Recent reviews by Grimalkin

I really wanted to like the sequel to Blasphemous, as I am a big fan, however based on the writing done for the sequel I cannot recommend the 2nd based on that alone.

TL;DR: Gameplay fun, Story Bad

The story of the first game basically says that one day the people's "God" which is referred to as "The Miracle" starts to manifest it's will upon reality in a tangible physical way. This causes widespread suffering and chaos, and almost destroys the world, thus leading the people to start calling it "The Grievous Miracle".

This lead to the creation of "The Anointed Legion" led by His Holiness Escribar, a.k.a this world's version of the Pope. Escribar had the idea of appointing a representative for humanity to commune with the Miracle. The Anointed Legion started to hunt down anyone who dared to pray to the Miracle, who wanted to pilgrimage to the Sacred Tree.

A faction was created called "The Brotherhood of the Silent Sorrow", which was a group of monks who took vows of silence believing the best way to avoid committing sin was to be completely silent and living a life of purity and isolation. Escribar didn't care about their innocence, he viewed them as a threat. Blasphemous 1 starts right after The Anointed Legion committed genocide.

The Penitent One, the character you play in both games, was a member of the Brotherhood that WAS killed but at the beginning of Blasphemous 1 is resurrected from death by the Miracle. The Penitent One goes on a suicide mission to reach the Sacred Tree (the place where mortals supposedly can directly communicate with the Miracle) and try to speak to the Miracle directly.

In Ending C, the True Ending, The Penitent One and his allies find out a horrible secret. They find out that "The Miracle" is actually an Eldritch God/Dimensional Alien and that it was assimilating the mortals and was hiding it's secret by manipulating people like Escribar into blind servitude and killing anyone else. The Penitent One is successful in killing the Eldritch "Miracle" and dies as an unknown hero, as the rest of the world never did learn of the true secret and believed that they were abandoned by their God/Miracle with it's silence.

Blasphemous 2 takes places in the future, long after The Penitent One and his friends have been dead for some time and the world had experienced regular peace. The Penitent One is resurrected once again, some woman who looks like an Angel tells him that The Miracle is coming back and is in the process of "giving birth" to a new baby.

You find out that "The Miracle" wasn't truly killed, but it's physical form was, causing it to kind of go into a coma or something. A couple tries praying to the Miracle for help with their inability to conceive a child and it caused the Eldritch God to awaken. The Miracle saw what had become of the world in it's absence and also was reminded of what had happened and became enraged, and The Grievous Miracle took over the world once again and started punishing the mortals again.

So here is where my issue is with the writing:

Blasphemous 2 only has 2 endings, the Bad Ending and the Good/True Ending. The Miracle appointed a bunch of "Penitent Ones" who worship the Miracle and dress similar to The Penitent One, claiming that they and the main character are part of a "long line of Penitents" and the 2nd to last final boss is "The First Penitent One" who supposedly been waiting for our main character and insinuates that The Miracle orchestrated the whole thing centuries ago.

Bad Ending shows The Penitent One ends up getting absorbed by The Miracle's baby and becomes part of The Miracle. The "Good/True" ending shows that The Penitent One kills the Eldritch God once again and goes to "Heaven" and meets up with all his old friends and "lives" happily ever after.

First off, The Penitent One was called that in the first game because 1. No one knew his real name because he took a vow of silence. 2. Because he was acknowledged by the locals since he was a member of the Brotherhood of the Silent Sorrow, that he was a sorrowful monk who was repenting for the sin of his mortal being and the sins of his mortal brethren. It was NOT because he was part of some mysterious group of elite selected warriors by the Eldritch God. ALSO the outfit that he wears in both games was the uniform of the monks from the Brotherhood of the Silent Sorrow, yet the 2nd game would have you believe that this outfit is a symbol of warriors who serve the Eldritch God since long before the Brotherhood was created, which is chronologically and cannon wise not correct.

Also, the whole idea behind the Ending C of Blasphemous 1 was to reveal that all the miracles, and their god The Miracle was nothing more than the manipulations of a dimensional Alien that was beyond our mortal understanding. The Miracle did NOT exist since the dawn of creation or before, it's very specified in dialogue that The Miracle didn't start appearing until AFTER The Father/Twisted One became the Sacred Tree after sacrificing himself and caught the attention of the Eldritch God.

