GAME OF THORNS
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I stumbled upon a couple
of screenshots of this game a few years ago. It was the depiction of one of its bosses, evocative and disturbing in equal
measure; the apparition of a blindfolded blood-crying infant of colossal size,
being held aloft by a tentacle of tree roots in the background, tearing the
arms from the hero's torso. Like the illustrations from ghost tales, it disturbed
me enough to wanna learn more.
Now, having played and finished Blasphemous, I can say that the title
is aptly chosen by the Spanish studio Game Kitchen; you get to curse a lot. It is a
2D-Metroidvania with more than a small hint of Dark Souls-inspired
world building, storytelling and progression. It's a haunting experience, and I love it for its punishing gameplay that ties so neatly into
the Catholic themes of sin and punishment. It's also deeply unholy - if you're
looking for body horror, the game doesn't disappoint.
It's been quite a while since I finished it, but my HLTB-notes remind me of
how much I appreciated this gem upon completion:
"A challenging sidescrolling Metroidvania with religious motifs, taking
place in the dark fantasy of Cvstodia, a world full of monsters, gore,
suffering and pointy objects. It is also brimming with pixellated beauty,
with multilayered parallax scrolling showcasing evocative environments in
the distance. Snowy peaks, poisonous sewers, haunted libraries, bridges
stretching high above endless valleys, rooftop spires bathing in sunlight -
the world is presented as a struggle between beauty and torment.
Since religion is of no great interest of mine, I chose to disregard the story
altogether and simply focus on the diehard platforming, exploration and
combat. The game constantly slaps you in the face, mocking you for dying
over and over, only to reward you handsomely when you finally beat the
challenge. It's one of those experiences that presents unreachable ledges,
only to hours later give you an item that clearly allows you to reach those
ledges.
With brilliant level design, featuring evenly spaced checkpoints and
shortcuts, and great, imaginative monster variation, every single one of the
28 hours I spent introduced something new. It kept my thoughts entertained
with different ideas to test in already visited places. "What if I tried to
offer this object on the altar I passed after the first boss?" And often I
found out that it worked, unlocking some obscure secret that allowed me to
find even more traversal options or story beats.
Combat is melee-oriented, with a few unlockable ranged attacks. A parry, a counter (which I never really got the hang of) and a dodge make the defensive options bountiful, and every enemy can be dealt with in a number of ways. With the aid of tears of atonement (a.k.a. experience points) you can unlock additional attacks, like a plunge attack and a charged strike. They are great, but in the heat of the moment it's hard to forgo the standard
attack and its combos.
The boss battles are the game's prime achievement. Scary, imposing,
challenging, visually creative and true to the twisted thematic
ramifications, they are bloody awesome. I came into every one not knowing
what to expect, and they simply blew me away. They take a few bouts to get a
grasp on, before you can take them on for real, and then you need to perform
at your highest level. A few perks bound to your rosary and prayers can
boost your damage output or protect you, but in the end it's your patience,
wit and reflexes that will make you triumph.
With a great deal of visual imagination this game sticks out from the rest,
and it's a warm recommendation from me. It's a shame the story didn't make
me care, or I might have scored it even higher. Still, Blasphemous seems
destined to become a cult classic, if it isn't already that."
Looking back now on the screenshots I took, the visuals bring to mind the fantasy backdrops of the more mature 16-bit
platformers from the 1990:s. They add a hint of a bigger truth out there,
begging to be uncovered. And the inquisitive player gets rewarded for
exploring; finding secret passages opens up entire areas full of rewards and
challenges. Game Kitchen draws inspiration from Spanish folklore, art and the
nation's own history, particularly the darkest period of the Inquisition, to
make it happen. The gameplay punishes carelessness and indecision in equal
measure, putting high demands on the player to stay focused and determined.
The game is longer than expected, and towards the end teeters on the edge of
becoming too mysterious. Its stiff dialogue and scattered storytelling doesn't help progression; in fact it stalls it quite a bit, and the antiquated, hard-to-read choice of font doesn't help. I personally
didn't check a walkthrough, but I almost wish I did - it could've saved me a
few hours of backtracking. Luckily, the game world isn't too expansive, and
it's easy to spot unexplored areas. Also, a few fast-travel points exist.
As previously mentioned, the story takes place in Cvstodia. It is a dark
fantasy realm beset by a curse called "The Miracle", that transforms most of
its residents into suffering monstrosities of varying kind. From amongst a
pile of dead bodies, you spring to life as "The Penitent One", a holy warrior
with a pointy helmet armed with a thorny sword. Your mission is to bring down the
corrupt force behind the Miracle, and then climb a mountain of ash to reach
penance, saving the land in the process.
The Penitent One controls really smoothly with fierce determination in his
animation cycles. As you swing your sword, the action commences instantly and
is over in a few frames. I also appreciate his safety net of traversal and
combat features, like the aforementioned sliding dodge, the parry, a bloody counter (they are enemy-specific, which reminds me of Mortal Kombat finishers) and
automatically grabbing onto ledges if he cannot quite land safely on them.
That is crucial because the game is ripe full of precise jumping challenges,
and mastering the movement is crucial.
Involuntary ledge-grabbing can, however, cause some frustrations when you need
to escape a gnarly situation by jumping to a lower platform. If you drop too
close to the edge the Penitent One pulls himself back up again only to get beat up some
more. What a god-dang masochist...
To help you along the way, you have quite a few different ways to tweak your
character, like rosary beads, relics and a few prayers. The rosary beads - at least the ones I found - had an almost unnoticeable effect, such as an indistinguishable
protection against fire, or a slight bonus experience for destroying objects in the world. The sword's rune slot has a drastic effect that
seems to always come with too high a cost, although they might support a major
change in your playstyle. I chose not to experiment much with it. The prayers
work like magic, though, and can save your life in a tight spot.
Naturally, health flask upgrades were helpful. You can both increase their
number and their effectiveness. Interestingly, doing the latter comes
at the cost of the former. In other words strengthening them reduces their
maximum uses by one. It's an irreversable change, but given the time it takes
to drink one, it's definitely worth the price.
I can clearly see in Blasphemous' visual design, and feel it in the atmosphere
with its haunting soundtrack, that there is a lot of passive storytelling
going on. But although I am a big proponent of this unobtrusive way to convey stories, I admit that I'm terrible at decoding them myself. I
usually just soak it all up and later resort to lore videos on YouTube to
piece the puzzle together. However, that aspect of Blasphemous isn't very
rewarding. The story felt too impersonal and too symbolic, and the characters
all too unrelatable. It wasn't all that fascinating to me.
Instead, the story exists on a higher, more analytical plane, but the clever way
it's told makes it easy to disregard. As for the gameplay, it's not perfect; some platforming sections are too tedious, and some bosses are unfair and
luck-dependent, but those aspects are few and far between. Instead, the game elements collude to inspire. You
gather what you can find, shape it into your own little beast, drawing from
your own imagination to craft a story of your own. That's just what the
Dark Souls-creator, Hidetaka Miyazaki, did as a kid, reading
stories that were too hard for him to parse. Learning that sort of storytelling turned out quite
well for him in the end.
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