Blasphemous II is a 2-D Hack and Slash Metroidvania and the sequel to the critically-acclaimed Blasphemous, created by The Game Kitchen and published by Team17. It was released on August 24th, 2023 for PC, Xbox Series X and S, Playstation 5 and Nintendo Switch.
Some time after the first game, the Miracle has re-emerged within the lands of Cvstodia. This in turn resurrects The Penitent One and sets him on a new quest to reach a city in the sky in order to stop the Miracle from "giving birth" to an entity that rests within a heart hovering over the land.
The gameplay remains mostly the same, consisting of heavy exploration and backtracking interspersed with simple but satisfying combat encounters and puzzle platforming, although with the notable addition of replacing Mea Culpa, the Penitent One's sword, with three new different weapons:
- Sarmiento & Centella: A rapier and a dagger used together for fast damages per second balanced by said damages being the weakest. A good succession of hits can charge it with lightning energy giving it a temporary boost. Hitting the many statues holding mirrors found through the game will teleport the Penitent One to where the mirror is directed, allowing to reach great heights and go through some bareers.
- Ruego Al Alba: A large blade and the most balanced weapon of all three. It's special ability "Blood Pact", once charged from enough hits, allow the Penitent One to sacrifice some health for extra mystical damages and (eventually) regains health. It also allows you to strike it on the ground from above, which when done from high enough, can burst the flesh walls and unlock new paths.
- Veredicto: A chained mace and the slowest but strongest weapon. It can be charged using fervor to release fire or miasma damages. It can also ring the bells scattered through Cvstodia to open doors and summon platforms that reacts to the resonance of the chimes.
Regretful be the Tropes, Penitent One:
- Affably Evil: With the exception of Odón of the Confraternity of Salt (who doesn't speak at all during your encounter with him), all the other Confraternity leaders greet the Penitent One warmly even though they're about to kill him. Including the Incarnate Devotion, who only starts fighting the Penitent One because is believes the High Wills have ordered it to.
- Air-Dashing: One of the new abilities for the Penitent One is to perform air dashes that allow him to go through chains and laser traps.
- All for Nothing: This is the realization the Incarnate Devotion has moments after it's born into the world. Despite the Miracle's efforts, the High Wills are still dead, confusing and distressing it since it was born to revive them. Depending on which ending you get, the Incarnate Devotion realizes its pain is to serve as its baptism before merging with the Penitent One to become the Second Psalm for a new era under the Grievous Miracle or dies under the impression its pain is a rejection of the Miracle and the people do not want to live under its thumb once again.
- Animation Bump: The story cutscenes in are done in traditional animation, rather than the pixel art of the previous game's cutscenes, and are sharper and smoother than the rest of the game as a result.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: The Incarnate Devotion is described as being the literal embodiment of the people of Cvstodia's worship of the Grievous Miracle as well as its "Magnum Opus". The Incarnate Devotion is aware of this and fully embraces its role, which is why it's confused when, in spite of its birth, the High Wills don't respond to its birth and instead is immediately confronted by the Penitent One. The meaning behind its existence is solidified depending on the ending, either becoming the Second Psalm in a new age of worship after realizing its pain and suffering are a form of baptism or a form of rejection against the High Wills and the Miracle.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Since a greater emphasis is placed on platforming in this game, spikes and pits only deal damage (reduceable with a late game upgrade) rather than outright killing you. Any other time, you simply respawn on the nearest bit of solid ground. This is lampshaded by the achievement "Welcome Back!", which is unlocked by surviving a fall into a spike pit.
- The ability to fast travel between Prie Dieus is now easily obtainable by the mid-game by unlocking six Cobijadas and paying for their tributes, rather than being a Money Sink upgrade retroactively added in an update like in the first game.
- Movement abilities are no longer considered inventory items that you have to swap out occasionally because there's not enough slots for all of them like with the Relics and Reliquary, instead just being abilities you gain permanently after picking them up.
- You no longer have to upgrade your weapons at specific locations with Tears of Atonement, instead being able to upgrade them whenever you want using a new resource called Marks of Martyrdom, which can either be collected by killing enemies or by finding them out in the world. Although, you still need to find various weapon statues out in the world to unlock the next tier of upgrades for each of them, and there's a limited amount of Marks of Martyrdom you can earn by defeating foes, so you'll also need to find all the remaining ones if you want to max out all your weapons' abilities.
