Be advised that this review contains a reference to sexual assault.
One of the main ways Blasphemous II sets itself apart from its predecessor is to strip The Penitent One, its player character, of Mea Culpa, the weapon they wielded during their first struggle against the capricious Miracle. In their new battle against a reborn Miracle, The Penitent One relies on three new weapons: Ruego al Alba, Veredicto, and Sarmiento & Centella, each with different attacking styles and new powers to confer upon their wielder. With the premium Mea Culpa DLC, The Penitent One is offered a chance to reclaim their original weapon for their arsenal. Doing so requires them to complete a quest that sprawls across all the non-linear platforming world of Cvstodia, gathering new collectibles, exploring new areas, and challenging new bosses, all culminating in a new ending to The Penitent One’s rematch with the Miracle.
After installing the Mea Culpa DLC and resuming my near-one hundred percent completed save file, it’s not immediately clear that anything in Cvstodia has changed. No new quest marker points The Penitent One towards the location of Mea Culpa. When I open the status screen, I see the map completion statistic has dropped down to 72%. Clearly a significant new addition has been made to the world. Scrutinizing the map, I see that many rooms which ended at impenetrable walls in Blasphemous II’s original 2023 release now have doorways.
Most of these new doorways lead to new platforming challenges. Completing these rewards The Penitent One with Altarpiece of Favours figures, Prayers, and Rosary Beads, the upgrades that customize how the player character performs in combat. Outnumbering these rewards are Lumps of Gold. These new collectables may be deposited in a hole in the root of a tree, also located behind a new doorway, in exchange for still more new upgrades for The Penitent One. Finding all twenty Lumps of Gold is one of the major new quests in the Mea Culpa DLC.
As soon as The Penitent One begins exploring the expanded areas, they encounter platforms, walls, and barriers made of an emerald material. These may be compelled to appear and disappear by striking jars held aloft by disembodied hands with one of The Penitent One’s weapons. Many new platforming challenges are overcome by hitting these jars with precise timing and positioning. The Penitent One also encounters small crystal platforms that instantly shatter under their weight until they discover a new ability, Broken Step, in one of the larger new additions.
The areas the new doorways lead to vary in size. Most are small, consisting of just one or two new rooms containing platforming challenges with new rewards. Others are larger, expanding pre-existing regions so far they create new paths into Cvstodia’s neighboring areas. A few passages take The Penitent One to two new regions with unique graphics, geography, and puzzles: The Icebound Mausoleum and Santa Vigilia.
The Icebound Mausoleum is a dead forest blanketed in snow containing three crypt entrances. These lead to a large, interconnected tomb buried beneath the frozen ground. Inside is a classic Blasphemous non-player character encounter: A hooded man bound to a guillotine, begging for The Penitent One to end his life by pulling the nearby lever. They grant his request, only for the guillotine’s blade to rise just a few feet. Several more levers hidden around the tomb must be activated before the man’s request can be granted and the door behind him opens, leading into the Icebound Mausoleum’s deepest parts.
The Icebound Mausoleum is the most straightforward addition in the Mea Culpa DLC. It is easy to discover and there are few platforming obstacles The Penitent One cannot overcome there as soon as they arrive. Santa Vigilia presents far more problems. Accessed from multiple locations around Cvstodia by riding in glass cages carried by enormous crows, Santa Vigilia is a ruined cathedral floating high above the theocracy. The Penitent One can do little here until they have discovered everything else added by the Mea Culpa DLC. It is the ultimate area that protects the DLC’s ultimate secrets.
Both the Icebound Mausoleum and Santa Viligia are filled with new monsters. Most are variations on enemies that appear elsewhere in Cvstodia, even sharing attack animations and counter timing. They are joined by a new enemy, a gigantic floating corpse that swipes at The Penitent One with its elongated limbs. It is difficult to hit this hovering ghoul without coming into range of its sweeping attacks, which hit so hard it makes some of Cvstodia’s previous bosses look like weaklings. As a final insult, it also explodes when it is killed. Every enemy that appears in the two new regions, including the flying, exploding corpse, has astonishingly high defense. Accustomed to cutting through everything The Penitent One encounters in one or two hits, the DLC’s meatwall monsters put up a resistance that is more aggravating than satisfying.
Bosses in both of the Blasphemous videogames come in two broad categories: Grotesque monsters that fill entire rooms and superhuman warriors whose size and abilities mirror The Penitent One. The Mea Culpa DLC offers a new one of each to challenge.
Sor Cautiva del Silencio is the more visually fantastic of the pair. A massive nun who looms over the battlefield from a backdrop where her convent watches with eerie disinterest, she fills the screen with energy beams and projectiles by waving her disembodied hands. I’m disappointed by this fight. Mechanically, it feels too familiar and obvious, particularly when juxtaposed to the first Blasphemous’ Our Lady of the Charred Visage boss. It checks all the boxes of a series boss fight and does not trouble itself with imagining and marking any more.
Brother Asterión has less visual flair but is by far a more distinct and deadly opponent. A knight wielding a massive blade, he attacks with so much power and aggression that there is barely any time to allow The Penitent One to heal from his crushing blows. Brother Asterión must be defeated twice to fully complete the Mea Culpa DLC. In the first matchup, he puts up a good fight. The rematch is the hardest battle in both Blasphemous videogames. It nearly breaks me. It takes me several hours before I finally discern the few openings in his relentless attacks and deal the final blow. It’s a triumphant and deeply cathartic accomplishment.
