using them but you also get stuck with just one at a time – and you can’t even change them unless you’re at a checkpoint. They really should have let you equip multiple at once, or given them more versatile uses because I found that on their own they’re not all that helpful or fun to use, and that I was barely using them.

    - Relics unlock different abilities which are required for finding new areas or hidden objects. This is fine in theory, but two improvements could have been made. 1. You can only have 3 of these 5 relics equipped at once, meaning you have to interchange them instead of just being able to use them all at once. There's no reason to not be able to have all of these effects active at once, it just ends up making them less satisfying to find/use and are tedious to swap in and out. 2. These effects are underwhelming, they do things like make additional platforms appear and give resistances to uncommon hazards like poison smog and water

    The game struggles a little bit with its equipment and abilities, fortunately the games areas are so fun to explore on their own that it is ultimately still very fun to play anyways. Every area has distinct enemies, environments, beautiful music, obstacles and environments to experience, and each is as fun as the last. The games platforming really shines when it’s combined with combat encounters, trying to navigate treacherous traps and tight platforms all while dealing with enemies makes for some really distinct and intense combat encounters, because the game merges the two seamlessly with great success. The controls are tight and responsive, making platforming and combat feel tight and responsive. The great variety in enemies, bosses paired with the amazing animations make for an engaging combat system which is as fun to watch as it is play.

    Blasphemous is certainly worth your time, it’s art direction and story is without a doubt worth the price of admission alone. It controls perfectly, the level design is great, the combat is tight and responsive and all the areas are interesting and fun to explore. It however suffers from some very weak, boring, useless and restraining abilities and items. A lot of potential here, and I look forward to seeing what the developers do next.    … Expand
  2. MrPassionfruit
    Sep 13, 2019
    7
    Blasphemous has an excellent atmosphere and art style.
    The voice acting (English) doesn’t go with the rest of the game in my opinion and is poor overall.

    Fun and annoying to play, well done!
  3. Dungeon00X
    Sep 20, 2019
    7
    Such a brutal and challenging game and I love it! Being one of the Kickstarter backers, I had faith in this game from the start. I had fun starting out, but now I'm stuck. I'm sure I'll get over the hurdle, it's forgiving enough so that I can actually get further. I highly recommend this game.
  4. painava
    Jun 28, 2022
    7
    Not bad, not great. Too much backtracking and the gameplay feels old. Aesthetically impressive. Controls are a little clunky/unreliable, and the game gets too repetitive after 10 hours. Vague NPC quests. Relics should be permanent upgrades. There are so many questionable game design choices I have to give a bit lower score than I otherwise would.
  5. Roman_LAV
    Dec 6, 2022
    7
    Прикольная метроидвания. Крутейший мрачный дизайн, классическая для жанра механика. Мне понравилось
  6. aphex1991
    Feb 6, 2021
    6
    Bland experience that fails to impress with creativity. Metroidvania can be done better. The game has no idea what it wants to be. Some elements have been straight up copied from darksouls, yet it lacks a dark atmosphere. Combat feels very unresponsive. Same goes for controls in general. Clunky at best. The plot is interesting but not deep enough. Resulting in endless skipping of text.Bland experience that fails to impress with creativity. Metroidvania can be done better. The game has no idea what it wants to be. Some elements have been straight up copied from darksouls, yet it lacks a dark atmosphere. Combat feels very unresponsive. Same goes for controls in general. Clunky at best. The plot is interesting but not deep enough. Resulting in endless skipping of text.

    Level design on the other hand is pretty amazing.    … Expand
  7. HydrophobikFish
    Jun 9, 2023
    7
    Fun but extremely punishing metroidvania. Art direction is incredible and brutal and boss fights challenging but fair. Overall though feels a bit sluggish to control and doesn't explain some of its systems.
  8. marcos_derozzi
    Sep 7, 2023
    5
    It's Ok, definitely a decent experience.
    As is pretty well known by this point, the most impressive thing this game presents is the atmosphere and how the levels look and feel (not how they play, by the way), with the whole catholic aesthetic the game goes for being pretty cool most of the time, even if it feels like it's maybe trying a bit too hard sometimes to be cryptic. Unfortunately    It's Ok, definitely a decent experience.
    As is pretty well known by this point, the most impressive thing this game presents is the atmosphere and how the levels look and feel (not how they play, by the way), with the whole catholic aesthetic the game goes for being pretty cool most of the time, even if it feels like it's maybe trying a bit too hard sometimes to be cryptic. Unfortunately the rest of the game isn't that impressive.

