Blasphemous 2 lands with yet more disturbingly Catholic horrors to kill

The souls-like metroidvania world of Blasphemous 2 dropped this week and it's already doing pretty dang well, with a peak player count of nearly 10,000 tripling the first game's top pop number. Blasphemous got a lot of praise for its twisted, dark-fantasy adaptation of the strange and fascinating world of Spanish Catholicism, with developers The Game Kitchen based as they are in Seville, Spain.

Blasphemous 2 builds on the prior game with a larger, deeper, and richer to explore non-linear world. The combat is apparently sharper, and the new weapons and skills to learn are more customizable to your personal likes. Early positive player reviews cite those reasons, though some rate the worldbuilding writing in this second game below the first. Either way as of press time it has 91% positive player reviews out of 1,163 reviews on Steam.

"The Heart in the sky heralded the return of The Miracle and foretold the birth of a new miracle child," is a hard pitch if you, like me, enjoy cryptic pseudo-fantasy nonsense.

PC Gamer's Robert Jones got his  hands on Blasphemous 2 earlier this year, and his takeaway was pretty positive. "At no point during my gameplay session was I not, almost oppressively, assaulted by some sort of often corrupted Christian iconography or imagery, which The Game Kitchen has clearly had plenty of fun with when it comes round to designing levels, characters, and specifically bosses," he said, before noting that it was well on the way to being another cult classic of gaming.

You can find more about Blasphemous 2 on Blasphemous2game.com. You can find it for sale on Epic, GOG, and Steam, where it sells for about $30. You can also get it in a discounted bundle with the first game.

Contributor

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

Read more
Dry Devil holds a torch, illuminating a creepy rictus grin on his face.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 rockets past the first game's peak player count as it pips into Steam's top 100 most-played games
A cartoon nun looks shocked and scared, bathed in green light.
The new game from the Blasphemous devs is like if Commandos was a metroidvania set in a Spanish monastery, and also the Green Beret kept losing his mind
Hans with his hands in the air
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 sells more than 1 million copies in just 1 day
The First Berserker: Khazan review - Maluca
The First Berserker: Khazan review
A grinning Henry and Capon ride proud-looking steeds.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review
A viking battling monsters in Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel.
Diablo 4 meets Vampire Survivors in this clever roguelike that makes every round its own epic viking adventure
Latest in Adventure
An image of a corpse with the text "You've been re-educated."
I played the lost videogame sequel to 1984, and came away more nostalgic than ever for gaming's awkward adolescence in 1999
Rosella encounters a satyr in a forest in King's Quest 4
Eagle-eyed streamer spots that Roberta Williams' portrait in King's Quest 4 is based on her author photo on the back of the game box: 'I never noticed it before.'
Myst puzzle game
'You’ve been asking, and we’ve been listening': Myst remake adds a whole new world to the classic adventure, one originally introduced in another overhaul from 25 years ago
The character takes a test in a school room.
Expelled! review
Max, protagonist of Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Double Exposure, stares with trepidation at something off-screen with her friend.
Life is Strange: Double Exposure reportedly a 'large loss' for Square Enix, says analyst, who adds: 'The company's IP fundamentally varies too much between good and bad'
Inside
Limbo and Inside studio demands compensation from co-founder Dino Patti for alleged 'unauthorized use of Playdead's trademarks and copyrighted works'
Latest in News
A True Kin knight stands in a ruin in Caves of Qud, flanked by bloodstained furniture and a freshly mortalized corpse.
Despite making a roguelike where you can have countless arms and legs, Caves of Qud's creators say the ideal form is a limbless sphere: 'We started in perfection and only moved farther from God'
Civilization 7 Great Britain - Modern Civ art (via YouTube)
As Civilization 7 struggles to keep up with Civ 5 player counts, a new patch is coming tomorrow with still more UI changes and gameplay tweaks
Metaphor: ReFantazio character art
Metaphor: ReFantazio battle director says turn-based RPGs can still be just as popular as action RPGs: 'I personally believe turn-based games have a long future ahead of them'
assassin's creed shadows review
Assassin's Creed Shadows streamer goes viral after confronting whining commenters: 'Normal people don't get upset about this sh***'
Assassin's Creed Shadows change seasons - An upper-body shot of Yasuke looking cheerfully up into the distance.
'This is just the beginning': Assassin's Creed Shadows dev team thanks fans for their support and promises more to come in the future
Geralt sitting on a wall wearing a Cyberpunk jacket modded by TheRealArdCarraigh
The Witcher 3 devs had to practically remake the game engine to make official modding possible