Highlights
- Elden Ring is a massive open-world game packed with content, but an argument can be made that a lot of it is recycled. Despite this, it offers an incredible experience that can easily take over 100 hours to complete if players explore every detail.
- Still, Elden Ring's achievement hunt is relatively easier than other FromSoftware titles.
- Blasphemous, a Metroidvania game, may not reach the same scale as Elden Ring. However, achieving 100 percent completion and certain challenging achievements require meticulous exploration and could be difficult without outside guidance. Blasphemous 2 could improve its achievement list by making it more accessible.
Elden Ring is a challenging FromSoftware game, if not the developer's most gargantuan in terms of sheer real estate and content. Some fans could argue that a lot of that content is recycled from other parts of the game, namely enemies and bosses that can be found repeatedly appearing, but even considering that it is an incredible feat of an open-world experience. One playthrough can easily take more than 100 hours if fans are searching each nook or cranny and, while an indie Metroidvania title like Blasphemous is miniscule in comparison, Blasphemous 2 can still achieve a similar sense of satisfaction.
Not everyone adored how massive Elden Ring is, and many FromSoftware fans have stated that they enjoy the more claustrophobic or linear designs of Dark Souls or Bloodborne in comparison. Either way, a lot of Elden Ring’s content is optional. This means that a player’s time with Elden Ring is as long or as short as they want it to be, but its achievement list is also generously short. It will take multiple playthroughs, but platinuming Elden Ring is arguably an easier feat than most other FromSoftware games, and that’s an error made in Blasphemous that its sequel can rectify.
Blasphemous 2 Should Make Its Achievement List More Digestible
Like any Soulslike, Metroidvania, or any other action-adventure-platformer title, the difficulty of each is perceived by the player alone. Blasphemous has its own difficulties in certain areas, such as its divisive platforming, but its combat is arguably less challenging to master than a game like Hollow Knight, depending on what part of the genre fans find themselves troubled with most.
Nonetheless, Blasphemous can be completed in a rather short amount of time considering how little content is required to finish its base game story, and the game’s length is extended based on whether fans are playing for the first time or indulging in DLC content, the latter of which includes a bunch of new content for them to peruse.
Similar to Elden Ring, players cannot achieve full 100 percent completion in a single playthrough of Blasphemous, but its achievements are also much more oriented around a degree of tedium that Elden Ring’s achievement list does not possess. Players are tasked with scouring every inch of Cvstodia and completing nearly everything available within it.
Even more like Elden Ring and other Soulslikes, Blasphemous includes NPC quests that are virtually impossible to discern if a guide or community forum is not handy, obviously making quest-oriented achievements that much more difficult to complete if players need to ascend to New Game Plus or begin a new playthrough. There are achievements like ‘Bronze Medal’ that also examine players’ speedrunning mettle, and ‘Requiem Aeternam’ requiring players to beat all original bosses without consuming any bile flasks is a truly herculean feat for casual players.
Blasphemous 2 hasn’t shared much that can be explicitly comprehended besides the fact that it will feature new environments, enemies, and weapons, though its achievement list being more lenient could be one of its most advantageous improvements. Having a comprehensive and arduous achievement list might persuade fans to play it for longer than it would take to simply earn all three endings, but it also branches into concern for bloat that the game’s tight-knit experience doesn’t carry otherwise. Blasphemous 2 could potentially end up being bigger than its predecessor in every way, though that will hopefully not mean its achievement list is also as daunting.
Blasphemous 2 launches on August 24 for Nintendo Switch, PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
