Blasphemous 2 Mea Culpa DLC Review
Blasphemous 2 Mea Culpa DLC Review
Returning to Blasphemous 2 for the Mea Culpa DLC was hard, as the last time I played it was over 14 months ago. This amount of sand through the hourglass would be long enough for any game, let alone an extremely unforgiving, tough as nails Metroidvania that requires the complete use of your tools and abilities. Luckily, Blasphemous 2 was the best Metroidvania that I played in 2023 and having the chance to return was an opportunity that I will take every time.
The Mea Culpa DLC is not a far departure from where Blasphemous 2 last left off. Enemies will end your existence quickly if you aren’t careful, the world is still haunting yet beautiful and the journey is still vague. When evaluating Mea Culpa from a DLC standpoint, this expansion is a resounding success
Mea Culpa adds plenty of new content to what was already the best game the genre had to offer in 2023. There are two new biomes to explore with two new bosses, new skills, new abilities, new enemies, new items to find, and your quest will even expand upon the story.
Mea Culpa fixes and sidesteps some of the issues that the base game had. Reused enemies from the first game were prevalent in B2, but surprisingly there are a lot of new enemies to encounter with some new executions. The bosses felt like a bigger challenge as well that required proper architecture of your skills and abilities. Mea Culpa also bring some of the bad traits from B2 as there are still a lot of executions that use the same animation. Bosses once again didn’t reward the parry player as there were minimal opportunities for it to be useful. Instead the boss fights required patience for attacking, proper dodging and prayers.
Our biggest criticism with the Mea Culpa DLC was how the questline intertwines with the original map. You initially find the entrance to the first new biome just off the main hub in the streets of wakes. After spending plenty of time exploring the first biome and defeating the first boss you need to find a key, but the game doesn’t give you any hint that it’s not in the new biome. This was very unclear, and it was a pattern that continued. You will eventually have to comb through the old map again looking for any possible pinholes that haven’t been explored to their fullest. You are never sure if the DLC altered your map or you just didnt explore certain areas
Backtracking is one of the essential Metroidvania traits, love it or hate it, but usually you have an inkling about what vicinity you should be in and there were never any issues in the base game. The silver lining is that if you didn’t fully complete B2, there will be plenty of new items to find along the way that at least, which helps ease the frustration.
Returning to Blasphemous 2 and with the way that the Mea Culpa journey is spread out requires a major commitment from the player. You will be forced to comb through almost every area again, even if you already did, most of the time ending up fruitless and back at square one. The good news is that the reward is worth the hardships as Mea Culpa is a reminder of how refined Blasphemous 2 was. The moment that you finally get the Mea Culpa back in your hands is satisfying and soothes the pain that you have endured to get to this moment.
The Mea Culpa DLC didn’t leave us as awe struck as Blasphemous 2 did in 2023, but the time was worth the wait to take on the role of the penitent one again. If you own Blasphemous 2, you should own The Mea Culpa DLC