Stellar Blade

8/10

Apesar de toda a polêmica, como um bom fã de Bayonetta e Nier, esse jogo é indispensável.
A história está longe de ser tão boa quanto Nier, mas tem personagens e designs legais, ambientação detalhada e uma OST ABSURDA.
a Gameplay é simplesmente deliciosa!

I've actually been pleasantly surprised by Stellar Blade. Culture war shite aside, I find the explicit difference between the depictions of men and women in this game to be pretty lame. It's bizarre, since the world itself seems entirely unconcerned with gender, and there's never a moment where someone objectifies the protagonist or other women, at least from what I've played. In a game where sexuality is barely a factor at all, you're left to wonder why it's present at all, for any reason other than the assumed benefit of the ogling player.

To be honest, it's not a particularly significant feature in the game overall, so the fact that conversation around the game always comes back to that is a shame, though the developers do bring it on themselves when it is what appears on the box when you buy in.

What I find to be a more interesting part of Stellar Blade is the clear influence by NieR Automata, and more specifically the way that fact didn't bother me as much as I'd expected. It can feel a little hacky at first to see right away the ways in which this game mirrors its major influence, but as I continued to play, a lot of the creative decisions for this game felt surprisingly authentic. In every side quest, every collectible, every costume is a glimmer of humanity. A lot of blockbuster games these days are so bloated, and can often feel arbitrarily lengthened by studio mandate. Stellar Blade trims a lot of the fat, so what's left straightforwardly feels like an idea that somebody had on the dev team which was then built for the game.

It would be quite easy to call Stellar Blade shameless given the discourse surrounding it, and it's sort of true, but as a result it feels more human. This game is a series of Shift Up's personal indulgences, made manifest with a triple-AAA budget.

It's oftentimes a little tone-deaf, but it's also full of strangeness, just like a person. It knows what it is, wears its influences on its sleeve, and doesn't waste time feigning otherwise. I don't know if I'll finish it, but I enjoyed my time!

Stellar Blade was an extremely fun game, but the story is pretty straight forward. (No Spoilers)

The combat was incredible, action like Nier with a bit of soulslike when it came to bosses having attack patterns with timed parries. Even had segments that made the combat just turn into somewhat of a horror game. The animations were crisp. Everything felt like it hit with force it was so satisfying.

The soundtrack was beautiful, every fight scene had a banger of a song play in the background and just roaming around the song fit the atmosphere. One particular song that played during a boss fight near the end was amazing.

The graphics were absolutely stunning. The character detail, particularly EVE, was insane. She looked so lifelike you'd think it was a movie. The cosmetics to make EVE stand out in many ways provided many options, made me want to replay the game just to see her in different outfits in the cutscenes.

Like I said at the beginning, the story was pretty straight forward but they told it quite well. However, I did wish they explored the word they built more. Normally, I don't mind getting collectibles to discover more lore but I felt like I needed to go out of my way to learn more doing so. What did shine however, was the side quest line of a duo that I loved so much. At the end of the day, it was still a solid story. Replaying the game to get the platinum trophy really makes you focus on the cutscenes even more knowing the end.

My biggest issue with the game is some stuff out of combat. It could be a bit rough. Some segments slow down to a crawling pace, especially a few parts near the end. Sometimes the movement wasn't quite responsive, EVE would not listen to the inputs and would do whatever she'd like, normally falling to her death, which got frustrating. Some of the puzzles, although pretty easy, ended up being tedious.

Overall, the game is great. They had some minor issues that I think could be easily resolved with some patches. I definitely recommend this game to anyone who enjoys action games.

Stellar Blade is a surprisingly very polished game with good production values. The graphics looks nice in general from the environment to the character models. Lighting is decent most of the time as well. Loading times are very minimal and surprisingly did not run into any glitch or technical issue.

The story is a somewhat standard post apocalyptic story. It starts off with Eve and her airborne group of sister warriors descending from the space colony to destroy the Naytiba monsters populating the planet. Lots of issue arise and Eve becomes the sole survivor after the landing battle. Saved by the Scavenger Adam, he helps him retrieve energy cells to support the last known human settlement.

The story is rather straightforward and has predicable plot twists within the sci-fi genre. Not much actually happens for the first few hours which remains consistent for most of the game. The story takes the slow reveal approach.

That said, even a generic sci-fi story would keep me interested and that was the case with Stellar Blade's story. The plot twist at the end of the game did take me by surprise though and the endings did set up for a potential interesting sequel that I hope come to fruition.

There aren't many story characters in the game. The few of them are mostly undeveloped outside of the main trio. There are few notable side characters that are unrelated to the main story. They aren't developed much either outside of a few of them.

The music is good overall. Admittedly, I only liked a few tracks in my first playthrough, but have grown to appreciate more tracks in my subsequent playthroughs. There's a lot of piano pieces with soft vocals which didn't really move me much. The tracks use for boss fights are usually of the metal and rock variety which I vibed more with in general.