The Good Ending makes no sense because "Heaven" doesn't exist, Angels and Sin don't exist, and if he kills the Eldritch God again there shouldn't be any abominations, cherubs, heaven/hell, or anything like that. The Penitent One should've just died again and the world would return to normal. The Bad Ending actually makes more sense, since we know The Miracle wanted revenge against The Penitent One so it had planned that from the start. That would ALSO make the bonus cutscene at end credits make sense, which shows Crisanta coming back. Crisanta takes on the mission in his place to kill the new Eldritch God which would be The Penitent One/Miracle.

But no. We are expected to believe that the true ending is The Penitent One going to some magical realm of Heaven, which is not supposed to exist, and meet all of his old friends like some cheesy Disney ending which completely devalues/discredits any of the storyline that led up to this point.

The writing at the end really does come off like they wanted to make a sequel, had planned out levels and enemies to fight with new weapons, but didn't have a story to give them an excuse to make a sequel. So they basically just threw a bunch of crap together so they could make a second game. LOOK guys, now The Penitent One fights other Penitent Ones so he can go to Heaven, isn't it so heartwarming and gives you closure?

No. No it doesn't. I'm so glad that I looked into the endings before fighting the final boss, because I wanted to get the true ending, and if I had played through that entire game a second time just to watch All Dogs Go To Heaven, I would've been so freaking pissed.

Once again, this series does NOT disappoint! I felt the Watcher gaze deep into my soul and as usual he read me like a book. The trilogy in itself is absolutely worth playing for anyone out there who is looking for a short but deep game that will blow your mind every time.

From the first two games my words were Angel and Justice, and in this game my word was Strength.

Secret Word: Justice

Wow that was surprisingly accurate! Weirdly something that I needed to hear...😳 Worth the price

I really wanted to like this game, but unfortunately I can't recommend this, even with it being on sale for about 4 bucks; I still asked for a refund for the game. It's sad to say because The Park has great potential for a good horror visual novel experience, but falls short explicitly for that exact reason: it's gameplay length is so short. Technically there are other reasons this game doesn't succeed, but I'll get to that in a moment. I only played this game for about an hour and 20 minutes and that's when the game ended. That was it. That's all you get. And they even end the game on an ambiguous cliffhanger where you never fully figure out what's going on, as if the artsy fartsy symbolism of the game was supposed to justify their lack in writing. The fact that Funcom has the audacity to try and charge even 13 dollars for something like this baffles me. The reason why I place so much emphasis on the gameplay length as the main problem is because I feel like the other issues with the game would or could be fixed with more time and effort put into the game itself. More narrative, more story, more to do, MORE something, ANYTHING.

I've read that a lot of people don't like the story, but one thing that gets overlooked a lot (which is funny because the game reminds you of this often), but the game takes place in The Secret World. For those of you who don't know, The Secret World was (I don't know if it's around anymore) an mmo game where in this universe all mythology, folklore, superstitions, fairy tales, etc., are all actually real things, they exist. The Boogeyman, Santa Clause, Bigfoot, anything you can think of is supposed to exist in this universe. Thus, with that being said, that fact actually adds to the ambiguity of the story because you truly don't know what is real and what isn't. It's easy to write off the story as simply being symbolic of a woman's mental decline and terrible luck, but knowing that ANYTHING is possible, then all the extra things in the game like the occult themes and paranormal happenings may very well be real and directly related to her story in a literal sense. Was she just nuts? Or was she being messed with by supernatural forces? Was it both? Unfortunately we won't really know as they chose to leave it up to conjecture.

Another issue I have with the game (which once again could've been fixed with more content/playtime) is how little you can interact with and how linear it is. It comes off initially like an open world map where you have to search for your son, but right off the bat it's made clear that you are being forced in one direction and you just make one circle around the map. Done. The End. That's it.

No other backstory. You don't find out anything else about the history of the park or Chad. That's it. It's just: Welp life sucks lady, OH WELL

I'm sorry but I really feel this game deserves better than just being an excuse to get Secret World players to spend extra money just to unlock a Chad costume.

