Quick Look: Blasphemous

Hearing mixed on this and from what I've seen it seems like not missing much.

At least it's no grimoire of souls.

Water drops that hurt you? Yeah this is a European game alright.

I really liked what I played of the demo. This is looking cool so i think i'll pick this up

This was the polar opposite of what i just watched Jim Sterling say about it. Think it looks like a fun game.

@meierthered: I trust Jim over Dan on Souls-likes, tbh. I completely can't relate to complaints about "weird lore things". Well-done optional lore is best kinda lore :)

I just bought it and personally. I'd take it over Dead Cells but that's only because I'm a sucker for metroidvanias and that aspect of Dead Cells kinda sucked...

Super disagree on the judgment, Dan. Still love yer wacky antics, my dude :*

On the Beastcast I though they were describing a game called 'Blast of Us'.

Weird QL, I think Dan could have shown everything he wanted to by starting a new game.

Is this a Rogue-like?

@max_cherry: Nah, it's a full-blown metroidvania.

I'm on the final boss of this game.

• The platforming is just not good, there are just way too may insta-death spikes. I died mostly on those spikes than from enemy encounters
• Map is huge and many varieties too
• Some of the spells, relics, items are bit more abundant around the latter half of the game
• There are good amount of secrets to be found
• The side-quests and lores are very opaque, necessitating me to search and discuss online about it. Which is like Dark Souls, in certain way.
• I played it on Switch, there are minor bugs, soft lock-ups, but rarely frame drops.

Personally, I enjoyed the game, the platforming is frustrating, but the rests are good. Hope that they will do DLC and successor to it.

I don't know that this is confusing for confusings sake I think it just wants you to read things.

@max_cherry: Nope! You keep your currency when dying! It's more 2D Dark souls then something like Hollow Knight.

Also guys, can you please show the intro of games again and then skipping ahead in a later save like you used to? This just randomly dropping a QL in to a mid game without introduction is so weird. Astrain Chain was the same and it comes over as haphazardly and in haste put a quick look out without much thought and it's kind of a bummer. It doesn't really give an impression what the game's about and has to offer. :(

Oh yeah for sure, in these type of games Jim's opinions are pretty on par with my own.

Awesome style. These pixels are so crispy.

this music is pretty nice

Abby should wait for the Blasphemy of Nancy Drew: A Bjork Tale release.

Also this was kind of a bad QuickLook that barely showed any of the game, and with a tiny bit of preparation like having a separate save file before a boss fight or something it would be much better.

But hey they can't all be winners I guess.

I've never been keen on the marrying of the deliberate strikes of Souls games with 2D action. It creates a weird dissonance in my mind.

tbh this game is really good

Saw this video on Youtube so I could learn about the game. Dan tells me to go to Youtube to learn about the game.

This was a weird video. Aimless wandering is a part of Metroidvanias, but just a hint of preparation on what to show would've been appreciated.

This didn't really tell much of anything. Fourteen minutes of wandering around with nothing of note happening isn't super informative. I've been finding that some Dan Quick Looks are so eager to get to content that it skips over potentially interesting things. Kinda like trying really hard not to knock over a glass of milk and then immediately knocking it over, or something.

Yup! Got that Amiga era Psygnosis look to it too. Or maybe a little Bitmap Brothers.

I'm intrigued, as someone who was really put off by the art style of Dead Cells and Hollow Knight.

@efesell: blasphemy!

Sorry folks, I didn't really get much from this QL. Like I get that the gameplay loop is pretty straightforward and this QL is never going to be two hours long, but at least dig a little to have something prepared. Otherwise what's the point? Also it seems weird to decide to cover a game you're so disinterested in and then just say, you should look for coverage elsewhere. At that point why cover it at all? Then we would.

The mention of peanuts in this QL will have me referring to the player character as the Peanutant One.

The respawning in your face doesn't look fun.

Points for Dan getting his roguelike-roguelite distinction correct again.

Sold. From now on whenever I refer to Christians or Catholics, they'll be Churchies. And if something is of the Christian faith, it'll be Churchy. Thanks, Dan.

Dan says "it's good", but his overall tone seems sour. I hope you were just having a bad day :(.

This is probably the first video game in a while that has legitimately unnerved me. The religious imagery crossed with violence is pretty gnarly. There's a scene like 5 minutes in after you beat the first boss that really got to me. Surprised Dan didn't start a new file to show off, the intro to this game is quite good.

Yeah, Jim's video got me to pick this game up yesterday. I've played a couple hours and am really enjoying it. Art design and music are stellar, and the game is just dripping with theme. Switch version runs great as well (which isn't always the case). My only complaint might be that I wish the platforming was a little more interesting.

I think this is some fair criticism, and I agree...it oftentimes feels like a very "hurry up and wait" sort of situation. Hopefully Dan will take this to heart. I think part of the problem is he sometimes has a very narrow idea of constitutes good "content"; it doesn't all have to be high octane action or straight gameplay...especially for a game like this, a lot of the fringe lore and exploration is part of the appeal.

This is reminding of Chakan: The Forever Man on the Sega Genesis, as much as anything.

Wasteland of Buried Churches is my favorite Morbid Angel album, highly underrated.

Anyways holy shit this game looks like it was made for me. 2D Soulsvania with a metal as fuck aesthetic and paragraphs of incomprehensible lore and item descriptions. There's nothing here I don't like.

@bachogrande: That's one of the things I really like about Dan: he can acknowledge the quality in the game he's playing, even if he isn't feeling it. I wish more reviewers were like that.

