YMMV / Blasphemous

• Awesome Music: The soundtrack is heavily influenced by the folk music of southern Spain, ranges from calm and thoughtful to passionate and powerful, and it's all Awesome with a capital A. Special mentions go to Para Un Mártir Del Compás, Su Beso de Plata and Cinco Miradas Tiene la Aurora.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Many side characters such as Altasgracias, Nacimiento and, in the sequel, Cesáreo and the Man in Honey, are of various gigantic size despite being supposedly humans. A common explanation is that the Game Kitchen simply made them so big so they could have more detailled sprites in spite of the pixel limitation. This lead some players to wonder if any of these characters are really all that big or if it's just an artistic choice.
  • Deogracias. Is he truly a guide seeking to witness the history of the Grievous Miracle while offering the Penitent One his chance at the redemption they desperately seek? Or is Deogracias simply repeating history and watching the Grievous Miracle begin and end by sending wayward redemption seekers towards the Cradle of the Grievous Miracle? The normal ending seems to imply the latter, given that he's seen with hundreds of helmets, all similar to the one worn by the Penitent One.
  • Possibly the Grievous Miracle too. Is it really a malignant force that seeks to make people suffer? Or does it respond that way because the area the game takes place in is a tyrannical theocracy with a martyrdom culture, and given all of the bosses seem to use it and its powers as an excuse to tighten their hold on Cvstodia, it's freely punishing those who would make use of it for such ends? Giving fuel to this is the Order of the Kissers of Wounds, a group who are able to kiss the wounded to heal them, yet suffer no side effects from this, as well as Socorro, whose prayer does keep those who would've been killed safe, and herself from dying from said wounds, yet the only real "side effect" is that she's in constant agony due to Cvstodia being a Martyrdom Culture that punishes people daily, and not as an effect by the Miracle itself. The High Wills themselves seemingly imply the latter idea, that it causes people to suffer because they believe they should.
• Awesome Art: The game's pixel art, influenced by the iconography of Spain's history, captures the desolate and grotesque atmosphere of the game's setting, the backgrounds and bosses in particular being extremely detailed.
• Breather Boss:
  • Melquíades, the Exhumed Archbishop, can be considered one. Compared to other bosses at that point, he is a lot easier to handle due to his attacks being far less unpredictable and much easier to land consistent hits on.
  • Tres Angustias are also not particularly dangerous, even despite the gimmick of their boss arena, for several reasons: they spend a lot of time simply floating around, not attacking; since there's three of them mostly in close proximity, you can hit them multiple times at once; and although they can go One-Winged Angel and start spamming huge beams across the arena, it's absolutely possible to breeze through the fight so fast that you don't even see them combine.
  • Quirce, Returned by the Flames. While he hits hard, by the time you fight him, you can equip two rosary beads to reduce damage by fire if you found them and he never gains any new moves throughout the fight, only making some of his existing moves stronger and/or faster. Once you understand how he moves and his attack patterns, he can be a cakewalk by an experienced player.
  • Crisanta of the Wrapped Agony can be incredibly easily defeated by simply parrying the first strike of her combo attacks. Even after she unwraps her sword, the ensuing Teleport Spam attacks are effortlessly avoided by simply jumping or dashing, and she only teleports three times before she goes back to trying to do her combo several times. It's entirely possible to get through the fight without seeing all her attacks. This is rather strange, considering that she is the penultimate encounter of the whole game, and would be challenging if she wasn't so easily parryable. Though in context it might actually be Fridge Brilliance. By the time those in charge have finally decided to send out their elites against you, you've already slain all manner of abominations and warriors, to the point where she just doesn't compare.
    • However in Wounds of Eventide, if you have completed the requirements for the Golden Ending thus far, she'll have a second phase in which she's stronger, faster, and takes more damage before being defeated.
  • A possible glitch can make Ten Piedad into a relative punching bag - if the player stands at the edge of the arena, he will come close to them and limit his offensive options to the stomp and the swipe; both are quite damaging but both can be blocked, and since you're at the edge of the map you won't get knocked out of range needed to retaliate.