I really wanted to like this game because of the true story it's based on, and the fact that it's an open world exploration game. I feel like this game is a true "hit-and-miss" type where they were trying to bring multiple experiences to the table but never fully succeeded at any of it. It's a shame considering you can tell that real work went into this project but it just doesn't quite cut it for me.

First off, the graphics are beautiful. The atmosphere when you simply explore can be breathtaking, immediately peaking any explorer/adventurer types curiousity. When I first played, I didn't know too much about the game, so when I got free reign to look around, it was a pleasant surprise. I especially love when horror games utilize this. But this is where you start noticing the rest of the game.

For anyone who doesn't know about the Dyatlov Pass Incident/Horror , look it up because it's totally worth reading and very very disturbing. Honestly I don't feel like this game does the true story justice, especially when they added the antagonist to the game. The real story is more scary than the game, in fact I would say to fellow horror enthusiasts to avoid this game because it's not scary at all. The antagonist feels more annoying than frightening and it even breaks immersion and detracts from the mystery of the real story. Plus, what's the point of having a horror game where you can't hide and you can't fight so all you can do is run, yet they limit your sprint? Pretty much guaranteeing you'll always die unless you spot them first. Creating realism would make more sense if they were implementing a survival mechanic like eating and shelter, but there isn't. So you limit sprint because...you can? To extend gameplay by dying all the time? To make the game harder because it's boring without this stuff?

Another immersion breaker for me was the narration/voice acting. I don't mind narrated cut scenes or if the main character was narrating/expositioning things in observation, but when you pick up notes left by (probably) dead people and you start hearing some random actor/actresses voice, it breaks the 4th wall. I appreciate the effort in getting voice acting and the thought behind it, but when it comes to a horror experience and a mystery it kinda ruins the atmosphere. For example, hearing a womans voice speak, when you have no idea a woman wrote that note, is an extra detail of information that makes no sense how we learned it nor is it relevant to the true plot: how did those people die? Or at least that's what I hope the plot was because to be honest I didn't get very far into the game because I got too bored to care anymore. Once I backed up into a mountain wall and got magically clipped/stuck on a rock (and then killed by the monster), I was done.

If you're wanting a true horror experience, the most important thing you need is atmosphere/immersion. If you break the illusion of fear and danger, then you no longer have a horror game. In Kholat's case, you have a boring but beautiful exploration game that tries to be horror but falls short.

It's times like these I wish Steam had a neutral option for recommendation rather than a straight up "yes" or "no". The Town of Light was indeed everything that most reviews good and bad had said:

The game pace is VERY slow and is more a visual interactive story with mutliple choices rather than a true horror in my opinion, although one could argue that the content within the story is the true horror of the game.

The story revolves around a patient Renee and the horror that was her whole life leading up to the beginning of the game. People were not lying/exaggerating either with how graphic and depressing the story is. Truly, by the end of this game, I didn't cry but I felt the deepest despair. I was so sad I had to take time to try and cheer myself up because of how powerful the experience was (plus the story hits a bit close to home when it comes to me). I do not regret playing the game at all and enjoyed it as a whole, but the content of the game is truly disturbing and they pull no punches when it comes to showing you the details. The game works in a crescendo effect where the intensity gets worse and worse, but there's no point where you get to have a resoultion and feel better, no calm descension with resolution, only the sudden shock of an ending that you hoped wouldn't be. The story for it's time period is as realistic as it is somber and unnerving, the ending was so graphic that I had to look away occasionally yet the sound effects still had me squirming in my seat.

If you are a gamer looking for an action packed game or a true horror game with hiding/danger/jumpscares/etc., then this is NOT the game for you. If however you are simply looking for a really good story or something that is thought provoking and atmospheric, then this IS the game for you!!!

A word of warning: you might want to avoid this game if you are sensitive to subject content involving mental illness or being institutionalized ( or freaking lobotomies ). This game was hard for me to play for those reasons, but it was well worth the experience if you can make the full journey.

Overall, a cleverly made game with both literal messages as well as figurative ones paying homage to both history of psychology/medicine and to those who live with the eternal struggle of mental disorders. You find out a spooky secret about your character towards the end too ;D (there are hints towards this throughout your playthrough, so pay attention to details).