Blasphemous 2 is a sequel to Blasphemous. A game that I have not played played. Did I let that stop me? Of course not. After a quick read of the plot I knew I had absolutely no idea what was going on in the first game, and playing it wouldn’t help my understanding of it. Nevertheless, the game did look interesting and worth a deeper dive.

What’s good?

Blasphemous 2 has a certain style to it and that style looks wonderful, despite conveying dark underground dungeons.

The game felt very balanced and meeting new enemy types presented a learning curve, but not so much that they felt annoying to defeat.

Health bars on bosses! After coming from the bullet sponges in Metroid Dread this was a joy to behold and made the boss combat much more bearable as later boss phases could be predicted.

What’s bad?

As already mentioned I had no idea what was going on, and that did not change the more I played. While the setting for the story seemed to make for interesting enemy types this led to a lack of investment in the story for me.

Two (or three) stage bosses. I have a pet peeve for bosses that transform into bigger or new bosses. It’s always a let down and a video game trope that needs to go away now please.

How much did I play?

I was under the assumption I was doing quite well with my progress but after looking it up I had beaten 5 out of the 12 bosses.

Conclusion

Overall I enjoyed the time I spent playing Blasphemous 2 and it had some interesting mechanics, but without the story element I was just wandering around biomes killing things without seeing much point, or end, in sight. Reading other reviews it sounds like there is some deep lore to the game and a lot of interest around using different starting weapons but I didn’t feel any draw to discover more.