I have reached the end of my blasphemous journey, and forsooth, I found immense joy within it. Though I would be false to claim full understanding of its cryptic narrative, it is assuredly of mine taste.

The art, wrought with painstaking reverence, and the melodies, haunting as lamentations, breathed life into the dread and mystery that shrouded its world, thereby having me in thrall. Each passage and sanctum kept me ever alert and the visage of the foes, both gruesome and grotesque, stirred great awe within me, along with profound admiration for the artful depravity of their forms. The boss encounters, too, were trials I very enjoyed and found most rewarding upon triumphing.

I urge thee with great fervour to embark upon this blasphemous pilgrimage.

🩸 Blasphemous — where even your conscience wants to press Alt+F4, but can't, because that's a sin
I didn’t play a game. I performed a ritual.
I didn’t beat a level — I overcame an inner demon named “timing that jump.”

You launch Blasphemous, and you hear… silence. Right away, you know: this won’t be fun.
No one smiles here. Not even the enemies. Especially not the enemies.
They look into your soul and whisper: “You didn’t come here for joy. You came here because you needed to suffer.”

🔪 Combat — a slap to your overconfidence

You thought you could play?
You thought a couple of sword swings and a dodge would fix everything?
You were wrong.
Here, you must feel your enemy like you're spiritually bound by mutual pain. One wrong move, and you're confessing before the loading screen.

🗺️ The map — a hellish mosaic of deliberate inconvenience

Custodia wasn’t designed for your comfort.
Doors don’t open where you expect. Checkpoints look at you with sarcasm.
Every path is a chance to fall, die, meet the unspeakable, and lose everything.
And yet you keep going. Because you want answers.
What you find instead… is another relic with a description like:

“A thorn from the crown of a martyr who suffered for those who did not suffer.”

📜 STORY AND LORE: “The Cursed Redemption”
In the world of Blasphemous, everything revolves around the Miracle (El Milagro) — a supernatural force that offers blessings… or curses. Sounds noble, but in reality, the Miracle is a cosmic power that judges everyone by its own twisted divine standards. Someone prays for healing — and turns into a tree. Another begs for forgiveness — and ends up sealed alive inside a bell. How touching.

🌒 You are The Penitent One:
A silent warrior in a spiked helmet-hood, the last survivor of the Brotherhood of the Silent Sorrow. Your mission is to undertake a pilgrimage through the mutilated sacred land of Custodia, slaying the sinful spawns of the Miracle and seeking meaning in an endless cycle of suffering.

🩸 Core Themes:

1. Guilt and Atonement — nearly every character has either committed a sin or suffers for someone else’s.

2. Sanctity and Flesh — many "relics" in the game are literal body parts of martyrs. Yes, you collect dried fingers, tongues, kneecaps, and mustaches. In Blasphemous, holiness is quite literally flesh.

3. Religious Allusion — distorted versions of Catholic rites, cults, miracles, and iconography. It’s not a direct critique of religion, but rather an artistic reimagining of religious archetypes through the lens of suffering.

🔮 Lore Through Items:
Like in Dark Souls, the game’s lore is hidden in item descriptions, NPC dialogue, and environmental design. Reading the description of a saint’s nasal blood will show you: every detail matters. Every item is a line from some ancient apocrypha.

🧙‍♂️ Characters — saints, sinners, and those who’ve lost the line between:

1. Deogracias — the narrator, like a monastic Shakespeare. Constantly appears to whisper something cryptic and stare into the void.

2. The Red Mother — a resident of the puppet temple, a symbol of infertility and sacrifice.

3. Esdras, of the Anointed Legion — a knight-brother, walking toward his own agony with a prayer in his eyes.

🎼 Sound — organ, whispers, clashing metal, and your nerves at their limit

This isn’t music. It’s a prayer in the void, sung by walls.

🧎 At the end, you don’t win. You… understand.

You didn’t save the world.
You’re not a hero.
You simply accepted the Miracle. And it accepted you.

🕳️ Score: 10/10.
I don’t know why I did this. But I know it was the right thing to do.

I picked this game up because I had heard about some of the lore and it sounded amazing. While the lore is in fact amazing and I would highly recommend a read of it, playing the game for it is not how I would recommend it. My major problems have to do with the game play outside of boss fights, I really enjoyed some of the boss fights and getting to know their patterns but the area surrounding boss arenas is filled with clunky and poorly designed (imo) parkour section. The most I died to any singular boss is like 12 or something at Escribar, but I would consistently die to "traps" and the most egregious offender not being able to grab ladders when I jumped to them. Many of the gimmicks that differentiate the areas are not mechanics that I enjoyed, every area I went into I had to tell myself "we just need to get to the boss". This combined with the absolutely insane order that you need to beat the bosses in to unlock the "true" ending. I played the game blind and by the time I got to the end of the game I had naturally finished like 2 quests by myself, and I knew that I had missed most of them so I looked it up and found out that because I had progressed to far I couldn't get the true ending, the only reason I was playing, and I couldn't even fight most of the DLC bosses because they are only in NG+ for some reason????? I was already forcing myself to finish a game I was just not enjoying so I could see how it ended and now I can't see how it ends and to do so I would have to play it all over again on NG+. Extremely disappointed because I watched a lore video afterwards and it was amazing. If you are only interested in the lore just watch a video or read about it, it will save you time and money you can use on anything else.