Jerp plays Blasphemous pt.4 [End] - I have no idea what's going on but glad it's over (2020-12-13)
1I ended up checking out a bit of a speed run, up until the points where I hadn't been yet (and later, a small bit of the game's wiki) -- both which I would never do for a first playthrough. There's a rosary bead that reduces the dash cooldown that makes the game a lot less frustrating to play (which I hadn't noticed as the game basically trains you to ignore item descriptions). Also, spending 20,000 tears in the church unlocks fast travel between prie-dieus, which makes the game a whole lot less tedious. Despite erring on the side of a little too much access to dashing and fast travel, I much prefer that to the default state of the game, where dashing feels awful and there's a lot of backtracking through either empty rooms, or rooms with little to no interesting engagement or challenge (let alone decent rewards for backtracking -- many other Souls and/or Metroidvania games have interesting random drops, better rewards for repeat-killing enemies, and better ability-gated stuff to return to).
A couple of the bosses were frustrating due to jank animations, hitboxes, over-aggressive AI, and frequently overshooting/missing their attacks in a way that made parries/etc. way more troublesome than they should be. Chrisanta in particular is obnoxiously over-aggressive, leaving very little time to heal, and the difference between her attempting to parry, or going in for another attack is nonexistent - it appears to be the same few windup frames, so the instinct is to parry straight away regardless of what she does (and she'll often dash past you as she attacks, effectively crossing up your parry).
Despite being a bit of a frantic chase (both for that elusive sword, and to get to a high enough platform to hit the boss before the platform disappeared), the final boss was alright. I think probably one of the better ones overall, at least in that it was relatively straightforward and a decent challenge.
I ended up getting the bad ending, and I'm fine with that. While I think the game shows a TON of promise, I definitely don't have the urge to go back - a lot of the core of how you move and interact with the world, as well as a few of the enemies and especially bosses are just frustratingly clunky.
I ended up looking up the true ending, and while I suppose it fits the game's style and presentation, it's yet another disappointment for me. Looking at the DLC which appears to be comprised of a set of bosses, I think I probably would have enjoyed that had I encountered them throughout the game, though at this point I'm fine with just having gone and watched it rather than played it myself. The DLC does at least explain that one particularly elaborate background I pointed out earlier - turns out that wasn't just expensive pixel art for art's sake. I still hope the game gets some quality of life and game feel updates, as it still feels like a ton of peoples' time went into making Blasphemous and the current state of the game isn't doing them justice.
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