- The unlockable ending is no longer tied to a destructible key item or having to counterintuitively destroy the places which cleanse you of Guilt; Guilt is now handled entirely by a separate NPC called the Confessor and the ending is instead tied to exploration and completing several different questlines in order to get the golden Altarpiece Figures.
- The rewards of failed quests can later be purchased from Casto, thus averting locking the player out from 100% Completion. Since at the very least Cástula and Trifón's quest results in one of their two possible collectible Altarpiece Figures being rendered permanently unobtainable, this also prevents 100% Completion from being Unintentionally Unwinnable.
- "Arabian Nights" Days: The Two Moons area is set in an alcázar
, which is a type of castle in Spain and Portugal built with Arabian influence, since Spain has a long history of Moorish influence. - Back for the Dead: Crisanta from the first game makes a reappearance, only to die within the first few minutes. This goes double for the Penitent One, who dies regardless of the ending.
- Back from the Dead: The reappearance of the Grievous Miracle prompts an unknown higher power to revive the Penitent One in order to stop the Miracle one more time. He's not the only one, though; the members of the Archconfraternity are explicitly stated to have been resurrected by the Miracle to serve as its muscle. The High Wills are implied to be attempting to bring themselves back to life by using the Miracle to restore their long-lost faith. Whether they succeed or not depends on the ending.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The Three Regrets, forming the Testimony, explain how and why the Miracle suddenly resurged through Cvstodia despite the Penitent One's actions. Despite their best efforts, a couple could not have a child and begged for anyone to bless them with one. The Grievous Miracle answered and blessed the woman with a child, but as the Miracle is known to do, instead of a child, she gave birth to a plague that is all but implied to have killed the mother in childbirth and spread its influence with deformities and ailments on the flesh of innocents in an attempt to regain its power.
- Bedsheet Ghost: Benedicta of the Order of Endless Orison invokes this aesthetic. She's depicted as a white, almost transparent sheet in the shape of a woman, carrying a mummified corpse... except there's clearly nothing beneath the sheet.
- Big Guy, Little Guy: Lesmes of the Confraternity of Incorruptible Flesh is fought alongside the Sleeping Infanta, a much smaller unit that nonetheless helps cover the space between Lesmes' brutal strikes.
- BFS: The boss Orospina, Lady Embroiderer, wields a rapier whose blade is as long as she is tall.
- Body Horror: As per series standard.
- The Lady of the Chalices, who improves and increases your health and Bile Flasks has her flesh slowly peeled, first from her arm, her head, and eventually her entire torso. The cherubs that accompany her flay her bit by bit to allow her to bleed enough to complete the Flasks. Collect all of her associated collectables and she ends up as just a blood-red, still animate skeleton, with her limp flesh hanging off her.
- An NPC in the Choir of Thorns vomits and bleeds an endless tide of honey due to the massive hive of bees that have built a nest in his guts. If you break the Maiden altarpiece he gives you and return to him, he's increasingly full of holes. By the third and final time, his head is gone, revealing a hollow torso overflowing with honey. He notes with disturbing cheerfulness that he's actually dissolving completely into honey, and will soon be gone for good — leave the room and return, and there will be nothing of him but a massive puddle of honey where he was.
- Cesareo in the Severed Tower has cut off his dead wife's breast and stitched it to his own chest in a desperate attempt to produce milk to feed his baby.
- Boss-Only Level: Beneath Her Sacred Grounds has a weapon statue, some Marks of Martyrdom and a single Holy Brother of the Golden Visage. Besides that, there are no enemies and a couple of platforming segments before you reach Afilaor, Sentinel of the Emery.
- Boss Tease: Odón of the Confraternity of Salt has a short scrap with the Penitent One on the bridge leading to the Sunken Cathedral, but jumps away before he can be defeated. He is encountered for real at the end of the Cathedral.
- Cephalothorax: A variant. Lesmes is basically a golem body with a glass "belly" that displays his original human head resting on a pillow.
- Co-Dragons: The leaders of the Archconfraternity: Orospina, of the Confraternity of Embroiderers, Benedicta of the Order of Endless Orison, Odón of the Confraternity of Salt, Lesmes of the Confraternity of Incorruptible Flesh, all working under Eviterno, First of the Penitents.
