Blasphemous + Blasphemous 2 Bundle

Genre: Compilation / Metroidvania

Players: 1

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Review:

Blasphemous + Blasphemous 2 Bundle, released on Nintendo Switch in 2023, is a Compilation of the two named Metroidvania games, both being dark games evidently inspired in part by the “Soulslike” genre.

I have separately reviewed both of these games. Here is what I thought of both of the games in this collection:

Game	Genre	# of Players	Score
Blasphemous	Metroidvania	1	B-
tl;dr Blasphemous is a Metroidvania that takes a lot of influence from Dark Souls, and pumps the game full of gruesome, bloody, repulsive imagery and repeatedly slams this imagery into players with a giant religious sledgehammer. This is absolutely not a game for everyone, but I give it credit for doing what it does very well, with good but challenging gameplay and detailed artwork and animation.
Blasphemous 2	Metroidvania	1	B+
tl;dr Blasphemous 2 is a Metroidvania that improves on its predecessor in multiple ways, with a truly stunning presentation, more gameplay options, and the same grotesque sensibilities and nails-hard difficulty. Again, this won’t appeal to everyone, but if you’re craving a challenging Metroidvania, you may want to kneel at the altar of this game.

In short, I think these are both excellent Metroidvania games, but I also feel like their high difficulty as well as their heavy use of grotesque visuals and religious imagery make for a game that not every fan of the genre will appreciate. That said, I do believe that Blasphemous 2 builds on and improves upon the first game in numerous ways, making it a significantly better game than its predecessor.

So that just leaves the question of value. Blasphemous and Blasphemous 2 sell for $25 and $30, respectively, while this bundle sells for $45, making for a nice savings of $10. That’s good if you’re getting these games at their normal prices, but looking at sale prices shows that the first Blasphemous game has repeatedly gone on sale for $6.24, while the sequel recently went on sale for $20.09. Now, to be fair, this bundle has also gone on sale for $30.04, but that’s… yeah, still a few dollars more than the sale price of the two games combined. Also, suspiciously, the discounts for the original Blasphemous when it goes on sale started getting slimmer a few months before this bundle release, making it seem like they’re trying to inflate the value of this bundle by making the original game a worse deal.

I suppose in the end, I’ll just say that this is a bundle containing two well-made but somewhat niche Metroidvania games, and the bundle itself may or may not be a good deal, and that’s something you may want to look into before buying it – check digital storefront trackers to see the prices for both this package as well as the two individual games. You may find it’s better just to get the games separately.

tl;dr – Blasphemous + Blasphemous 2 Bundle is a Compilation of the two named Metroidvania games that draw inspiration from the “Soulslike” genre. The games are very good, albeit made a bit niche due to their high difficulty and grotesque imagery. However, as a bundle, whether this makes for a good value is really going to depend on the price when you get it – you may be better off getting both games separately.

Grade: B

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