Blasphemous 2
It's getting heretical in here.
Blasphemous 2 is the long-awaited sequel to Blasphemous 1, giving us a new Penitent One to watch stumble through their penance. Blasphemous 2 starts off immediately differentiating it from 1 by giving you a selection of weapons to start with; a giant ball on a chain, a rapier-dagger combo, and a sword. Each of these weapons interacts with a different object; the ball and chain (Veredicto) can hit blue bells, which send out ripples that cause platforms to appear or certain doors to open; the rapier-dagger combo (Sarmiento and Centella) can strike mirrors that teleport you a short distance forward, bypassing walls or pits; and the sword (Ruego al Alba) can dive-bomb the ground, releasing shockwaves that destroy certain barriers. Each of these objects are present in the early-game, sending you into different directions when starting a new run based on which weapon you choose to start with, keeping the early-game fresh for at least two additional runs.
In combat, the weapons have their own pros and cons as well; Sarmiento and Centella are fast, with Lightning-based buffs that, so long as you can avoid getting hit and losing it, vastly improve their DPS. You can also aim the weapon up or down when in the air, allowing for a little bit of extra utility. However, the weapon is abysmal against enemies that are small, as you can’t aim at the ground while standing, its short range makes it difficult to fight aerial enemies, and the lightning buffs the weapon can acquire through repeated hits are lost when you take damage. As a result, Sarmiento and Centella are high-risk, high-reward, and hugely satisfying if you can keep the damage going.
Ruego al Alba is a one-handed saber and is similar to the Mea Culpa from the first game. As such it’s fairly well-balanced in terms of power and speed. It can be similarly buffed with Mystic-type damage. Ruego’s buff isn’t lost upon getting hit, but it does pass over time. With wider swings, Ruego al Alba is better for smaller enemies than S&C, and its slightly greater range makes it better for aerial enemies as well. Both Ruego al Alba and S&C can block and counter, giving them a defensive option that Veredicto doesn’t have.
Veredicto is slow, but its swings are incredibly wide and it has more than double the range of Ruego al Alba, making it ideal for dealing with crowds and aerial enemies, as well as fighting from far enough away that any enemy using it would have me calling bullshit. Veredicto has an active Fire-damage buff that consumes Fervor and can be toggled on and off at will. It is, in my opinion, by far the best of the three weapons, as its slow speed isn’t enough to counterbalance the raw damage it can deal or the distance from which you can deal it. Once you acquire it, whether you start with it or not, it quickly becomes your primary damage dealer. The only time you might swap to another weapon is during boss fights, but even then, Veredicto’s wide swings allow you to attack from basically anywhere you feel safe. The only real downside is that you can’t dodge while making your swing, meaning it is possible to botch your timing and get hit by an attack that otherwise wouldn’t have hit you if you were using Ruego al Alba or S&C.
Basically what I’m saying is, just start with Veredicto. (Although I started with S&C.)
Blasphemous 2 has two expansion DLCs, each adding a new region and weapon of their own; DLC1 adds the Mea Culpa, and DLC2 adds a whip-like weapon called Embrujo, and these weapons interact with new objects that appear only in their new locations. The Mea Culpa can be made to interact with all three of the objects that the starting weapons interact with, but by default it basically replaces Ruego al Alba. Embrujo takes the place of Veredicto and can also interact with the bells.
On top of all this weapon stuff, you have access to a suite of spells called Prayers, which take the form of quick-cast Verses and longer-casting but more impactful Chants. They cost Fervor to cast and can cover for basically any weaknesses of your preferred weapon.
One weakness Metroidvanias are at risk of is late-game exploration being tedious and boring. Blasphemous 2 avoids this, making extremely good use of the different abilities you can acquire to encourage exploration with every new movement tool you acquire by putting things basically everywhere. Even the very starting areas have places you can only reach in endgame when you’ve acquired specific movement options. There is always something new to find, and every new movement ability you get means another sweep of the entire game’s map.
Supplementing these sweeps is an increasing ability to fast travel; at first, you can only use special mirror rooms to fast travel to other special mirror rooms, but eventually you can fast travel between Prie Dieus (effectively bonfires a la dark souls), and there are a great many more Prie Dieus than mirror rooms, making the former effectively obsolete. You can also earn a Chant that allows you to teleport back to the main hub’s Prie Dieu from anywhere, meaning you don’t even have to hunt down a Prie Dieu when you need to fast travel; you can just use the go-home chant to get to one quickly. You aren’t ever able to fast travel from a mirror room to a prie dieu or vice versa, however.
The boss design is peak, and I’ve been taking notes on how they function for my own Metroidvania project. No boss feels unfair or cheap; every attack is avoidable, even if they come out fast and punish bad positioning or timing, and they are all very cool fights to boot. Getting better at the tougher ones after each attempt feels amazing, and it’s equally amazing when you lock in and manage to one-shot a boss. This is only helped by the super tight and responsive controls; at no point ever do you feel like you didn’t go *exactly* where you intended to go, and so platforming challenges as well as bosses that demand a lot of movement from you feel incredible.
The music is, as usual, very good. The voiceover as well; there’s this sense of dread and melancholy coming from nearly every person you interact with, as their lives are affected irrevocably by the Miracle.
And speaking of the people you interact with...well, at this point, it’s time for the spoiler cut, so reader beware!