- Continuity Nod:
- Several of the Altarpiece Figures are named after characters from Blasphemous, such as Viridiana, Tirso and Nacimiento.
- One of the Chant Prayers is called "Taranto To My Sister", which was a Prayer from the first game that The Penitent One inherited from Esdras Of The Anointed Legion after defeating him.
- Another chant is "Tiento To Your Thorned Hairs", which makes the Penitent One invulnerable for a few seconds and was originally obtained through Cleofás' questline in the first game.
- Deogracias can be seen cradling the sarcophagus that the Penitent one crawls out of at the very beginning of the game, alluding to how at the end of ending C of Blasphemous he and Crisanta were the ones to lay him to rest.
- There's a statue of Redento in one of the hidden Cobijada sisters' rooms in Mother of Mothers. It roughly aligns with the room in Mother of Mothers from the first game where Redento's questline ends and he dies, as well as where the Blood, Perpetuated in Sand relic is found.
- Collecting all the Rosary Knots grants the achievement "Soledad", in reference to the name of the ghost woman who unravelled Rosary Knots for you in the first game.
- Standing for a second near the Knot of Three Words in Mother of Mothers will allow the player to hear echoes of some of Deogracias' lore drops from the first game. Additionally, the Knot itself has withered and no longer weeps gold, referencing the death of the Twisted One and the fact that the Knot no longer has to serve as a reminder of the First Miracle so far underground.
- After raising the Sunken Cathedral a broken bridge forms in the Sea of Ink area to allow access to it from the door of Mother of Mothers. The bridge's position and design correlates to part of the Bridge of the Three Cavalries from the first game which led into the Mother of Mothers.
- The now-headless statue which Ten Piedad was first encountered sleeping upon can be found in one of rooms in the Sunken Cathedral.
- In the Labyrinth of Tides you can find the ornate boat the Penitent One uses to travel through Mourning and Havoc in the first game.
- Defeating the Incarnate Devotion generates the same purple "SUMMA BLASPHEMIA" victory text that appeared when defeating the Last Son of the Miracle, the previous game's Final Boss.
- Contrasting Replacement Character: In contrast to Deogracias, who despite somehow appearing in places he shouldn't be able to is very much a mortal being, Anunciada is explicitly shown to be a divine being of some sort.
- Creepy Cathedral: The Mother of Mothers returns in this game, albeit in a much more ruinous and decayed state, there's also the Sunken Cathedral which its interior is covered in seaweed and barnacles, all which make it fit the bill nicely.
- Creepy Good: The Cobijadas are extremely tall women completely wrapped in a sheet of black or white cloth (cobija), that leaves only one eye exposed, and speak in creepy whispers. However, finding the all has the Cobijada Mayor reward the Penitent One with her sculpture which makes him regenerate health, in addition to enhancing the Prime Dieu by given Tears of Atonement as tribute.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Executions make a comeback, and they're as brutal as ever. The most common Execution has the Penitent One envelop his victim in a mass of vines and crush them to a pulp, but certain enemies have unique deaths. For example, the Charging Knells/Esquilones, the returning enemies wearing enormous broken bells as armor and try to run into the Penitent One are executed by the Penitent One leaping onto their bell, feeding the vines through holes in its top to wrap around its sides, and then collapsing the armor inwards, crushing them to a pulp. The returning undead candelabra-bearers retain their execution, with the Penitent One grabbing their candelabra off of them, impaling them to the ground with it, and then crushing their skull under his boot.
- Cutting Off the Branches: Character dialogue heavily implies that the Golden Ending added by the first game's Wounds of Eventide is the canon ending. The story told by the defeating the bosses is about the Grievous Miracle returning to Cvstodia, and Ending C was the only ending in which the Penitent One banished it. The first Achievement the player will receive in game is called, "A Thousand Years Later," and implies that's how long it's been gone.
- Deadly Disc: The Faceless One, Chisel of Oblivion, the first boss, employs this as his main weapon.
- Distant Sequel: The game takes place in a period after the events of the first game, when the land had recovered enough from the destruction caused by the Grievous Miracle enough to build a new great city. The achievement the player can get from beating the Faceless One, Chisel of Oblivion, suggests that it's been approximately a thousand years since the first game. Other characters refer to the Miracle as having been absent for "aeons".
