Review | Blasphemous 2 - Judasvania

Catholic funerals typically take place three days after death, sometimes up to a week after. I’d say that’s about how much time we have to see if Blasphemous 2 will get buried. 

If you’re coming here to this specific Blasphemous 2 review, you might be a fan of the cult hit souls-inspired Metroidvania, and now are hotly anticipating and gobbling up any impressions of the sequel. If that’s you, Blasphemous enjoyer, rejoice! Blasphemous 2 is great, it's different enough, and it's better in some key ways that casual players will enjoy. You can buy this video game. 

The divine reaching down to the mortal isn’t always for the best.

If you are stumbling through the door high off the fumes of Baldur’s Gate 3 and Armored Core 6 or waking up zombified from a weekend in Starfield, then Blasphemous 2 failed to pick up steam. Especially if that is the case, I urge you to give this game the shot it deserves, even if the deck feels stacked against it being a megahit. 

Yes, no matter how you view it Blasphemous 2 releasing in August means it’s arriving just before — and yet somehow already in the shadow of — FromSoftware’s latest release as well as a glut of other “big games” made by teams a dozen times the size of The Game Kitchen. It was always going to be hard to stand out, made even more difficult by the fact that FromSoftware’s recent work has clearly been a great influence on the team at the Game Kitchen. 

In the shadows of our lord.

Blasphemous 2 is still littered with its own takes on FromSoft signatures like the corpse run, an Estus flask-like healing system, and cryptic NPCs, and a compelling drip-fed narrative. To its benefit, though, the sequel to 2019’s Blasphemous is more Castlevania in its DNA than its predecessor, and as an overall experience is less punishing than that game too. Even if punishment is still one of the main themes in the Gothic Roman Catholic-inspired world of Cvstodia, where you return in Blasphemous 2. 

As the Penitent One, you are yet again serving the Miracle, the force which plagues and saves the world, I guess, depending on how you look at it. This time a baby is born, in a tale that grows to echo the immaculate conception of Jesus Christ. 

Even the basics here are shrouded in a stylish crypticness that echoes Dark Souls. Yet, The Game Kitchen remains one of the few developers to use this tact to craft a world all its own outside of the shadow of Lordran. The hulking, inhuman creatures that serve as your friends and foes in Cvstodia evoke the grandeur and specifics of the Spanish Roman Catholic architecture and art the game is pulling from. Even the wood carvings you find and equip that gives the Penitent One buffs look like statues of Saints your devote grandmother would keep on her dresser. While less grotesque than its predecessor, the imagery on display in Blasphemous 2 continues a bloodthirsty reverence for the macabre, a tone that underpins the entire experience. 

Stuck in the mud.

The most unique part of Blasphemous 2’s approach is the way it opens. Abandoning the Mea Culpa, you can now choose from one of three weapons to start the game. Don’t worry, you will get them all eventually. The catch is, you’ll need to find them in the world which, from the outset, is much more open and expansive than you might expect from this genre, which often thrives in linear upgrade progression. The trick, however, is that each weapon also has its own traversal move tied to it. Each weapon is a tool to unlock one of the many blocked paths. And in the first half of the game, the starting weapon you chose is just one factor that can determine your path. 

I first took the thurible-like mace which ended up being my trusty companion ‘till the end. With both range and power, it's hard to go wrong with this pick, just know it’s the only weapon that cannot parry. Instead, you can use your Fervour (a magic meter which grows smaller upon each death if you fail to reclaim your body) to light the mace up with flame damage buff. Each of the three weapons have their own skill trees and each has its own use. But the dynamism of this opening is where Blasphemous 2 is at its most thrilling. This extra wrinkle is just enough to turn something we’ve seen plenty of times before, into a complete mystery. 

Sadly, after you’ve begun to parse its language and how to travel Blasphemous 2’s world with a full arsenal, the game loses a bit of its edge. The back half of the journey is where it becomes clear The Game Kitchen has been easing up on the difficulty early on to accommodate both the branching opening and a wider player base who might have bounced off in the first Blasphemous. In the sequel, the penultimate boss fight really provides a significant challenge. The other hardest parts of the game all came from locked room fights with wave after wave of the enemy - a type of encounter that occurred in frustrating frequency in Blasphemous 2. This is not to say there isn’t hope for more masochism down the line. There almost certainly is. 

Let us slay.

The first Blasphemous released three DLC expansions over the course of two years, which added a considerable amount of new content, modes, and settings, including a thematically relevant  Spanish dub. The latter of which is in the sequel from the get-go, but it doesn’t feel like that’s stopping The Game Kitchen from adding more features. 

The path I took through Blasphemous 2 led me to a definite and dark ending. I saw the potential for other paths, but without the help of an online community or guide, I’ll admit I was lost in how to stray from the one laid out before me. Over time, these secrets will be unlocked by minds more dedicated than my own and — we can pray — more development support will be given. That is not to say that this game, at a nice 20 hours, is  unfinished, anything but. It is a polished, snappy action-platformer that wears its influences on its sleeve while still making them its own. But to what end? I’m perfectly content with my time playing Blasphemous 2, but at 98% map completion I still want to know more about these characters and just how much agency I could have had in the fate of The Penitent One and Cvstodia.