• Complete Monster:
  • The High Wills are the deity of Cvstodia's religion and the source of the country's suffering. Seeking to become eternal and all-powerful, the Wills exploit Cvstodia's Martyrdom Culture by creating the Grievous Miracle, a curse that results in immense and disproportionate suffering upon those it "blesses" and twists most of Cvstodia's people into wretched abominations. When one of their creations attempt to rebel and leak the truth of the miracle, the Wills have his eyes removed and then imprison him. Using His Holiness Escribar as the leader of Cvstodia's brutal theocracy, the Wills have him slaughter the Brotherhood of the Silent Sorrow down to the last member for some unelaborated heresy, including protagonist the Penitent One. In Ending A, where the Penitent One sacrifices himself to save Cvstodia from the miracle, the Wills have a mind-controlled Crisanta nullify the sacrifice to start the cycle anew, uncaring about the suffering they have to cause to remain godlike and immortal.
  • His Holiness Escribar, the "Last Son of the Miracle", is the great enforcer for the High Wills who controls the nightmarish theocracy of Cvstodia. Causing the Age of the Turned Throne by callously abandoning his congregation to misery, Escribar later gave himself to the Miracle in horrific catastrophes, devouring countless beings in the ash of his throne and recreating them as the Punished. Keeping control via the culture of torture, martyrdom, and keeping the High Wills supplied with suffering, Escribar had the Brotherhood of Silent Sorrow eradicated, which set the Penitent One upon his quest to slay the Pontiff.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Sisters of the Charred Visage attack by swinging a giant censer they drag around. Contact damage (a lot of it, especially early game) happens whether you get caught in the swing (which can happen if you try to jump over them), accidentally run into the censer yourself, or if you dodge prematurely and into it.
  • The Sagittal Martyr enemies in Jondo and Mountains of Endless Dusk. Their Castlevania-style throwing cross projectiles are both very large and highly accurate, often attack from hard-to-reach places, and cause enough knockback to throw you off the next jump they're guarding. You can deflect the projectile with a well-timed melee attack, but the timing to do so is quite tight. They also have a book-throwing variant that appears in the Library of Negated Words which are even stronger.
  • Bellidos, fast and very mobile enemies with high accuracy ranged attacks who can jump up to higher platforms.
  • The Wax Ghastly Baronesses in the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage. Facing a single one in open terrain would be no challenge, as it's easy to jump up and hit them before they start their attack, disrupting it and forcing them to blink away to repeat the cycle. Unfortunately they're always found in uneven terrain that makes it difficult to reach them, or in the company of other enemies who can make it very hard to keep on top of them, or both, and their laser attacks are staggeringly difficult to avoid (almost Hitscan in speed) and do comical amounts of damage if both shots hit you. Surprisingly, the Ink versions faced in the Library of the Negated Words are significantly less dangerous as even though their beams are much larger, can track you through 360 degrees and cannot be interrupted, they're also usually faced on their own, and despite how impressive their enhanced beam attack is, a hit does less damage than a pair of bolts from the Wax versions.
• Epileptic Trees: Some fans of the game have started a rather curious theory regarding Deogracias possibly being a physical avatar of the Grievous Miracle, testing various individuals to see whether or not they are capable of saving individuals while also attempting to atone for their own sins. That he's implied to have been at this for a while in the normal ending where he puts the Penitent One's helmet in a mountain of helmets similar to his own does not help matters.
• Fan Nickname: Melquiades, the Exhumed Archbishop, is often referred to as "Lazy Skeleton" since he's a giant skeleton reclining on a bunch of hands holding him aloft after he was dubbed as such during Australian YouTuber Indeimaus' playthrough of the game.
• Fridge Brilliance: Now has its own page, along with Fridge Horror.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Pelican Effigy Rosary Bead, which makes you completely invincible during your Bile Flask animation. Not only does this make your healing impossible to interrupt (making the normally difficult task of finding a healing window during a boss fight a triviality), it can even be used to let you simply No-Sell any particularly difficult to avoid attacks that you don't feel like dealing with properly. It's not even an end-game item either, being found in Jondo and only requiring the Three Gnarled Tongues Relic to reach.