- Double Jump: One of the new abilities the Penitent One can unlock is the ability to double jump.
- Downer Ending: Ending B. Despite Anunciada and the Penitent One's best efforts, the worship of the Grievous Miracle resurges anew. Worse still, the Incarnate Devotion undergoes a Fusion Dance with the Penitent One's corpse, becoming the Second Psalm that will become a new icon of worship in the Miracle's new age.
- Dual Wielding: One of the weapons that the Penitent One can pick up at the start of the game is called Sarmiento and Centella, a rapier and dagger that are used in tandem.
- Dual-World Gameplay: Two Moons is divided into a real and reflected version of it, the Penitent One can switch between them by using portals in their water fountains.
- Eaten Alive: One of the enemies in the Choir of Thorns is an old woman who attacks the Penitent One with trained owls; when slain, her birds turn on her and strip the flesh from her bones, eating her alive in an instant.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: In order to obtain Ending A, the Penitent One will have to travel to every corner of Cvstodia in order to complete at least four separate Side Quests, namely finding all the Forgotten Tributes and giving them to the Night Procession, freeing all the Holy Brothers of the Golden Visage, finding all the sleeping sisters and completing their combat challenges and buying everything from Escolástico and Medardo at every point in their journey. After this, he must return to the Chapel of the Five Doves, arrange the Altarpiece Figures gained from each quest so that they point inward, and go into the formerly locked Chamber of the Father and burn the figures to collect the Incense of the Envoys. After using this item on Eviterno's corpse and defeating the Incarnate Devotion, the Devotion undergoes a Despair Event Horizon and dies, removing any trace of the Miracle's influence from the world for good. The Penitent One dies but ascends in body and soul to the true heaven and not the Path of Eternal Processions. The penitence is done.
- Elemental Powers: Downplayed. Certain combinations of altarpieces give the Penitent One unique ways of inflicting elemental damage upon enemies.
- Equipping the Punished One and Tempest altarpieces causes the Ruego al Alba to do Lightning damage instead of Mystic damage when Blood Pact is activated..
- Equipping the Veteran One and Guide altarpieces causes Verdadera Destreza to imbue Sarmiento & Centella with Mystic damage instead of Lightning damage.
- Equipping the Anointed One and Alchemist altarpieces makes Veredicto do Miasma damage instead of Fire damage. Strangely, one of the potential upgrades for the Veredicto is a permanent boost to Miasma damage when it's equipped.
- Equipping the Veteran One and the Tempest altarpeices means that each strike with Sarmiento & Cantella unleashes Lightning that damages nearby enemies.
- Equipping the Pillager and the Tempest altarpieces causes the Penitent One to unleash lightning bolts whenever they dodge, whilst the Pillager and the Alchemist combo makes them unleash a barrage of thorns.
- Equpping the Partisan and the Alchemist causes the Penitent One to unleash a cloud of poisonous miasma when they block a strike.
- Equipping the Trifon and the Alchemist altarpieces causes enemies who strike the Penitent One to take miasma damage.
- Elemental Weapon: Each weapon has a unique elemental damage affinity that translates into an unlockable bonus type of damage; the sword has "Mystic" damage, the flail has "Fire" damage, and the rapier has "Lightning" damage.
- Elevator Action Sequence: The battle against Benedicta. It starts with two rapidly rising elevators; after some damage, Benedicta will destroy one of them, leaving the Penitent One with only one viable platform.
- Enemy Summoner:
- Odón of the Confraternity of Salt can summon headless pikemen to assist him while fighting the Penitent One.
- For his final trick, Eviterno, First of the Penitents, will summon the memory of each of the Archconfraternity leaders.
- Evil Counterpart: Just as Crisanta of the Wrapped Agony served as this for the Penitent One in the first game, Eviterno is this for him in this game. Not only is he a willing servant of the Miracle, but he's a fellow Penitent himself; as his name implies, he is in fact the very first.
- Falling Chandelier of Doom: The Palace of the Embroideries features several of these as obstacles that fall on you upon walking beneath them.
