As a fan of both dark soulsvania like Hollow Knight or Grime and the FromSoft games it emulates in the Souls category (Bloodborne most evidently), I was intrigued by what the game had to offer. The atmosphere was grim and interesting and I started off slowly.

In a lot of these game, you play a bit before it picks up and grabs your attention. With this one... it never picked up for me. I played it for a souple of hours one night and struggled to pick it back up. Areas were samey and combat did not offer a lot, since weapons did not have any combos to vary the moveset. You basically have one attack you're spamming, one special attack that wasn't very useful and a dodge roll. Spamming normal attacks did not weave them into one another, but simply repeated the same one akwardly. You can equip a gun or spell with limited ressources to vary it a bit, but it ends up feeling very clunky. Traversal is not smooth like you could have in Hollow Knight or Grime and I felt like I was constantly looking for a run button. Grabbing ledge felt super weird.

I ended my run with this game when I was trying to get through a room with multiple waves of enemies and I just... couldn't muster the courage. The first wave was a ranged enemy that spat a projectile every few seconds and a dog that constantly charged up an attack that did half my health bar. The second wave was a mix of three enemies : two flying enemies that I had to jump-attack to hit who spammed projectiles that left a damaging crystal on the ground for a few seconds, severely limiting my movement, accompanied by a ground enemy that would constaly charge at me *and* with every attack, send two projectiles horizontally across the arena. That wave just *filled* the screen with damaging areas and projectiles in all directions at all times. The third wave was a boss-like enemy that would traverse the entire arena in one attack that would drain 75% of my health, was difficult to dodge and immediatly chained into flying instead of leaving a damage window.

I'm leaving a detailed description of that room as an example, because that's how I feel most relevant encounters felt : a spam of projectiles and attacks from multiple enemies that I had to constantly dodge with clunky controls to try and survive long enough to retaliate. Even on the way from the checkpoint to the room, there was a section where two projectile enemies that threw spears *through walls and the floor*, then attacked on both sides were on separate platforms that you had to grab a ledge to get to. That led to a frustrating experience of having to deal with an agile enemy that threw very damaging projectiles and had melee attacks you have to dodge, while another one was also spamming regular spears at you, and to get to them, you had to time a jump/grab ledge/full second animation to haul yourself up while they were both hitting you through the floor.

All in all, I did not have a good time in those 4 hours and I'm left with absolutely no motivation to grind some levels or explore other parts of the map. It just felt so... outdated. Like I was playing a game from 15 years ago. It doesn't hold up to the competition at all, unfortunately.

Unable to change keyboard configuration despite it saying "choose your new key"

Forced to use an Autohotkey script to be able to use keyboard / mouse, there's no way I'm playing with just keyboard...

Also, go f*** yourself with your PS keys displayed everywhere in your explanations while I'm using keyboard / mouse.

I've barely started and I'm already annoyed... this is promising but I'm leaving a negative review right away just for this.

Maybe the game's quality will make me change my mind, but right now I just want to insult you.

Still no update since february... wtf are you doing? Did you ran with our money? There's a lot of things that we, backers are still waiting.

Think I'm done for now. My autohotkey is ready, that's cool but I have a headache... lmao

Sincerely

Really good game! My playtime is deceiving, as I bought this game on GOG after trying it out here.

I prefer this game to the first Blasphemous. The second Blasphemous 2 is just masterful, so it's hard to top that. This game is a lot more accessible compared to the first, though. I prefer the setting, the worldbuilding and the level design (which is a lot more like Dark Souls/Bloodborne than even Blasphemous was).