I played the demo of Blasphemous a couple weeks back and immediately fell in love with the absolutely gorgeous artwork and amazing atmosphere of the game. Tonight I finished the true ending and all the challenges in Strife & Ruin. There are some games you know will stick with you, and this is one of them for me.

As you could probably tell from the trailer or countless other reviews, Blasphemous is a platformer metroidvania set in a dark, fantastical world of Christian themes. Picture walking through the fevered nightmares of Torquemada, complete with twisted medieval Spanish landscapes, towering cathedrals, and forgotten crypts. There's no denying that the art, music, and overall atmosphere of the game are superbly realized - serious kudos to everyone involved. Even when you're retracing your steps across the same areas after (another) death, experiencing the game world around you makes it totally worth it. I was always really excited to encounter a new boss, just to see the larger-than-life art in store for me.

Blasphemous is also difficult, but with a few exception, I didn't think it was as hard as comparable platformers like Hollow Knight. After a little while of game play and buffing a bit, I rarely died from damage. The biggest source of death (and this is a common theme in the reviews) are the lovely spike pits, but for me, there were really only a couple areas where I consistently died from them (looking at you, Sleeping Canvases). And often times this was due to my impatience or stupid mistakes. Some of the bosses were also tricky, but I can't say any of them took more than 5-6 tries for me. Though my play style tends to be to collect as many powerups as possible before heading into a boss battle, so that may have affected the outcome.

And if you want a platforming challenge, the Strife and Ruin expansion will not disappoint (though if you're like me, prepare for some serious frustration). With only 5 challenges, it's not huge amount of additional content, but the last 3 of those challenge took a good amount of practice to conquer, the last was probably 25-30 retries.

I do feel like Blasphemous has some game play issues. Jumping ladder grabs and ledge grabs seem off in opposite ways. You must hit up exactly at the right time when jumping past a ladder, or you will miss it. The Strife and Ruin expansions will make this abundantly apparent if you didn't realize it already. I wish so, so much that you could just hold down up and it would auto-grab as you passed it. And ledge grabs happen all the time, whether you want them to or not. If there's a ledge on the screen, there is a 95% chance you will be hanging from it very soon. Also, small thing, but I wish the sword bounce didn't use the same directions as the downward thrust, this burned me on multiple occasions as well (again, especially in Strife and Ruin). Lastly, there are some cheap moments when multiple attacks are positioned in some way that don't allow recovery. But honestly, I feel like this is par for the course in many platformers.

That being said though, I feel the positives of this game vastly outweigh those frustrating moments. There is lots to explore, secrets to find, powers to unlock, enemies to battle (and many ways to kill them) - basically all the stuff metroidvania fans like myself love. And it's a beautiful and haunting experience the entire way. If you like the genre and are up for a little punishment, definitely pick this one up!