Sinner! Yes you, you’re a sinner, aren’t you?! Do you like video games? Of course, you do, as you be a sinner!
Okay, I’ll knock it off. But we must all rejoice, as the sequel to 2019’s Blasphemous is finally here! Blasphemous was one of our top games of 2019, and over the years was refined, received new content and made even better to become one of the most phenomenal Souls-inspired Metroidvania. So it was going to be a massive task by The Game Kitchen to make a sequel and have it match up and be even better. But with a lot learnt with the first game, does Blasphemous 2 manage to top the original and be an even better game? Read on.
What is Blasphemous 2? 
Blasphemous 2 sees the return of the Penitent One, many years after his sacrifice and halting the spread of the supernova-like event known as The Miracle. As the Penitent One arises he is informed the land of Cvstodia Is once again under threat from The Miracle, as it is about to birth a child. Above, high in the clouds is a beating heart, and as it beats, the evils of the Miracle, and its influence on those delusional spreads. But worse yet, it seems like the Penitent One has some family issues to deal with!
It's another venture through a cursed land, bringing powerful justice to all manner of beasts and evils, exploring the deepest depths of a vastly beautiful and troubled world while becoming the ultimate redeemer to take on the Miracle.
Blasphemous 2 retains much of what made the original game so beloved, the gore, the monsters, the weirdness, the brilliant pixel art, and the immense tragedy that would break any gamer. However, since the long slew of updates in the original game, the developers decided to pull back the framework to a more traditional Metroidvania game. Whereas before, Blasphemous wove-in elements more foreseeable in a Souls game, including much of the convoluted twists and turns. But there is still the same level of challenge, a dense world filled with exciting discoveries and secrets that will leave you scratching your head until it bleeds.
The Legend of Violence, Faith, and Blasphemy 
Now the previous game didn’t have a deep, complex story, with plot points resembling bloody nails in a coffin. You go here, kill a large beast, go there, kill another, a new place opens up, kill more beasts and partake in a side quest which could lead to something. It was incredibly simple, but what it had to elevate itself from tacky 16-bit games (not the good ones like Super Metroid) was an utterly compelling world harbouring a rich sense of lore, and variety of locations, interesting supporting characters and tragic tales.
And Blasphemous 2 is pretty much the same, down to even similar story/plot beats.
From the get-go, you feel the impression of the original game, with the Penitent One awakening in a rather beautiful, yet haunting tomb, surrounded by followers made of stone, getting his bearings together and engaging in a fistfight which is a boss, rather than a standard enemy. After this event you meet your guide, a Heavenly figure with golden rays of light beaming from her very essence, to tell the Penitent One the Miracle is giving birth to a child. This of course is deemed unpleasant to the power that be, and he must once again, fight against the Miracle to kill an unborn, mega being who sits within a supernova-sized beating heart in the sky. It’s so wild, but wait … there’s more!
From here, it’s a very video gamey quest of go here, kill a beast, get something useful, discover a new location and kill some more, until you reach the heart in the sky. It’s a modest case of killing bosses to access new areas, making your way to the heart of the map (no pun intended) and coming face to face with the Child of the Miracle. Woven into the story are of course many Metroidvania elements, some more modern and many more very classic, including the powers of dashing, double jumping and so forth.
Along the way, you’ll encounter many weird and wonderful folks, who give you an insight into the world, their beliefs, and the inner workings of the Miracle. It’s really engaging to speak and listen to all the twisted, and benevolent tales, as each character gives something unique regarding the world, the politics surrounding the miracle and just a general tale of misfortune. With fascinating characters such as a giant disembodied hand with a rather elegant voice that requires kisses from its followers a blind sculpture who gives all his devotion to the Miracle and begins craving the most beautiful representation of the Mother of Mothers, and a man trapped in utter isolation who deems himself so heinous, the engulfing darkness and silent air is not enough for his trespasses. It’s all great writing and matches the same tone as the original game.
