Blasphemous

Mumble jumble dialogue but damn the pixel grafix and cut scenes are fantastic. The combat interactivity/animation doesn't feel complete, kind of still rough stage. But the grafix, characters, and settings makes up for it. Most of the skill upgrades feels rather useless as spamming autos seems like to be the optimum strategy. Doesn't feel like your damage or movement ever get a significant upgrade which I love in metroidvania games. Got the bad ending. Youtube the rest, I like the good ending.

points mostly for visual design, not gameplay.

Hmmm, I'm a bit mixed. I'm very positive on the pitch-black tone and visuals (think Castlevania with the dark fantasy toned down and replaced with sheer gory religious horror), but as a Metroidvania - it's fun to explore and reveal the map of course, as always. Good boss battles too. But it's full of frustrations, too. Wayyyy too many useless collectables, poor sense of growth and progression, opaque design and mysteries, annoying features with one hit-kill spikes.

Slog.

A fantastic Metroidvania that was immensely enjoyable to play from start to finish, despite occasional difficulty spikes (the DLC platforming challenges were super rough for my skill level). Blasphemous's artistic quality is of the highest order, and reminds me of some of my favourite art movies with religious motifs, like Buñuel's Simón del desierto and Russel's The Devils. I'm not a native speaker, but the new Spanish VA also seems very good to me, and much better than the original English VA.