  • The "Tiento to your Thorned Hairs" prayer, while significantly harder to get^note you have to complete Cleofas' quest, is simply the most powerful form of defence in the entire game, rendering you completely immune to all damage and knockback for a period of several seconds (although you still have to watch out for spikes and bottomless pits).
• Genius Bonus: Anyone familiar with Spanish (particularly Andalusian) folklore and locations will get a lot of references they might otherwise miss. Examples include, but are not limited to:
  • The pointy hat (the "capirote") the Penitent One, Deogracias, and some others wear are modelled after those worn by penitents (called "nazarenos") during the Holy Week (Easter) processions. Also the order that originated the capirote, the Flagellants, were eventually suppressed by the Church after accusations of heresy, which is mirrored by the Penitent One's order, the Brotherhood of the Silent Sorrow, being excommunicated and wiped out by the Church in the game.
  • All prayers are named after traditional singing styles.
  • "Albero" is a type of sand traditionally used in bullfighting arenas.
  • "Jondo" refers to "cante jondo" (more or less translated as "deep singing"), a type of singing used in Flamenco.
  • Anyone who lives in or has visited the city of Seville will instantly recognize the Bridge of the Three Calvaries, as it's modeled after the Triana bridge.
  • The Knot of the Three Words is modelled after the interior of the Cordoba cathedral.
• Goddamn Bats:
  • Hoppers are seen crouched down, poised to take a leap at you at the perfect opportunity to interrupt your next jump or interfere with combat. They go down quickly, but their hitbox is often aligned so that they're hard to hit without a Prayer.
  • The zombie conquistador enemies that infest Mourning and Havoc, which constantly respawn and run at you, sometimes in swarms. The fact that they go down in 1 hit is small compensation when they keep coming back.
• Heartwarming Moments: One of the new items in the Wounds of Eventide DLC is a rosary bead that resembles a behelit named Crimson Heart of a Miura, in honor of the late Kentaro Miura, author of Berserk. The lore of the item simply reads, "Thank you for everything, master."
• Narm:
  • Crisanta's voice-acting sounds less like one of second-in-command to His Holiness who has slain hundreds in His name... and more like (in the words of a youtube comment) "the Girl Next Door". This may be why she was one of the characters whose dialogue was re-recorded for The Stir of Dawn DLC.
  • The reveal of Miriam in the Strife and Ruin DLC has the camera focus on her thighs for a lengthy amount of time and never pans up past her hips. Players have since made jokes that the Penitent One finds her legs attractive.
• Nightmare Fuel: All over the place. To start, there's the Grievous Miracle, an ironically named phenomenon that causes people's guilt and penance to physically manifest and twist them into terrifying creatures, reduced to doing little more than engage in endless punishment, either to themselves or others. Even putting that aside, the game's setting has a Martyrdom Culture where the vast majority of people there are utterly obsessed with suffering in the name of their religion, which the Miracle has only amplified with its presence. All the monsters and bosses the Penitent One fights? Every last one of them, in some way, ties back to Cvstodia's faith seemingly mandating painful penance.
• Realism-Induced Horror: What makes The Punished such unnerving enemies is how most of them have clearly died or mutated in ways reflective of real life Cold-Blooded Torture. The Miracle revived and gave them power, but humans were doing this to each other WELL before the High Wills intervened.
  • More disturbing is the truth of the Miracle itself. Though shrouded in mystery and religious mystique both in-universe and out, the High Wills and their Miracle are little more than Cult leaders. The horrifying and contradictory punishments and blessings, the emphasis on Sin (and the vagueness of what that 'Sin' is), the scrutiny placed on even the lowest and highest members of the community, and the deliberate isolation of the populace mirrors control techniques employed by cults in real life. Cvstodia is a horrifying example of what would happen if a cult magically grew to the size of a nation while still maintaining its basic structure.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Worth noting is that all three entries were fixed in Blasphemous II.