And this level of mastery for characters does spill over to the variety of beautiful locations in the world. There are a few too many caves and underground sections, but then there are some remarkable places to melt your eyes, from an inverted tower dripping with wax, an ancient holy ground consumed by bone dust, broken glass and skeletons, to a palace that pays homage to Castlevania: SOTN’s most interesting and controversial design choice.
I did feel there were a lot of seismic events happening in the story, but many vague visions and dream-like sequences that give you hints of what is going on. What I pieced together was a very tragic tale that could have been explored much more, and there are some neat additions, such as the family of Penitent siblings, led by the Penitent Father. These are all really cool characters and nice counterparts to the Penitent One, but a lack of major story beats and only servings of boss fights to push the story made the journey not as satisfying as I had hoped. Especially as there are some beautifully animated cutscenes now, and what little there is of these is truly incredible in my opinion. But I wanted to learn more about the Penitent One, the family and just in general have a more interesting conflict overall.
No one Expects the Spanish Inquisition 
There is a whole heap of improvements carried over from the original game to Blasphemous 2, including a few new ideas that really flesh out the Metroidvania aspects, if not streamline the entirety of the game compared to the original. But yes, yes indeed, the most important change is here finally ….
The spikes now don’t insta-kill you!
PRAISE BE TO THE MIRACLEThe core of Blasphemous 2 remains largely the same, you play as the Penitent One, exploring the world in a way you see fit, killing monsters, finding key items and power-ups allowing you to progress further to your goal, and avoiding many, many obstacles in the way. Spike traps included. But as mentioned, there are a few new design choices in action.
See before, Blasphemous used a whole host of tricks and environment interactions to make the world fully connected and discoverable. You had an item that would allow you to survive falling into great depths, thus opening new areas via a new means of traversal and it was quite ingenious for the genre. There were a whole host of hazards from poisonous gases, and more which acted as barriers between you and vital key items, and special loot. In the sequel, this has been stripped back and replaced now with what you would find in any other Metroidvania game (or search and action games if you’re that pretentious).
You have your dash ability, double jump and so forth to traverse the environment, and these are fine, but don’t have the explorational bite of the original game. They’re traditional, they’re still a lot of fun to use, and the world does make use of these powers in some cool ways. One set piece will see you rushing through a dream-like sequence, frantically avoiding dangers, and outrunning a wall of death. It’s all solid, fun, and well put-together. But the lack of those special methods of discovery is felt though.
However, the world is still immensely engaging to traverse through, with many secrets to discover, a rich sense of depth and variety in locations, a good sense of pacing, enemy placement and the sheer scale is just breathtaking. I do feel like more of the world is coming in future updates (or I thoroughly hope so!) as more could be here, despite the world being massive in scale anyway.
What is outstanding are the new weapons, and how they interact with certain aspects of the environment. This is a nice inclusion, as now we can adapt different attack styles, combine them and pick a favourite weapon for its speed, heavy damage or balance of both, but also use them in meaningful ways around the environment. There are of course Prayers, both smaller and more powerful events you can trigger to cause massive damage or for huge passive relives such as teleporting back to the safe area. There were a few I mainly stuck to, but all of them had their own advantages, lending to certain styles of play. I was always willing to risk big for a supermassive attack, whereas there are prayers which are smaller, yet safer bets for recovery or damage.
Your general playstyle and means of attack can be tailored to your very skillset, and the huge number of new perks and powers you can learn, along with the increasing strength and mixing of prayers, really does make Blasphemous 2 much more flexible and approachable than the original game.
One new mechanic which is super nice is the inclusion of equipable figures that grant certain benefits. You find and collect little figures/statues of various characters in the Blasphemous games, that provide positive effects such as extra damage with certain weapons, stronger prayer effects, resistance to certain elemental effects such as fire, and toxins. This is a great inclusion, and again one which could have gone further. There is a line about being granted a blessing, but also a curse, so I figured some statutes would have a positive and negative effect. Yet I didn’t see any negatives at all. Whether this was a change by the developers, I’m fine with it, but maybe with new content, there will be even more powerful statutes, with great positive and negative effects.