- Fan Disservice: Continuing these games' tradition of juxtaposing uncensored female breasts near things that make them unambiguously untitillating, the only exposed breast in this game belongs to Cesáreo, a giant man who has grafted his dead wife's breast onto himself and is perpetually using it to squirt milk into his child's mouth.
- Feel No Pain: Lesmes, who welcomes the pain of properly dying as opposed to being encased in the unfeeling automaton body he was shoved into.
- Field of Blades: Afilaor, Sentinel of the Emery's boss room. He will even occasionally break his sword, retreat to the back of the room and hurl weapons at the Penitent One while he rummages for a new one. In fact, his entire area, Beneath Her Sacred Grounds, is littered with weaponry, even used as spikes.
- Gathering Steam:
- One upgrade for the rapier unlocks a gauge which fills as the Penitent One lands hits with the weapon. Once the gauge is full, the rapier becomes electrified, dealing significantly more damage than normal. This state lasts until the Penitent One takes damage.
- The sword similarly builds up a "blood meter" as the Penitent One hits foes with it, which can be triggered to use an empowered state that lasts until the meter is depleted.
- Giant Woman: As in the original game, the Penitent One encounters several characters who are inexplicably huge, and some of them are women.
- The east side of the City of the Blessed Name, past the downward passage into Profundo Lamento, has a merchant called Regina, who only appears as a shapely young woman's arm longer than the Penitent One is tall reaching out from beneath a pile of assorted goods.
- Just east of the passage down from the center of the City of the Blessed Name into Profundo Lamento is the NPC who can improve the Penient One's health bar and Bile Flasks, who appears as a giant woman who is being skinned alive as an act of religious sacrifice.
- The Labyrinth of Tides has a faceless giantess named Regula, who is desperately struggling to hold up a collapsing entryway that leads to a shrine to a carved saint and begs the Penitent One to find a new opening, so the saint within the shrine won't be forgotten. Once he does, the entryway collapses on Regula; when he returns to see her, she thanks him with her dying breath and gives him the shroud with the staint's stolen face on it to restore the statue to its true glory.
- The Cobijada Mayor is several times taller than the Penitent One.
- Graceful Loser: The Incarnate Devotion, in both endings - in Ending B, it's because it's about to fuse with the Penitent One but gives him its sincere thanks for helping it understand pain, as was its duty, while in Ending A it realizes that the people have come to reject the Grievous Miracle's dubious blessings and congratulates him on enforcing its punishment and saving the world from its ignorance.
- Group Picture Ending: Ending A shows the Penitent One ascending to what seems to be the true, final Heaven, body and soul, where he is seen past Perpetva, Esdras, Redento, the Three Holy Guardian Visages, Tirso, Soledad, Viridiana, Tentudia, Regula, Jocinero, Deogracias, the Witness, Anunciada, the Lady of the Six Sorrows, the nameless Bile Flask lady, the couple that revived the Miracle, the Twisted One and more.
- Guide Dang It!:
- To receive the final Fervor upgrade, you need to refuse to kneel to the disembodied hand in the Street of Wakes and collect all of the Fervent Kisses, then visit the Confessor at the City of the Blessed Name to receive the Broken Key. It opens the door behind the hand in the Street. Witnessing what is on the other side and talking once more with the hand will grant you the Fervor upgrade.
- As with the first game, several Holy Brothers of the Golden Visage are hidden either just out of view of the camera when walking through an area, behind hidden walls or require you to backtrack to an area that seemed completed.
- Every step of lifting the Curse of the Unforgiven requires this, starting with kneeling in front of a mirror in the reflected part of Two Moons for several seconds.
- Getting all ten hidden symbols of the miracle. First off, there is no indication that the Chime of the Twisted One Prayer is anything more than a (admittedly underpowered) prayer, so there's next to no way that the player is going to be able to discover that it can reveal the symbols without consulting a guide. Then, it's a map-wide Pixel Hunt as you attempt to track down sometimes tiny, imperceptible symbols in the background of a single screen of a gigantic area, ten times over.
- Heroic RRoD: In the aftermath of the final boss battle, the Penitent One collapses and dies from a mix of exhaustion and the wounds inflicted on him throughout his long battles across Cvstodia. That said, his fate after death is determined based on which ending you get: In Ending B, he will merge with the Incarnate Devotion to become an icon of worship in a new era for the Grievous Miracle, whereas in Ending A, he stays dead but is Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence.
