It's A Sin
What is Blasphemous? It all depends on your point of view I suppose, but misusing its proper meaning for my own, very atheistic purposes; I’d start with the pronunciation of ‘betrothed’ as ‘be-troff-ed’, or deliberately writing noone instead of no one. To be fair my very existence and polymorphous perversity would be cause for a painful death among certain sections of our dearest humanity so I do hope they appreciate how much I die in The Game Kitchen’s 2D adventure.
Clearly I did something wrong as the story of Blasphemous is almost entirely centred on some sort of quest for redemption. Your character is nameless and silent, sporting some delightfully impractical yet striking headwear which you fill with blood, because of course you do.
I won’t pretend to understand most of it. Presumably there is narrative cohesion to events and encounters but it’s far from clear even after many hours. The language used throughout is cryptic and wordy, leaving you unsure as to whether it’s mysterious and cool or just silly bollocks to obscure its simple ideas and messages. It certainly appears cool, even if the voice acting is somewhat variable in quality, including some truly terrible mispronunciations (pious is pronounced ‘pie-us’ not ‘pee-us’ you Wally).
Metroidvania pretty much covers most of what to expect in the game but its nod to the Souls series comes via having your magic meter shortened each time you die, needing you to collect the lost portion from where you died or pay to get it back. It makes death less impactful, but with healing and save shrines some distance from each other, it can lead to some irritating re-treads of familiar ground.
The world design at least is quite decent; sections of the map connect to each other in some smart ways and you get that wonderful A-ha! Feeling when each new link is discovered. Likewise whenever I felt in need of a save point or an upgrade the game always seemed to provide one at almost the perfect moment, rewarding progress and exploration in just the right manner.
Alas, frustrated is the heart, penitent one. Should leaping over instant death spike pits be quite this awkward? Platforms, or rather the spaces between, are at such a distance so as to make traversal ever too slightly exacting and consequently, ever so slightly annoying. Grabbing ledges, hitting and dodging enemies, nothing in Blasphemous ever feels as precise as I might wish it. Perhaps this is intentional; to make every step forward feel significant, to give the journey a greater sense of peril and attrition. Whatever the case, death comes easily, and its source is rarely sentient.
The threat from actual enemies however is almost always front-loaded in terms of challenge. Once you understand its behaviour, overcoming becomes ever more trivial as they, bar a few notable exceptions, fail to ever really demand any great dexterity on your part. Most enemies have but a singular attack, which leads to a lot of repetition where backtracking is involved. Airborne foes are usually tougher, if only due to their more erratic movements and awkward spawn positions.
The environment however is far more perilous. The aforementioned pits, spike traps, toxic gas clouds, swinging bells, these are the true horrors you must face, that and some dodgy collision detection. At times your sword will waft through an enemy sprite to no effect, yet a light brush near them may well cause damage. Hit boxes do not appear to be all that consistent and although it doesn’t really hurt the experience, it was noticeable and only adds to the strange awkwardness that hangs over everything. It’s a nightmare to review as I cannot honestly say whether I liked it or not. There are lots of things I found annoying and tedious, yet I don’t think my desire to continue playing ever dipped despite my many, sometimes loud, often very blue frustrations.
The visual design sure helps; it’s Gothic in the classic architectural sense, to showcase God’s, or rather the church’s might and magnificence, to cause the subject to tremble at its vulgar sublimity and find itself wanting in the face of its vast, unyielding edifice. I adore it. Give me your flying buttresses, your cathedral halls and XXL sculptures of bleeding saints and weeping angels. Not so much your glorified sewers and dusty libraries, but you can't have it all I guess.
Musically matters take a slightly more Latin air, and not in the Greco-Roman style, rather Latin in it’s more modern sense with delicate guitar work layering over the game’s gentle yet moody atmospherics.
A pity then, that for all of Blasphemous' wonderful grotesqueries it has just one too many gameplay frustrations, one too many little irritations and annoyances that pull you out of its otherwise compelling and intricately designed world. Mileage seems likely to vary according to how quickly one adapts to its mechanical quirks, but it's hard to shake the feeling that something is off. Fortunately there are compensations and Blasphemous compensates with a veritable orgy of blood, wounded flesh and myriad religious sadomasochistic pathologies. It's not pretty, but it is beautiful.
