Blasphemous 2 – a sequel with souls (Picture: Team17)
The sequel to one of the best 2D Soulslikes of recent years is a major improvement on the original and a game FromSoftware would be proud of.
2019’s Blasphemous was a more ambitious game than it looked. While a Metroidvania at heart, it wanted to be nothing less than a recreation of FromSoftware’s Dark Souls games, except in 2D and with pixelated graphics. Vibe-wise, it succeeded, thanks to a gloriously gothic air of twisted religious mysticism, but ultimately it didn’t quite measure up in gameplay terms, lacking the role-playing elements which make the Soulsborne genre so compelling.
Blasphemous 2 picks up where its predecessor left off and makes a good fist of acting like a 2D role-playing game – even though its core gameplay mix of melee combat, magic attacks, and platforming still conforms to the Metroidvania playbook. This time around, some subtle but clever additions to your character’s weaponry and accessories, and an all-round expansion in scope, ensure well over 30 hours of gameplay.
As in the first game, you play as a character called the Penitent One, who looks like an especially stern member of the Spanish Inquisition. As in most things, the game takes its cues from Dark Souls in terms of storytelling but while there’s little explanation for why things are happening the danger of a giant heart descending from the sky, to give life to an unholy abomination, is a pretty clear and present danger.
In Blasphemous 2, you immediately have a choice to make between three weapons: a giant mace, with reach and power; a more wieldy but still meaty sword that has a guard move; or two super-fast short swords. We’d recommend the mace, which is hugely satisfying and can be fire-enhanced, but as you progress, you will find the other two weapons along with others. Which is just as well, since there are areas of the map hidden behind puzzles that can only be solved with specific weapons.
From the very beginning of Blasphemous 2, parallels with Dark Souls abound. Before you work them out, enemies will punish you, and when you do work one out several new types will have already appeared. Combinations of enemies, often in unhelpfully confined areas, combine to effectively form mini-bosses, and the actual bosses are every bit as fearsome as you would expect, requiring total concentration and near perfection in your actions – and usually a bit of luck too. The same could be said about some of Blasphemous 2’s platforming sequences.
Like Dark Souls, Blasphemous 2 prefers to remain mysterious rather than explaining itself or shepherding you in particular directions. So it pays to explore as extensively as you can. The map does show you three initial (far-off) objectives, but you won’t get close to them without having first accumulated various crucial items and upgrading the Penitent One in the process.
For example, you’re given two health-restoring bile flasks by default but to add to those, and increase your health bar, you need to find both empty vials and the 30 foot tall, half-buried Mary Magdalene-lookalike who will equip them after taking a generous sample of your blood.
When you die, you leave a Dark Souls-style trace, and your fervour meter (fervour is the game’s equivalent of magic, which powers prayers that are basically spells) is eaten into unless you retrieve it. Although you can pay a priest to purge that guilt, so Blasphemous 2 is at least slightly more forgiving than the Dark Souls games.
Developer The Game Kitchen is Spanish, which goes a long way towards explaining the game’s unique ambience. It’s stacked full of quasi-Catholic mythology and imagery, all put through a dark and gothic blender – the sort of thing you’d get if Lewis Carroll had been a manic-depressive and obsessed with the Inquisition.
Blasphemous 2 – even weirder than Dark Souls (Picture: Team17)
The City of the Blessed Name ought to be an impressive place – it’s quite the mediaeval metropolis, built into the sky on the backs of three giant statues – but ever since what its inhabitants refer to as the Miracle, things have got distinctly weird, with bizarre and dangerous creatures (such as floating carriage clocks containing colourful skulls that spit fireballs, or harpies wearing coffins who throw javelins) infesting its labyrinthine districts.
Blasphemous 2 has that gothic tone which has delighted fans of FromSoftware’s games over the years, but what is even more striking about it – and represents a big improvement over the first Blasphemous – is how much the overall experience of playing it resembles what would you would actually get from a Dark Souls game, albeit in 2D.
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With its huge map, abundant hidden areas, and wider range of abilities and attributes it really feels like a full-blown, meaty and intricate role-playing game. Each weapon has its own upgrade path, for example, and the Penitent One has an altarpiece on his back with eight slots for attribute-enhancing wooden statues.
Post-Elden Ring, it will be a while before we get more Soulsborne fare from FromSoftware. In the meantime, Blasphemous 2 does an unbelievably good job of, if not filling, at least putting a large wedge in that gaping hole. It deserves to be a major hit and should delight any open-minded fans of FromSoftware’s oeuvre, which is by now a pretty extensive audience. There have been many attempts to replicate the Dark Souls formula in 2D but Blasphemous 2 is easily the best so far.
Blasphemous 2 review summary
In Short: A significant improvement on the original and undoubtedly the best 2D Soulslike game so far, with a macabre and imaginative style all of its own.
Pros: Gloriously twisted gothic vibe, with great weaponry and bosses. Superb level design, surprisingly substantial, and a good mix of Metroidvania and action role-playing influences.
Cons: There’s still very little in the way of new ideas, as well as inevitable problems with difficulty spikes and a lack of in-game help.
Score: 8/10
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £24.99
Publisher: Team17
Developer: The Game Kitchen
Release Date: 24th August 2023
Age Rating: 16
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The sequel to one of the best 2D Soulslikes of recent years is a major improvement on the original and a game FromSoftware would be proud of.