    Let's take, for instance, the combat, which stays basically the same from start to finish and is very basic (and kind of sluggish and clunky), with the game lacking any meaningful progression related to your character in anyway to make it feel more satisfying to fight enemies or to traverse the map. The game does present you with a feel items you can equip for "advantages" and a skill tree for a better moveset overall, but unfortunately it all varies from very situational to borderline useless, making the whole experience feel kinda samey, especially for a metroidvania, with the only piece of meaningful progression you're gonna get for most of the game is going to be health/mana and damage upgrades, which cool i guess, but underwhelming.

    As for the level design, i do think it's ok for the most part, but nothing that really blew my mind. Again, the levels look incredible and the developers also try to keep them interesting by adding a different gimmick to each area you visit, but stuff like the constant platforming in the Rooftops or the toxic waste area can get kind of annoying very quickly. These gimmicks then become either unremarkable a lot of the times, or just straight up unpleasant sometimes. Another problem about these levels is that, again, how the game lacks any satisfiable and meaningful progression, exploration feels very unrewarding, with you exploring these levels and getting occasionally a health or a damage upgrade, but mostly junk you do not care about.

    Lastly, the boss fights. They're OK. The game is competent in this regard but i don't think they succeeded in making memorable or engaging boss fights for the most part, with a lot of them being slow big monsters that mostly stand there waiting to be hit, or run away from the player just making me wait there for them to recover. Two bosses near the endgame required a lot more engagement from me by constantly moving and being agressive, and as a result were not only harder, but infinitely more engaging and fun to go against, which shows they know how to do things great sometimes, which makes things even more underwhelming.

    Oh damn, there's a story... The story is certainly there. I don't know anything about it and i honestly do not want to, as the game didn't really make any effort to present anything to me even in a slightly digestible way. I'm not asking for the game to serve everything to me for i am stupid and media illiterate, i'm just asking for something. Games like Hollow Knight or the Fromsoft games manage to be ambiguous while still being engaging and interesting, and having fun and remarkable characters. This game doesn't really have that. It does seem to have a lot of lore though, good for them...

    Since i mentioned the Fromsoft games, i do feel this game is heavily inspired by them, while still being a metroidvania. Unfortunately i don't think it succeeds in doing either style well. It does not present the great combat, abilities and level design either style has, feeling like it lacks understanding of what makes those styles so engaging in the first place.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

76
#76 Best PS4 Game of 2019
56
#56 Most Discussed PS4 Game of 2019

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
78

Generally favorable reviews - based on 16 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 16
  3. Negative: 0 out of 16
  1. Worth Playing
    Dec 30, 2019
    73
    If you're into challenging action platformer games, Blasphemous is as good as the next. It isn't perfect or revolutionary, but it doesn't have to be. Its lore and visual direction are disturbingly beautiful and craft an interesting and distinct world. Great boss fights and an enjoyable and challenging combat system ensures that fans of the genre will have enough to sink their teeth into and enjoy.
    Read full review
  2. CD-Action
    Oct 25, 2019
    85
    The Game Kitchen’s latest work is ideal not only for fans of metroidvania genre. For me its accessibility and sheer fun of gameplay compares to a “souls” version of last year’s Spider-Man, which is the best recommendation I can give. [12/2019, p.55]
  3. Playstation Official Magazine UK
    Oct 22, 2019
    80
    There are minor irritations – some bosses have annoying stun-locks, enemies sometimes don’t load in properly, and platforming can be iffy at times. But trying again comes with minimal punishment. Like the twisted religion testing The Penitent One’s faith, the game’s willing to forgive – if you’re willing to try again. [Issue#168, p.78]
See all critic reviews »