The art style in this is phenomenal. It's metal as fuck. I still haven't had enough time with it, but I'm looking forward to playing more.

Still not sure why they mention Dead Cells so much, as this is way more similar to Hollow Knight and even Castlevania. Also the level of disinterest in this makes me wonder why they even made a QL of this. Maybe other crew members would have been more apropiate to cover this kind of game that Dan.

I would much rather scrub through a longer video with long breaks in the action, than a shorter one that shows just a few rooms and not much else. Spend a few minutes with the menus, restart and show off the opening cut scene. There and many options.

I did like hearing about the pace of combat and how deaths work as well as seeing how the character animates.

That was such a weird and lazy thing to say, he was pretty much going "If you want to see something actually interesting from this game just watch somebody else play it on YouTube or something".

Sure I could do that, but then why am I on a website about videogames, and not on YouTube? ;)

@beard_of_zeus: Good to hear the Switch version is fine, i will most likely get it there. Seems like a nice fit.

@max_cherry: they really did a bad job on this ql didn't they LOL

@steveurkel: IMO, this is a better castlevania game than bloodstained this year.

I don't wanna say only run quick looks on games they're interested in because that's nonsense but Dan has consistently been a rough choice to lead one on games where he's just sorta "Whatever" on.

That was a bad quick look, sorry. I didn't learn anything about this game that wasn't already apparent from the Steam store blurb and video.

@fisk0: Team 17 is involved with it so your right on the money, since the days of full contact and alien breed they were producing some nice looking games at the time.

Would've liked to see more from this. The style seems great.

I've been playing it on switch. I'm not a fan. I WANT to like it, but there's some input lag at times which makes for some extremely cheap deaths.

This game is awesome, it's a shame Dan wasn't into it but I think I strongly disagree with his takes.

Why even bring up Dead Cells? I'm not even seeing the visual similarity tbh. Then Dan doesn't scroll down to read what an item does (not even talking about the lore) and the video ends... huh.

Seems pretty clear they were having technical issues during this video with the Tricaster, so I don't think it's fair to be hard on Dan not showing more of it. Though, not sure why they posted video at all.

Looks like people are annoyed Dan didn't love the game like they did. It looks pretty average to me and he's being honest about his opinion. Reminds me of another 2D Dark Souls game last year that Brad did a QL for that also looked average. All of these pale in comparison to Salt & Sanctuary. That game really nailed the whole "2D Dark Souls" thing for me and it's hard to really enjoy these others after it.

I hope the weirdness of this Quick Look is a victim of the Tricaster slowly dying. I know they lost a bit of footage in the middle, and for all I know maybe this Quick Look is take 2 after an earlier recording that died or something.

Because, A) this is a weirdly short video for a game Dan actually says is good (aside from frustrating deaths) but maybe that can be blamed on Abby thinking the recording could die at any minute so she suggested they just wrap up the video to be safe, but B) Even setting aside all the Tricaster stuff, Dan just didn't prep for this QL very well, because he seemed to quite like the bosses and cutscenes, which he then didn't show at all and just ran around a sewer area for like 10 minutes instead. I know he's kind of stuck/lost at the time of recording, but even when he got to the "bonfire" sorta thing where you can buy/equip upgrades, he didn't go over any of his abilities. As other users have suggested, maybe he could've started a new file to at least show the intro cutscene.

This Quick Look also just really gives the impression that Dan hates reading in games if it is written in anything other than a very direct, plain writing style. I know Dark Souls-style items are cryptic, but he could at least try to give us more than 1.5 seconds to read one of them.

Honestly, Dan should have shown a boss. It's the best part of this game. But it's pretty fair to say that the gameplay is generic at best, and the platforming is just plain bad, with the finicky ledge grab and the instant death spikes.

The backtracking gets worse as the game goes on, too. There's no reason, other than a slavish devotion to the art (in that, "we want people to look at the beautiful levels we made), that you can't just fast travel between altars from the beginning, instead of utilizing the painfully-spaced fast travel portals (perhaps this is unlocked later, but I am 78% complete with the game and you can't do that.)

As an aside, Bloodstained did this, too, and it's just dumb. Sometimes they'd even give you a portal instead of a save room, but of course every time you get a portal you portal to a save room, then portal back. It's a waste of time for no good reason. It doesn't help immersion or boost tension, it just ruins pacing. Just make all save rooms teleports, at least once you've unlocked like half the areas.

Also, as a Metroidvania, Blasphemous has no real meaningful upgrades, aside from sword power. You get an item that lets you walk in a certain type of area you couldn't before, and it's late in the game, and oddly, not placed in the critical path, so you can miss it and not be able to progress unless you backtrack to an area without a nearby teleporter. It's bad design all around. The other movement upgrades are mostly non-essential and weirdly obscure to unlock. I wouldn't even call them movement upgrades, and honestly, this game really needed something to speed up traversal at some point, at least just to mix things up.

A decent game that's style over substance, which I find compelling, but 3/4 of the time I simply find annoying.

extremely strong Tristam Village vibes to this music

We all know how much Dan hates lore (unless Kojima writes it) and this game is all about it's lore. It's a pretty good game if you like metroidvanias.

Unfortunately, this video is in the part of the game that's pretty classic metroidvania; going through the same areas over and over again to find the thing/ability that gets you to the next area. I'm actually stuck on the same part but I'm still enjoying it. The art and lore are very dark, which is something I wish more games did well.

They really put a lot of work into that art and animation.

A perfect October game!