- Incorruptible Pure Pureness: The game presents the more physical variant of the trope via the concept of incorruptible flesh with Lesmes, whose head remained forever fresh after it was enshrined in the altar that was later converted into his golem body, and the Witness, whose tongue was the only remaining piece of him after his corpse was enshrined in the Chapel of Five Doves.
- Improbable Weapon User:
- One of the Penitent One's new weapons, Veredicto, is a gigantic censer which he wields like a flail.
- Lesmes, Incorrupt Sacristan, wields an altar as his main weapon. It also hides his companion, the Sleeping Infanta.
- Ironically Disabled Artist: Montañés, one of the quest-related NPCs in the City of the Blessed Name, is a blind master sculptor, who asks you to find the various tools and ornamentations he needs to create his magnum opus. He finishes his task when you give him the last of the tools and materials, and passes away soon after. His daughter replaces him in creating any remaining figures for your Altar, and the statue is seen in one of the City streets soon after.
- Leitmotif: When acquiring each key to release the doves, a cutscene plays showing the new next area that has been unlocked to get the next one, and during it you can hear a few of the notes of their background music.
- Lethal Joke Item: "Chime of the Twisted One" is a prayer discovered early on in the game that makes a harmless spectral bell. However, if one uses it to find all ten hidden twisted one symbols it upgrades to the single most damaging spell in the game.
- Load-Bearing Hero: Regula has been holding up a crumbling shrine for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, she's on her last legs when you meet her.
- Making a Splash: Odón of the Confraternity of Salt can create damaging waves of water by swinging his halberd.
- Messianic Archetype:
- The Witness was created from a desperate couple's prayers for a child, but since he was created by the Grievous Miracle, was born heavily deformed and with a single feathered wing growing out of the side of his body and wrapping around him. Being a direct result of the Miracle's intervention, he was entombed in the Chapel of the Five Doves and caused a resurgence in the Miracle's power. His spirit converses with the Penitent One each time he releases a sacred dove, expressing his confusion over why he is allowed to exist and what prompted the Miracle to create him.
- The Incarnate Devotion is a literal child of the Miracle like Escribar, having gestated in a huge sky uterus, but is also the collective personification of Cvstodia's worship of the Miracle and the High Wills. Obtaining Ending B allows it to fuse with the Penitent One and become a physical avatar of the Miracle.
- Multiple Endings: Has two like the first game before Wounds of Eventide came along.
- Ending B: The default ending. After battling with the Incarnate Devotion, the Penitent One collapses and dies from exhaustion from their long hard battle. The Incarnate Devotion realizes the purpose of its birth was to know pain as part of its baptism, and then merge with the Penitent One's flesh to become the Second Psalm and usher a new age for the Grievous Miracle.
- Ending A: Can only be obtained by obtaining four unique Altarpiece Figures which have golden bands on them, equipping them in your Altarpiece in a specific order and using them to obtain a key item. Like Ending B, the Penitent One dies after their battle with the Incarnate Devotion. In this ending, however, the Incarnate Devotion is flabbergasted and confused as to why its birth is met with rejection and pain before realizing it was meant to die and suffer pain. Anunciado then lifts the Penitent One into heaven, where the Witness states the Penitent One's "penance" is finally over.
- Mummies at the Dinner Table: In the Palace of Embroideries, the Penitent One can find a pair of mad, quarrelsome siblings; brother Trifon and sister Castula, sitting at a dinner table. However, one of the two will randomly be dead, with the other alive and talking as if the dead sibling were still alive. However, which one of the siblings is alive and which is dead switches each time you enter the room, implying they may both be ghosts. Each wants the Penitent One to find something that belonged to their sibling — the Cloth of the Old Woman for Trifon (Castula's lost scarf), and the Scroll of the Elder (Trifon's secret journal) for Castula. Whichever one you present their item to will then realize their sibling is dead and crumble at the realization... ironically, the other sibling will fail to follow them into the afterlife, so they'll be alive whenever you next enter the dining room, trying vainly to goad their deceased sibling into speaking with them. The questline is a reference to another Goya painting, Dos Viejos Comiendo Sopa (Two Old Ones Eating Soup), which likewise depicts a mad, elderly person eating soup next to what is clearly a corpse. The achievement for placing their respective pieces next to each other in the Altarpiece is named after the painting.