  • Instant death when falling into spikes. There are several places in the game that demand precise platforming over pits of spikes, and any mistake results in being killed and sent to the last checkpoint, forcing the player to run back usually through several screens of respawning enemies just to attempt the entire platforming section again. The developers themselves noted that almost every negative review of the game mentioned this specific mechanic and promised to rework it in a patch, though with work on the game seemingly complete after the Wounds of Eventide DLC, it appears they were unable to figure out a way to do so to their satisfaction. The rework finally came in the sequel, which made falling into a pit or onto spikes respawn the Penitent One on the ledge they'd jumped from, minus some health. The sequel grants an Achievement the first time this happens, likely to call attention to the change.
  • There is also the Air Impulse mechanic, also known as "lantern bouncing". Many players have found it frustrating to master, especially since it's necessary to acquire certain items to reach a hundred percent completion. It also features prominently in the mini-dungeons in Miriam's part of Strife & Ruin, and if you aren't right on target and timed correctly you are going to fall to your death repeatedly. Blasphemous II removes this mechanic entirely.
  • The Reliquary only having 3 slots to equip Relics. Relics are basically passive character upgrades, mostly traversal powers that let you reach new areas in classic Metroidvania style, but there are 7 of them. Since you can swap them at any time and they have no combat applications, there's no need to make a choice about which ones you want to use over others in your loadout like with Rosary Beads or Mea Culpa hearts, you just need to equip the right one whenever you find an area with blood platforms/root platforms/poison gas/corpses to speak to etc, so the equip limit just forces you to go into the menu to swap out one Relic for another as needed. There's only one you'd ever need to "turn off"^note the Three Twisted Tongues, since the platforms it creates can sometimes block your path until you unequip it and the only one you'd ever need to have on at all times without a specific need for it is the Incorrupt Hand of the Eternal Master^note which notifies you when you're near a hidden secret and maybe the Linen of Golden Thread^note which protects you from dying in bottomless pits, so all the equip limit really brings to the game is a bit of extra fiddly busywork. Blasphemous II reduced the number of relics to four while increasing the slots to the same. Additional Metroidvania movement abilities were distributed through the sequel's three weapons, of which the Penitent One will only start with one.
• Squick: Depending on how grossed out you are by blood, the game can be an unpleasant experience due to its Bloody Horror aesthetic. The very beginning has the Penitent One pouring an enemy's blood in his helmet and then putting the helmet with the blood back on his head. Then there's the multiple Body Horror examples.
• Tear Jerker: Ten Piedad's life sucks. He Was Once a Man, but after having strange dreams about the Miracle, he fell asleep in the arms of a statue and woke up as a mindless creature that could only feel pain and rage. Fittingly enough, you literally find him in a place called Mercy Dreams. At this point, all Ten Piedad can do is dream of a Mercy Kill.
• That One Achievement: It's very easy to miss these on your first playthrough:
  • The "Mediterranean Diet" Achievement can be missed as early as the first (post-tutorial) boss. To avoid this, make sure to deliver the first herb Tirso needs before you fight Ten Piedad. Then make sure you deliver one herb between boss fights.
  • "The Sister", gained from defeating Perpetva, can be missed if you lose the fight. Unlike other fights in the game, this enemy does not reappear — if you want to get the achievement in the current playthrough, that fight is your only chance.
  • "Crossing Souls" and "Rebirth", two achievements that if you try to get one, you will be locked out of the other in that playthrough, though the former tends to be difficult since you could miss it if you advance one quest too quickly. Simply put, Rebirth requires that after you help Socorro in either way and talk to Cleofas in the same chamber, you go to the Order of True Burial and get the Cord of True Burying from Lvdovico, then go see Cleofas at the Rooftops and give him it. Crossing Souls requires that Redento is at the Patio of Silent Steps but not past it, and Cleofas is at the rooftops after helping Socorro. You need to talk to Cleofas, leave the room, re-enter to hear his death scream, then go back down to where Redento is and talk to him.
