There’s a trend among gamers today where they are searching for the next extremely difficult, punishingly hard gaming experience. This is all thanks to games like Bloodborne, Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and pretty much anything by FromSoftware Games or the many games inspired by them. I have played a few of these, and while I do find it very rewarding when finally beating a boss (even a random enemy), it’s not always worth the frustration of dying, time and time again.

Growing up, so many games were difficult and confusing — many times due to poor design. It was the early days and the developers were still figuring things out. For much of my gaming life, I’ve stuck to normal-to-medium difficulty. I have attempted to start off on a higher difficulty in recent games (God of War, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order) only to drop it back down to the normal equivalent after coming across the first challenging fight.

The cool thing about video games is you don’t have to be great (or even good at them) to enjoy them. I spend so much time dying in games — since I’m a run-and-gunner at heart. In recent years, I’ve adopted the method of slowing down and taking more of a defensive approach to combat. Still, I get frustrated sometimes and go for the quick attacks, which rarely works.

For the past couple of weeks I have been playing Blasphemous II on the Nintendo Switch.

“Blasphemous 2 is a 2D side-scrolling Metroidvania action-adventure game. Players assume control of the
Penitent One, a silent knight who must embark on a new adventure in a new kingdom to prevent the rebirth
of a curse named ‘The Miracle’.“

What I have continued to find over these past couple of weeks is all of the reasons why this game is not made for me, however I still continue to play — almost nightly. Each time I turn on my Switch Blasphemous II calls to me. Next, I play a bit without progressing much, and I end up moving on after one-to-three quick deaths.

So, why is this game NOT for me?
And, what keeps bringing me back?

NOT FOR ME

Brutal Combat

I will admit that I did start off with the wrong first weapon choice in Blasphemous II — the Veredicto, The Flail (seen in the video above). This is most likely the strongest starting weapon, but also the slowest. For someone like me, who wants to unleash a flurry of attacks, this was not the correct choice.

Once I restarted the game (after about two hours of gameplay), I chose the Ruego al Alba, or a single sword (seen in video above). This added a block/parry to my arsenal, which works great when perfectly timed. It also fails miserably when not perfectly timed. Starting the game over with my blade (Ruego al Alba), I had a much better time. Still, I died frequently.

I enjoy playing Blasphemous II, until I am handed my first death. Once I’m taken back to the far away checkpoint I’m ready to call it quits. And, I usually do just that and move onto some other game.

Massive Map

Over the years, I’ve played plenty of metroidvanias, and dying to restart way back is always frustrating.
For some reason dying in Blasphemous II makes me more annoyed than in other games. I’m not completely sure if the other games have handled it better, or if this one is just extra hard.

Another point of frustration lies in when I first opened the in-game menu map. I saw three “points of interest” all so far away from each other, with no map tiles, just infinite blank space in between. My first thought was, Where to first?

What I did wrong in my first save, and what I do wrong in many map discovery games is to being exploring with no plan at all. I go right for a bit and die. When I come back to life, I decide to go left for a bit and die. After about an hour, I have unlocked random paths of the map, leading to nothing in particular.

Over Customization

Customization in games can be a blessing and a curse. It’s great to have the ability to upgrade your character as you play, grab new items, and add new abilities to weapons and items. I will say that Blasphemous II, has way too many menus for me to care about.

I enjoy quickly upgrading my character and items, but I don’t want to have to check six different menu pages to see if I have found something new to unlock. When upgrading takes more than a minute or two, I quickly lose interest. I end up randomly upgrading without reading or knowing what exactly I’m doing. 

To me this is like the Borderlands problem where there are just too many weapons and you can’t hold on to all of them. I always end up sorting by highest rankings and tossing the rest.

That One Thing…

Art Style

There is, as I mentioned, one thing that keeps bringing me back to Blasphemous II, and that is the art style. I’m a sucker for pixel-art style games. There are so many games that use retro-inspired pixel art. Some of these games keep it simple and would even play fine on the retro consoles I grew up on (NES, SNES, Game Boy, Sega Genesis). Other games find new ways to implement this art style. They are heavily detailed, and include smooth animations.

Blasphemous II is one of the latter. The vibrant pixel art pops off the screen due to shadows and lighting effects. Each character features a variety of colors. Their movements are complex. Enemy death animation sequences are much more complicated than they need to be.

Other Pixel Games

I recently played LUNARK (a 90s inspired pixel art 2D platform), which sports a super simple pixel art style, yet the small character animations bring this game to life and make it feel like a real, lived-in world. Blasphemous II takes that concept of small animation details and expands on them with more complex animations.

Overall, my love for Blasphemous II is not too different from my love for another recent metroidvania, Hollow Knight. That’s another game that I was super frustrated with while playing, but the art style kept bringing me back. Only it wasn’t a use of pixel art, but instead the use of its beautiful hand-drawn style. With Hollow Knight, I actually found myself drawing the characters myself.

Hard Games

There’s another thing that keeps pulling me into Blasphemous II, and I believe it’s why these “hard games” are so popular. There’s a sense of accomplishment and pride with mastering these games. I felt it with the Star Wars Jedi games recently. Especially in the sequel, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. The sequel added different lightsaber stances (single, dual-wield, double-sided, blaster…) and although I had my main favorites (single and double-sided), I still wanted to learn how to properly wield the ones I wasn’t great at. I wanted to master each of the stances to be able to use any of them in battle.

There’s a feeling of accomplishment with these games, when you finally “get it.” The goal is to figure out the small tricks and nuances which will help you clear battles quickly. These games still require patience, but there is a way to get better. So, maybe it’s not just the beautiful art style of Blasphemous II, but also the feeling of wanting to get good enough at this game.

I told myself I would be done with Blasphemous 2 once I post this article, but I know that is not the truth. I totally see myself jumping back in soon or in the near future.

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*myVGBC.com was given a review code for Blasphemous 2 by the publisher, Team 17.