- Named Weapon: Each of the Penitent One's new weapons has a name; a serrated sword named "Ruego al Alba" ("Prayer to the Dawn"), a rapier/dagger pair named "Sarmiento & Centella" ("Vine & Spark"), and a censer-turned-flail named "Veredicto" ("Verdict").
- Noble Top Enforcer: The Incarnate Devotion, which sincerely believes the revival of the High Wills are what the people of Cvstodia want and only fights you out of a belief that is the purpose they desire. In Ending A, it realizes that was not the case and willingly dies to free everyone from the Miracle forever.
- Nostalgia Level:
- The Mother of Mothers returns as a sublevel to Profundo Lamento, with a new area at the bottom containing the Sentinel of the Emery. It features several room layouts which are identical to the ones in Blasphemous, including the room with the giant swinging censers. Part of it is even the Knot of Three Words.
- Early in the game there's Profundo Lamento which heavily evokes Grievance Ascends from the first game, in that it's a vertically downwards traversed dungeon with animated wall stone effigies that throw rocks at you.
- Partial Transformation: The Penitent One can morph his dominant hand into a mass of vines and roots, which he uses to crush enemies during Executions.
- Pickup Hierarchy: The game has a wide variety of items to pick up for various reasons.
- Prayer Beads return as one source of buffs. The Penitent One also needs to find four Abandoned Rosary Knots to expand how many Prayer Beads he can use at once, another returning collectable with a slightly different name.
- Bile Flasks, which are used to let the Penitent One heal, also return as a collectable in the form of Empty Receptacles that must be given to the nameless giant saint in the City of the Blessed Name.
- Prayers return in two forms; Verses, which are quick-fire projectile attacks based on the subweapons of the Castlevania games, and Chants, which have larger areas of effect and deal more damage.
- A new collectable are small wooden statues that the Penitent One can mount on a portable altar on his back for varying buffs and bonuses.
- Quest items are required, of course. Some of these need to be found in multiples, such as the six Wax Seeds for Cesareo in the Severed Tower, or the four fragments of Unfinished Lullaby to create the Lullaby of the White Shore, needed to appease the mysterious Giant Woman nursing a child in Profundo Lamento.
- Tears of Atonement return as the in-game currency.
- Marks of Martyrdom are a new currency used to unlock new weapon powerups and slots on the Penitent One's personal altar.
- Silver-Clad Crystal Shards are needed to increase the amount of health restored by the Bile Flasks.
- Empty Chalices are traded to the bleeding saint for an increase in the Penitent One's maximum health.
- Fervent Kisses are traded to the disembodied giant hand in the Streets of Wakes for an increase to the Penitent One's maximum Fervor.
- Point of No Return: Defeating Eviterno will cause the Holy Brothers of the Golden Visage to create a path up to the newly-born Miracle's child. Accepting "Yes" and stepping into their beam of light after receiving the "Do you want to ascend?" prompt will take you straight to the fight with the Incarnate Devotion, and one of the game's endings will play out after beating it, so you should make sure you've done absolutely everything you need to before accepting.
- The Power of Glass: Great Preceptor Radamés can make shards of glass stick out of his body before trying to ram the Penitent One. In his second phase, he can also make waves of glass shards erupt from the floor, forcing the Penitent One to jump over them.
- Rise to the Challenge: A section of the Sacred Entombments works like this with rising ash.
- Sequential Boss: The fight against Lesmes, Incorrupt Sacristan, is broken up into three parts. First you fight Lesmes himself. Then he appears to die and a small child, the Sleeping Infanta, pops out of his discarded weapon. After you beat the Infanta, Lesmes comes back, and you’re forced to fight them both at once.
- Sewing Needle Sword: Orospina's BFS invokes this image, with her position as the leader of the Confraternity of Embroiderers.
- Shout-Out:
- Once you knock Great Preceptor Radamés down to his second phase, he stands up out of the sand he's half-submerged in and bloodily chows down on the body tied to his club, in a pose exactly like the painting Saturn Devouring His Son.
- The questline with Cástula and Trifón is one to Dos Viejos Comiendo Sopa.