The Miracle taketh and the Miracle giveth
One of the biggest compliments I can give, and something many may not realise is just how much better the Penitent One moves now. I can certainly feel the refinements in movement making the Penitent One much smoother and fluent to control. Or maybe it’s just a tighter, more concise level design, as before it always felt like a flight or fight situation when making a jump over spike pits, as a single pixel wrong could mean death. But now, the Penitent One is always able to clear gaps, make jumps flawlessly and land on spikes doesn’t mean instant death now thankfully.
The Game Kitchen in an interview with Kotaku spoke about how Blasphemous 2 in line with traditional Metroidvania was more, in the same vein as Castlevania: SOTN or Medroid Prime (where the subgenre got its name from), with fewer complexities, or vague gameplay elements and more graspable level design and logics. And this is excellent, as it does feel more akin to a traditional version of a Metroidvania title, yet the original with its weird kinks in level design and puzzles had an utterly compelling edge to them and made them stand out as being unique.
While the exploration is watered down, I was thankful for the lesser number of immensely obscure puzzles that felt more like a stroke of luck would solve them… yet there were two side missions (one is quite important to get the True Ending) which had some of the most annoying breadcrumb/convoluted riddles I’ve seen in any game. They were annoying and could have been written out better.
But aside from these changes to the world design, and exploration, the combat is still brilliant, brutal and massively visceral. The weight of weapons, the roaster of enemies and as mentioned before, the number of perks, powers and combing all of them feels so rewarding and so much fun pulling in tightly woven battles.
There are a good variety of bosses, locations and obstacles to overcome, I have to say that the bosses here are some of the best I’ve played in any Metroidvania title, with one of my favourites being a delicate and dangerous duel to the death with an elegant sword fighter. Whose boss music gets quicker and more intense the further into the battle you are. It’s a great use of diegetic sound design and works so well. And there is a fantastic roster of enemies, with some cool new ones. Even though there are a few brought from the original game, and some I wasn’t a fan of before, and certainly not a fan of now …
Yet I will say, Blasphemous 2 is kind of easy for me, but I am a veteran of the original game, having finished it numerous times (especially during Covid). But aside from this ease of difficulty, I did come across quite a few annoying instances of stun locking, where you can easily die from an enemy backing you into a corner and just constantly hammering you with attacks. There are some small balancing issues with cooldowns, as some enemies can attack again, and again with very few spaces.
My biggest disappointment, however, is the lack of a proper new game-plus mode or just new content after finishing the game. This was odd upon finishing the game, there was nothing, no mention or hint of something that could be unlocked after. Not even a harder difficulty. This was disappointing, but like the original game, there were new modes and features added in after the release, so maybe this will be the case again... But it would have been nice to include at least a harder mode or something like a Boss Rush mode.
Overall?If you were to compare both Blasphemous games, you can easily see the first being much more monumental in scale and scope. But I must briskly remind all, and myself, that the original base game of Blasphemous didn’t have all the extra content, new difficulty and expanded endings. And I do feel (and hope) that The Game Kitchen will do the same level of miracle-like work and expand Blasphemous 2 in the same manner. Although if they don’t, I would still say the sequel has so much going for it, and packs in a ton of content, from its vast open Metroidvania world, cool enemies and bosses, awesome sense of discovery and exploration and looking and sounding terrific.
Blasphemous 2 is a great game! Phenomenal in certain respects and a reminder that the Metroidvania genre is still alive, well and able to bring an immensely satisfying sense of accomplishment and fun. While the first game did have some unique elements that made it different from the rest, Blasphemous 2 is a much more solid, traditional Metroidvania game, but a darn impressive one at that.
I really do hope The Game Kitchen have plans for more content in the future, as Blasphemous 2 could be even bigger! But even now it can sit proudly among the greats of the genre like Hollow Knight and Super Metroid.
++ Impressive and complex world full of discoveries
++ Beautiful art and music
++ Intense and brutal combat
+ Cool bosses, weapons, and progression
- Plays it a little too safe
- Lack of a proper new game plus, or unlockable content
- Some kinks in the combat
An Xbox Series X/S review copy of Blasphemous 2 was kindly provided by the publisher, Team 17, for the purpose of this review.