After guiding The Penitent One through Cvstodia’s expanded map for hours, I am confounded to find no sign of Mea Culpa anywhere. I expect The Penitent One to find their old sword the same way they found their other three weapons, inside a shrine located deep in a region. After exploring as much of the Icebound Mausoleum and Santa Vigilia as The Penitent One is able, there is still no sign of the blade. Obtaining it is a much more complicated process that requires The Penitent One to complete a seemingly unrelated quest.
The quest begins when The Penitent One meets yet another of Cvstodia’s wretched citizens who has been given a terrible blessing by the Miracle. Behind one of the new doorways, The Penitent One discovers a well where a voice calls out for help. Descending into the well, they meet a woman whose body has been turned into mud. She gives The Penitent One a key, also made of mud, which can open one of many doors that have been added to the map. The key dissolves as soon as it is used, so The Penitent One must find the woman again somewhere in Cvstodia to get another key. When every door is opened, the woman’s quest is complete and The Penitent One is finally given the first breadcrumb that leads to Mea Culpa.
Once again, I have to describe the mud woman as a typical addition to Blasphemous. Her quest’s design is familiar. Her design is impressive and upsetting; though made of mud, her feminine form is both visible and implied to be nude, and the way she is helped along by a gang of masculine mud men makes me deeply uncomfortable. When The Penitent One speaks with her, she sounds willing to go where the mud men carry her, but the way they support her body has the uncomfortable appearance of rape. Blasphemous II pushes its grotesque character designs to heights the first installment only hinted at. The mud woman is not only its most visually horrifying example, it is the most memorable, and perhaps not in ways Blasphemous II should be proud.
When The Penitent One finally returns Mea Culpa to their hands, I am surprised to find it is not a distinct addition to their arsenal. It replaces Ruego al Alba, the weapon of Blasphemous II’s original three that sets a middle ground between speed and power. Since Ruego al Alba already feels the most like how Mea Culpa is used in the first Blasphemous, this choice makes sense. Mea Culpa even adopts Ruego al Alba’s platforming abilities, allowing The Penitent One to continue bypassing obstacles they need the former sword to destroy.
As an actual weapon, Mea Culpa is superficially similar to Ruego al Alba but distinguishes itself in several unique ways. First and foremost, its range is much longer. It can also fire a wave of energy every few seconds to give it even more range. In exchange for a new currency hidden in some of the new areas, it can be upgraded with expanded combos that recall the abilities The Penitent One learned in the first Blasphemous.
Perhaps Mea Culpa’s most impressive combat ability is its activated one. Attacking frequently with the sword builds up a meter. When this meter is full, The Penitent One can activate a powered up mode that increases the damage dealt with Mea Culpa. Defeating enemies while powered up causes some of The Penitent One’s accumulated Guilt, the growing limit placed on their magic meter whenever they die, to be stripped away. This is an interesting choice. In the first Blasphemous, Mea Culpa was fixed with a thorn on its hilt that caused The Penitent One to bleed with every attack. This blood was one of the videogame’s main currencies. That Mea Culpa now heals The Penitent One’s Guilt instead of exploiting their pain suggests a fundamental change in the sword’s structure and its relationship with its owner.
Mea Culpa distinguishes itself finally with the new platforming abilities its wielder may use. I see these new obstacles shortly after guiding The Penitent One into the DLC’s new areas. Lines of golden thorns stretch horizontally and vertically in strategic locations, often blocking the path towards new areas and upgrades. With Mea Culpa equipped, The Penitent One can hurl waves of energy into these thorns, which continue through the thorns and turn into phantoms of the player character. With another button press, The Penitent One swaps location with its phantom and refreshes all of their platforming abilities. Many platforming sequences require this phantom swap to be used multiple times in a row with precise aim and timing.
Mea Culpa’s new abilities are excellent, especially when platforming challenges mix in the mechanics of The Penitent One’s other weapons, Veredicto and Sarmiento & Centella. They are also far too brief in number. Most of the golden thorns The Penitent One encounters are found in Santa Vigilia, forming a long obstacle course that grants upgrades to Mea Culpa’s combat abilities and culminates in the rematch with Brother Asterión that capstones the DLC. Mea Culpa is an impressively designed addition to Blasphemous II. By the time The Penitent One gets their hands on it, there’s almost nothing left in Cvstodia to do with it.
In my original Blasphemous II review, I describe it as a strong non-linear platformer, but a safe followup to its predecessor. I hoped the Mea Culpa DLC would reintroduce some of the ingenuity and unorthodox non-linear platforming design that made the first Blasphemous so special. Instead, it reinforces my evaluation of Blasphemous II: Good, great even, but conventional.
I’m most disappointed by how the Mea Culpa DLC is packaged. The first Blasphemous received generous free updates, including multiple new regions, and the structure of its second half was almost completely redesigned following my original review. The Mea Culpa DLC offers similar additions at an $11.99 price tag on top of the base videogame already costing more than Blasphemous I. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy myself while playing Blasphemous II and its DLC. I am saying I enjoy myself less at a greater price point. Blasphemous’ flame burns on, yet it demands more and expensive fuel while the fire begins to flicker.