- There is a hidden room in the Basilica of Absent Faces (very similar to an Easter Egg in Blasphemous) featuring portraits of various characters from other indie games and Metroidvanias, including The Beheaded from Dead Cells, Sorun from Death's Gambit, Europa from Nine Years Of Shadows, the titular Knight Witch and Laika and the King of Darkness from Aeterna Noctis.
- Grilles and Ruin is based on the imagery of the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War (which also inspired the eponymous painting by Pablo Picasso).
- The spinning iron maiden in Two Moons looks very like the Abductor Virgins from Elden Ring, and attacks similarly.
- There's multiple to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: The halls of the Elevated Temples look very similar to the Marble Gallery, and the color scheme is similar to the Alchemy Lab. The Amalgama enemy in the Basilica of Absent Faces is a dead ringer for Ectoplasm (and the spinning portraits are taken from Castlevania: Rondo of Blood). The entire Severed Tower area, and part of Two Moons, is an homage to the Reverse Castle. One room in Two Moons with a purple sky and visible full moon looks very like a similar room from Olrox's Quarters.
- Speedrun Reward: The "A Sharp Rendezvous" achievement/trophy requires players to get to Afilaor, Sentinel of the Emery's boss room in 30 minutes from the start of a new game.
- Starter Equipment: A variation. The Penitent One has to choose which of the three weapons he will use at the game's beginning. The other two weapons are promptly transported away and hidden in special reliquaries scattered through the game world, and must be unlocked. All three weapons have unique abilities, both offensively and in traversing the game world, and the Penitent One can also unlock progressive weapon powerups with Marks of Martyrhood.
- Ruego al Alba, the Sword, is described as the most balanced weapon of the three. It can counter-attack when used to parry, and be used to make a Ground Pound (well, ground stab) attack, which is needed to shatter certain wooden barriers. It has an unlockable "blood meter" mechanic, which when full lets the Penitent One sacrifice some health to activate it, whereupon it gives the blade bonus Mystic damage (and Life Drain, with the right upgrade) until the meter runs dry. If not selected at the start, it can be found hidden in the Crown of Towers.
- Veredicto, the Flail, has a high sweeping arc that hits multiple times if aimed right, and does the most damage, but is the only weapon that can't be used to parry. It can be charged for a powerful strike, and the Penitent One can ignite the flail at the cost of a constant drain on Fervor, giving it bonus Fire damage until it goes out. It can be used to ring special bells that open otherwise indestructible doors, create temporary floating platforms, and otherwise hide useful goods. If not picked at the start, it can be found in the Sacred Entombment.
- Sarmiento & Centella, the Rapier & Dagger, strike faster than any other weapon, but do less individual damage per strike. Whilst they can parry, counter-attacking requires an upgrade and only triggers if used at the last moment; they instead favor dodging, possessing the "forward slide into thrust attack" technique that was an unlockable power for Mea Culpa in the previous game. They also have an unlockable meter where, if the Penitent One deals enough damage without being hit, they become permanently charged with bonus Lightning damage until he takes a hit. They can be used to teleport along glowing mirrors. If not picked at the start, they are found hidden in the Palace of Embroideries.
- The Stinger: The post-credits scene of Ending A shows a single one of Crisanta's wrappings floating across a snowy mountainous background. Whether this is a Sequel Hook or not has yet to be seen, given the finality of the ending.
- Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Crisanta of the Wrapped Agony dies in the opening cutscene of the game, impaling herself with her wrapped sword (which coincidentally the Penitent One later uses to reach the final boss).
- Summon to Hand: The Faceless One's spiked wheel returns to his hand whenever he reaches for it.
- Turns Red: Happens with most of the bosses. Afilaor, for example, switches out his normal sword for a red-hot Flaming Sword the second time he replaces it, adding fire damage to his attacks.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Lesmes isn't thrilled with being kept on life support controlling what amounts to a cold golem body in the shape of his own.
- Wrap Around: A key component of the fight with Benedicta. You can move from the left side of the screen to the right or vice-versa by jumping into them. This is the only way to avoid a few of her attacks.
- Wrecked Weapon: Afilaor breaks his own sword from swinging it too hard several times during his boss fight. Each time this happens, he'll jump into the background and dig around in a heap of weapons for a new sword.