  • "Requiem Aeternam", on the other hand, is just plain hard. You have to beat all ten of the game's original bosses (doesn't require Isidora or Sierpes or any of the Amanecidas, but does require Esdras) without using a bile flask — not quite a No-Damage Run, as you can heal freely outside of the battles and are allowed to absorb as many hits as your life bar can tank, but you only have that one life bar to play with unless you tap into one of the rare alternate source of healing (like the Saeta Dolorosa prayer). Unless you're really, really good at the game, you will need to call on Viridiana for aid — and she can't help you with the brutal end boss either...
• That One Boss:
  • Our Lady of the Charred Visage isn't a terribly difficult boss at first, but the second phase has her use both of her hands in battle. As each hand can independently and simultaneously attack with fireballs, orbs, or laserbeams this part of the fight has the tendency to quickly devolve into a bullet hell.
  • Esdras, who has a nasty habit of stunlocking you, especially when the wind sickle attack comes into play. Furthermore, his overhead swing has an awkward parry window where if you are too close to him, he will just step through the parry. Then Perpetva joins the fray and it becomes a mad dash to see who dies first.
  • The Last Son of the Miracle can be a frustrating fight due to everything going on at once on the screen. The boss will attack with one of several magic spells at once, all the while its weak spot can only be revealed by striking the eyeball on the floating golden dagger several times. The issue comes with reaching either the boss' face or the dagger's eye when it floats way up. The only way to do so is by making use of platforms, which appear and disappear at random, leaving the player at the mercy of dumb luck whether they can at any point reach their target. The dagger at the very least occasionally comes down, but having no suitable platforms during your window to hit the boss' weak point vastly reduces your damage output. Since the weak spot is only available for a short time before the dagger re-appears, this may greatly draw out the fight. On top of this, some of the boss' magic attacks are troublesome, such as the hard to dodge stream of fire projectiles and the massive laserbeams that can take up two thirds of the screen.
  • Route Boss Isidora, Voice of the Dead is a massive stumbling block on the way to the third ending. Unlike fellow Route Boss Sierpes, who's mostly a Damage-Sponge Boss, she hits extremely hard, with attack tells that last barely a second. She also has an issue with Hitbox Dissonance, able to hit you from what feels like anywhere on the screen. If you enter the fight with the wrong loadout, the fight's gimmick (you can't pause the game) means you just have to deal with it.
• That One Level: Mourning and Havoc, the underground Derelict Graveyard added in the Wounds of Eventide DLC where the gigantic sea serpent Sierpes guards the Damaged Left Eye of the Traitor. The entire area is filled with hard-to-avoid lightning traps you have to jump through to proceed, and of the three enemies within it, the figureheads that shoot homing ball lightning have absurdly inflated stats (taking more damage than almost any other common enemy in the game to down while doing disproportionately-high damage themselves easily able to three-hit kill you even with a full life bar), the anchor-throwing Palette Swap versions of the Phalaris are far tougher and more damaging than they should be, as well as their rolls now hurting you, while the endlessly-respawning zombies in Conquistador helmets who never stop popping up and charging at you are easily dealth with, but constantly annoying. Without the Amber Eye that significantly increases lightning damage resistance, it's an ordeal. At least it's not that long a stage, but unfortunately it's not very interestingly laid-out either, with very little to discover.
• That One Sidequest: The Strife & Ruin bonus stages involve dashing through five obstacle courses to gather mirror shards at the end within a time limit, and each stage is longer and more complex than the previous. Platform Hell is aplenty as you have to maneuver across floating and Temporary Platforms, avoid getting juggled by stage hazards, and are forced to use the unpopular Air Impulse mechanic many times to avoid falling into the Spikes of Doom. Missing a jump either kills you or wastes your time as you're forced to wait for the slow moving platforms to return to their original position. Many a player has expressed their preference for a boss fight over all this.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Some people would have preferred Miriam to be a fully playable character, rather than just an Assist Character.