Recent reviews by GL|HF Laundry.God

I just achieved 100% completion on Blasphemous, so I wanted to write a review:

You play as The Pentinent One, in a land called Cvstodia. Cvstodia has been cursed, and you're on a mission to lift that curse. The game combines the feel and controls of Hollow Knight/Dead Cells with the combat and overall atmosphere of Dark Souls. I want to also mention that the game is not as punishing as Dark Souls. Visually the game is amazing. The combat is mostly fair, and rewards outplaying the AI with parries, jumps, dodges, etc. One thing that I really enjoyed about Blasphemous is the lore behind the world. You can examine lore behind each collectible, rosary bead, and quest item. You can even talk to dead bodies to learn more about the world before their passing (Similar to collecting lore around the world when using the dream nail in Hollow Knight).

The world is fairly large, and a lot of fun to explore. Each part of Cvstodia has a unique feel to it. You'll have to move around wind patterns in the Graveyard of the Peaks, avoid swinging pendulums and insta-death spikes in the Sleeping Canvases, solve bell puzzles in Jundo, tread the floor very carefully as to not upset the ghosts in the Library of Negated Words, and do your best to not get lost in the Wall of Holy Prohibitions.

The enemy design is great. They each have one attack, so it's fairly easy to fight them one on one. However once you have a few different types of enemies around insta-death spikes or insta-death pits, the fights can become more challenging. The bosses are are LOT of fun to fight, and are very creative concerning design. They all have approximately 3-4 attacks that chain together randomly, and chain together much more quickly (And the attacks become more powerful) as the boss nears death.

Overall I really enjoyed this game. I'm going to continue playing it until I get 100% achievements, and after that I will probably speed run it here and there to see how I do. With that being said, the game still has some flaws that I want to cover for both you and any devs reading:

The spells in this game are extremely underwhelming. The fact that they take time to charge up an animation AND they cost a resource (fervor) means that they should be fairly powerful. You can swing your sword as often as you'd like for free. So if something takes just as much time as two sword swings and consumes fervor, but does less damage than two sword swings... That's obviously not something that you'll use often. Please speed up the charge animation and increase the damage.

This one contains spoilers, so I'll block it. But I need to describe it in full for people to understand the issue. When you die, you leave a guilt trophy to recover your maximum fervor (Your fervor [equal essentially to mana] is used for spells and ranged attacks). These trophies sometimes end up in areas that cannot be reached, so you need to go to certain statues to recover the guilt, and spend money doing so. Also If you choose to obtain the good ending by destroying all of these statues, you will have none left to reduce guilt if you have one that spawned on a layer of spikes. This means that the only way for you to reduce guilt is to beat the game, which I may not want to do at that time. Please add an additional way to reduce guilt, like visiting the church after destroying the statues or something.

Like I said earlier, the combat is mostly fair. There are a few times in the game where you will get stun locked from a single enemy and killed. Getting tossed around by several enemies and locked into death is okay with me, but when one enemy can stun lock you to death with a single hit, it seems unfair. It's the equivalent of an attack instantly killing you. The two attacks that come to mind immediately are: Quirce when he comes down into 5 fire pillars when he is near death (It will knock you down, and he will ascend and descend again before you can get up to dodge) and the lightning attack of the final form of the final boss (The lightning is called down faster than you can recover from a single hit, so there is no way out of being chain stunned to death if you are hit a single time).

If devs are reading this, please add these two things: First of all I think everyone agrees that players need some sort of way to track our progress in each area. This way when people are achievement hunting, they don't have to wonder where the last bile vessel is (The Library one was very hard to find for me), or where their last child of the moonlight is. Second of all, please add more doors for fast travel. This game contains just under 200 individual rooms, and has 5 fast travel locations. That isn't enough, in my opinion.

And lastly, the price of this game may deter some people from buying it. It's a great game in my opinion. But in a competitive market, you're going against games like Hollow Knight which many consider one of the greatest games ever designed, but Blasphemous is 40% more expensive. Blasphemous has the same price tag as Dead Cells. This may deter some people from buying it. My suggestion to the devs is to keep a free demo available for installation to keep potential buyers interested if they are on the fence over the price tag.

Overall, I really enjoyed this game and I will continue to play it. I suggest it to anyone who is a fan of the games that I had mentioned earlier. If you're not interested in the game in the current state (Fairly new and some bugs to be patched), I feel that's fair... But when NG+ is added, additional content released, and the bugs are patched, I can assure you that you're not going to want to miss this one!