Indie Game of the Week 455: Blasphemous II

If you were to chop this IGotW number in half you'd get somewhere close to 225, which coincidentally is the IGotW number for the first Blasphemous: a grotesque pixel art exploraction game rooted in the Catholic church and its various mythologies and apocyphra—which is to say, the parts of Catholicism that they themselves would acknowledge as made up or at least deeply symbolic; I'm not looking to start a beef with those guys, not with a Chicago Pope on the throne—and I'm heartened to discover that its 2023 sequel is every bit as morbid and engaging as the first. Blasphemous II, as that sequel is mysteriously called, has you once again don the conical helmet of the Penitent One as he faces a new evil threatening the humble lands of Cvstodia.

Trying to decipher what's actually happening in these games seems like it would take a theology degree and/or a truckload of peyote to follow but suffice it to say there's some sort of Miracle, spoken of as a sapient entity with a capital letter and everything, and it has a habit of using its divine power to turn the nearby lands into an eldritch hellscape based purely on the misinterpreted wishes and prayers it receives from its vaguely medieval-ish Spanish parish: a guy metaphorically wishes he had some honeyed sweetness in his heart, and he becomes an enormous partial-honeycomb monster filled with bees, as an example. The Miracle was stopped last time by the Penitent One, a knight that observed a vow of silence as he (quietly) murdered a bunch of weirdos loyal to the Miracle either by choice or by duress and foiled the Miracle's plans to manifest fully: now, several decades later, the Miracle is planning the same trick again with some immaculate conception shit and various forces-that-be have resurrected their pointy-headed patsy to once again sort out these unearthly problems on their behalf. Well, it's not like he's gonna complain, right?

Lady, whatever you paid those wingaling babies for this "glamorous, deep, European-style" manicure, it was way too much.

Like many of their contemporaries the Blasphemous games have typical exploraction mechanics, like a big map to scour and barriers that need to be overcome with the right items or are otherwise shortcuts activated by reaching them from the other side, that are meshed with those of FromSoft's Souls series of action-RPGs: an increasingly popular hybridization for 2D Indie games from this genre. That includes corpse runs—which now instead use "guilt" as a mechanic, where accumulating it from dying constantly (who am I feeling guilty for? The overworked coroner?) lowers your mana and defense but increases your cash flow, though you might choose to erase the guilt and this malus alike by going to confession and bribing the priest (is that how it works?)—as well as some tough boss battles (against dudes who all have subtitles so you know they're important) and the generally saturnine and post-apocalyptic vibe that tends to accompany games made in this model. One new addition for this second outing is giving the Penitent One more weapons: you pick one of three initially, like a starter Pokémon, and can find the other two as you explore. The three weapons not only give you a mix of special attacks and a different balance of stats, from fast and weak to slow and strong, but each carries its own traversal ability which means all three end up being vital for standard progression. My favorite is the slow weapon: it's a giant censer, one of those metal bulbs that you burn incense in, and the arc it has when you swing it makes hitting anything—including small annoying enemies like this game's Flea Man equivalent or those damn birds—so much easier. There's also spells that regenerate quickly (the game calls them prayers, naturally; can't be doing with arcane magic here, that's the devil's business), at least two different sets of passives you can equip, and just a whole heap of collectibles and other upgrades scattered around the place like a true exploraction game do.

It's a curious coincidence that the recent State of Play of but a few days ago had a number of attractive pixel exploraction games to show off because that's still one of Blasphemous's greatest strengths, no lessened with this bigger and bolder sequel. It's the type of game where the NPCs are as much of a horror show as the bosses, and typically fill the screen if only so we can more clearly see the gory details in their designs. Likewise for the enemy deaths, whether you treat them to a showy execution move or not (those that sometimes trigger when they're near death, though it's easy to miss the prompt before hitting them once more to finish them off). There's a lady in the forested Choir of Thorns (the regions all have names like that) that shoots ghost birds at you and when you butcher her in the name of the Lord her fallen body gets pecked apart by her erstwhile avian friends—the execution has you instead tear her head off to feed to an owl. All I can say is that someone must have been working through some Home Alone 2-related childhood trauma (and retroactively speaking the Bird Lady was one of the less scary appearances in that movie). As is apropos for the Christian religion, most of the worst punishments are reserved for the womenfolk in the game, though they do also constitute a fair number of the more helpful NPCs as well; that includes the angelic Anunciada, whom acts as your guide (that is, she points out who you need to murder first) and is the first friendly face you see after rising unceremoniously from your own grave. It's almost worth playing this game for these character designs alone, though gracefully the developers were thoughtful enough to put a great game behind it all too.

Anunciada is a great help when you're just getting started and shaking the corpse dust off. I'd give her a big hand but she's already covered there.

The first Blasphemous felt like it had most of the elements right but was perhaps a bit clunky with its traversal owing to its sturdy, armored protagonist—where his implacableness came in far more useful in the boss fights—but here it feels like they have that balance between platforming and combat more fine-tuned, closer a Hollow Knight where the bosses and platforming sections alike could throw you for a loop while still feeling fair and responsive. The presentation is as impressive as ever as is the size and scope of its world and its many visually distinctive regions to visit, from natural caves and forests to pristine cathedrals and far less pristine catacombs and ruins, where character animations have an incredible fluidity to them that only heightens their uncanniness after the Miracle worked its, uh, miracles on these poor suckers seeking succor. The weapon switching is often conditional to the types of obstacles you face and the enemies around you, giving you ample reason to play around with all three rather than just the one you've grown attached to—the heavy censer, called Veredicto, is great and all but its downside is that it doesn't let you parry and you know I'm all about that parryslop—and you'll constantly pop back to town or backtrack to earlier areas with new upgrades just because those boons can really make a difference with the typically high boss difficulty in games of this ilk. You've probably seen enough this specific type of affair come and go to know whether you're interested in playing yet another one, though I will say that Blasphemous II is close to the top of that heap in terms of its quality and stomach-churning visuals.

(Incidentally, I've also recorded a clip of an early boss fight in case you aren't already sold.)

Rating: 5 out of 5.

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