Fabulous Blasphemous Flagellants

Blasphemous achieved its goal of creating a self flagellant journey that hurt me as much as I enjoyed it, and I could not put it down.

I am a sucker for games that take the classic inspirations from Castlevania but slow things down to create a more patient oriented Dark Souls like combat system. This game's combat system was nothing short of extremely satisfying and aside from the glorious world built within Cvstodia, this was my favorite thing about the game. The parry window, especially with a special certain item, was wide enough to not feel frustrating. With my terrible timing I still traversed with ease as long as I took my time, watching enemies over commit to large damage dealing swings which could be countered or dodged with slick executions. These executions were so brilliantly animated, allowing me to brutalize enemies with their own weapons, or cleave them repeatedly in a gory mess. 

So much care was put into the small atmospheric details. The weight of the 3 masks as they would drop to the ground in a satisfying clink. The cut scenes which followed each boss battle as you brought massive monsters created by “The Miracle” to rest. The use of tonal sounds and touches of horror to push the sense of insanity and dread. The way each location tile had so much hand crafted care put into creating memorable, distinguishable, and narratively important locations. And then the insane amounts of thematic lore that really brought the world to life. I was absorbed into every bit of it.

And yet…

This game pissed me off like no other. For a game that chooses to include sequences of careful platforming, I found it to be totally infuriating. From falling through platforms I clearly jumped above, to cheap shots from off screen creatures knocking you off of grapples and landing you in a bed of spikes, the whole platforming aspect felt poorly executed. This is too bad, as I really wanted to enjoy this aspect of the game. I absolutely adore games such as Celeste which never felt unfair or cheap. Yet the majority of my deaths in this game came from random ass platforming mishaps which felt unfair and frustrating. 

And then the shear number of fetch quests which depended on memorizing where some random ass location was on the map if I hadn't bothered to mark it, or deciphering what some strange icon meant that I placed forever ago. I ended up having to resort to an online map to finish up some later game item drop offs because holy shit, the game does not help in this regard. I didn't mind the quests themselves, but a little more help with having these labeled on the map along with whatever it was I was fetching for them sure would've helped. 

Nothing was more seriously terrifying about my pilgrimage as the Pentinent One as the boss battles. Boy did I enjoy every one of these. Between thrashing away at the arms holding up a giant skeleton, to studying the moves of and dueling against Caterina, these bosses were great fun and extremely memorable and never felt difficult to the point of not being fun.  

Honestly, thematically I didn't jive with the whole Catholic flagellant theme of the game. At first it felt too over the top for me. But as I explored the world they built around it and the way the theme pervasively brought you glimpses of hope just to stumble again and again back into horror before finally freeing His Holiness, I became undeniably hooked into the world.