3/5 ★ – FarnySeals's review of Blasphemous II.

The first Blasphemous wasn’t exactly non-linear in a vast, complex way like an RPG, but it was non-linear enough to allow the player to explore and experiment, allowing them to discover optional bosses and useful items. In Blasphemous 2, this freedom is executed for linear story progression and mission markers. Even when there are several markers, you have to do them in a specific order. Sword hearts in the first game were useless, but somehow the items here are less useful. I used the same prayers throughout the whole game because most of them are useless or situational, and the prayer beads amount to “this thing does less damage”. With three new weapons you’d think there’d be more variation in items, but at the very least those are fun to use. Art direction is still on point, the soundtrack is solid, and the new 2D animated cutscenes are cool even if I prefer the the pixelated cutscenes of the first game. The main reason I wanted to write this review though, is the difficulty, the level to level gameplay is fairly balanced, but the bosses suck compared to the first game. Most of them are super easy, but there’s a couple that are so insanely difficult and frustrating. They buffed a boss after the release of the DLC for seemingly no reason and now that boss and the penultimate boss are insanely frustrating and unfair to fight, with cruel, almost nonsensical hit boxes and no room to heal. I like difficult bosses, like Slave Knight Gael, Orphan of Kos, and even the first game’s bosses which I thought were all great, but bosses that are hard for the sake of it, like Malenia as a none Blasphemous II example, make the game frustrating, not challenging. This game feels like it took the first game’s flaws and made them worse. Thank god there isn’t a third one of these and the team has moved onto something else. For the DLC, I hope you like reused areas and fighting the same boss several times. Man, I didn’t enjoy this. Beating the final boss of the DLC was not satisfying, he has twice the attack moves as any other boss, insane hit boxes, and a level of RNG where if he does a certain move several times you’re guaranteed to lose, so just give up. If it wasn’t bad enough, the DLC ending is locked behind the game’s other alternate ending which requires getting a ton of collectibles, and quite frankly I did not care enough at that point and because of that, the DLC’s ending was underwhelming. I liked the 2 new areas quite a lot, but backtracking to old ones was not fun for me. I also appreciated the return of the first game’s sword, but it is way too similar to the other middle ground weapon. It has its moments, but I left this one feeling incredibly frustrated with the anti-climax of beating that insane boss.