Summary
There’s a lot to love about The Game Kitchen and Team17’sBlasphemousand, considering how long video game development cycles can be nowadays, it seems like a miracle of truly biblical proportions that the sequel was able to launch four years later.BlasphemousandBlasphemous 2are punctuated most distinguishably by their pixel art style and dark-fantasy art direction, plunging players into rich landscapes of horror-infused Catholicism. Like any good sequel,Blasphemous 2is a proper continuation of the IP and iterates on what the Metroidvania action-platformer excels at beautifully.
At its core, much is the same about how players—as the reprised, cone-headed Penitent One protagonist—interact with Cvstodia and its grim, dreadful, and lowly inhabitants, as well as bosses that challenge players’ mastery of new weapons and abilities they will discover in their latest pilgrimage.Blasphemous 2salvages rosary beads and prayerswhile also introducing significant altarpiece figures and warmly received quality-of-life improvements, but it’s impossible to deny that the sequel’s defining feature after being out for a year now is its three unique weapons:Blasphemous 2’s Veredicto, Sarmiento and Centella, and Ruego Al Alba—tripling players’ armament options from the first game.
Blasphemous 2’s Three Weapons Represent Everything Great About the Metroidvania Soulslike Platformer
Undoubtedly what’s most striking or identifiable aboutBlasphemous 2a year after its launch is how foundational its new approach to weapons is.Blasphemoushad the Penitent One solely equip the iconic Mea Culpa swordand rely on supplementary prayers, whereas players eventually have three individual weapon types at their disposal inBlasphemous 2, each with a profound and vital implementation in combat, traversal, and exploration—Blasphemous’ core gameplay pillars.
The catch, however, is that players only get to choose one to begin the sacrilegious side-scrollerwith, which has massive ramifications for how exploration and progression look from player to player. Each weapon has its own move set and animations as well as traversal mechanics, and certain areas or interactions can only be accessed with a particular weapon, meaning players will only be able to access areas and interactions associable to the weapon they selected and must find the other two weapons before they can progress further elsewhere.
This challenges the status quo ofBlasphemous’ Metroidvania level design authentically and allows exploration to still be natural with clear paths outlined by what players can and cannot access yet, which are only illustrated by continuously finding obstructions at every turn. Therefore, a choice that would be rather trivial in any other game is crucial to progression inBlasphemous 2and will also inform what playstyle players need to learn as they carve through enemies.
Thecrunchy, weighty censer, Veredicto, has proven to be an outstanding choice as a beginning weapon due to its stopping power, for instance, but Sarmiento and Centella will inevitably appeal to anyone who prefers quicker, lighter maneuvers with dual dagger-like blades instead.
It’s also interesting because the weapon players select will also be what they are then forced to employ against early-game bosses without a choice to swap to another weapon, while late-game bosses can be tackled in several ways depending on which weapon players decide they enjoy best at that time. Of course, players acquire other combat and traversal abilities that are not tethered to a weapon, such asPassage of Ash’s double jump or Mercy of the Wind’s air dash—two fundamental traversal upgrades the originalBlasphemoussorely neglected—butBlasphemous 2’s weapon-related abilities are far more unique and bake Metroidvania exploration into the first decision players come across in the sequel.
It’s easy to look atBlasphemous 2on paper and see it as a Metroidvania, Soulslike, and platformer individually; altogether, those subgenre influences are largely refined and supported well by a throughline of player choice that results inthree dynamic and versatile weapons players mix-and-matchlater on.
Blasphemous 2 Has More in Store This Fall
Blasphemoushad its own slate of post-launch DLCsand with a possible tease forBlasphemous 2DLC this fall, the Metroidvania sequel’s tale is not quite over yet. It’s unclear what this tease could amount to, and if it truly is a story-related expansion it’s difficult to predict what it could entail. Still, for moreBlasphemous 2content to be in the works and released mere months after its first anniversary would be fantastic.
Moreover, it would be thrilling to see ifBlasphemous 2DLC could have new weapons in store or if it would choose to embellishVeredicto, Sarmiento and Centella, and Ruego Al Albafurther by designing more epic and perilous platforming sequences with the same mechanics players have grown accustomed to. If DLC is integrated into the base game’s content like the originalBlasphemoushad, there’s no telling when it could become accessible or if players would need all three weapons obtained before being able to actually make any progress within.
Either way, a one-year-oldBlasphemous 2may look drastically different by its second anniversary, but for now it is arguably a commendable sequel and a staple for anyone who adores Metroidvania platformers anddark-fantasy Soulslikes. It doesn’t delineate itself wholly from the original (which could be perceived both positively and negatively), and there will always be those who preferBlasphemoustoBlasphemous 2, though the strides it makes are intriguing and cementBlasphemousas a franchise to keep an eye on for future content.