The combat is the biggest selling point of the game. I enjoyed it, but I do have mixed feelings about it. The combat isn't quite as fast paced as I would think based on the cutscenes. Well, at least the normal attack chain isn't as fast as I'd expected. The battle flow does move quick once you get accessed to all of the parry/dodge followups and Beta/Burst skills. In the regular attack chain, you can mix the weak and strong attacks for different combinations, but it's not really needed most of the time. All hits except for the final ones can be guard and dodge cancelled. The final hit forces you to commit and they have long recovery frames.

The combat isn't very difficult in general. You do take decent damage and can die in about 5 hits with the starting health amount. Blocking is not too effective considering that you still take chip and shield damage when blocking hits. A broken shield gauge will expose you to nearly the full damage and the shield breaks easily in just a few hits. Perfect dodge is one of the main defensive tool, but I can never pull it off consistently outside of the dodging projectiles. It's not that reliable, but it's very much needed since unblockable attacks are common. They come in three versions, yellow, blue and purple. Blue allows a special dodge counter if you dodge directly towards it at the right time (a flash will tell you when). The purple one requires a dodge directly backwards. Despite the supposedly easy counters to do here, the input is apparently very strict where a slight angle could be enough to fail the button press. Getting the right timing was never really an issue, but getting it to register forward or backward was a constant issue. The yellow unblockables don't have any easy counters like the other and requires the standard dodge.

Parrying on the other hand is a lot easier to pull off and safer to do in general. A failed parry usually means that you block the attack at least.

Mob enemies are more tanky than I'd liked for the medium and larger sized ones. I don't mind them too much when fighting 1v1, but fighting a group of them is a real massive pain. I don't think the game has sufficient tools to deal with groups. Parrying and perfect dodging them when attacked by groups is very difficult. A failed dodge or parry is going to lead to a death by stunlock. After replaying the games a few times, I find that I don't enjoy mob fights very much. It doesn't really feel satisfying parrying and dodging their attacks since fights get drag on longer than I'd liked.

Boss fights on the other hand are very fun. All story bosses and most of the ones in sidequest are fought 1v1. All of my attention can be focused on parrying, dodging and executing followups. The battle flow in boss fights are very satisfying.

The special moves, Beta and Burst skills are flashy and looks great, but they require building up a gauge to do.

The game does give you consumable attack items, but there's little variety and limited amount you can hold at once. The game also surprisingly has shooting elements where the drone can turn into a gun. The gun variety is decent, but it's not a useful option for most situations. The ammo that it can hold is limited and ammo drops are not that common. They are also near useless against boss fights since the time it takes to go into or out of aim mode is notable enough that you'll likely get hit by the boss in the mode transition.

One of the other highlights in the game are the level designs. They come in basically two types, the semi-linear ones and the opened areas. There are only two of the latter ones and while they are technically different, both are basically of the desert/wasteland theme so visual design is lacking. They are quite large in size too. They are decent at first, but after a while, it becomes a pain to move around.

The semi-linear levels on the other hand are quite good and fun. Some puzzles here and there and limited exploring for hidden items. They somehow remind me of some PS3 era action games. I wished they removed one of the opened areas and made more of these semi-linear ones instead.

Despite having a reputation as a "Souls" games, it's not very difficult or punishing. Resting at camps does respawn enemies, but that's mostly it. Dying and getting a Game Over just puts you back at the last check point or camp, but these are many of them close together. Progress like opened chests, items obtained, doors opened and exp gained are all retained. No need to go to a specific place to retrieve lost exp or anything like that.

The game has three endings which can be a pain to do since it basically requires playing the game three times outside of uploading saves to the cloud or something. Also annoying is that two of the endings are 90% the same.

There is a NG+ option which also unlocks Hard Mode. Enemies deal more damage and have much higher health. Since you keep everything on a NG+, most mob enemies don't become noticeably more challenging, but they get a lot more tanky to defeat. The same for the bosses, but the ones near the end of the game who were already challenging on normal, become a lot tougher where 1-3 hits can get you killed.

One thing I liked about the game is that there's a lot of outfits to unlock. There's about 35 and a different recoloring of those same ones can be unlocked on a NG+.

While I haven't heard much of the English voice acting since I played it with Korean voices, I thought they were quite good. Even Lily who does sound a lot older than I'd expected in English.

Since there's a lot of discourse on the fanservice, I'll put in my thoughts on the matter. If you remove Eve, the fanservice is nearly non-existent. The characters are filled with cyborgs with metal implants for limbs and even heads for a few of them. As for Eve, her design isn't that heavy in fanservice, but the camera angle does emphasis her behind at times. She does have jiggle physics as well. As for her outfits, a lot consists of fetish type costumes which are heavy in fanservice. Fortunately, there's also a good amount of normal ones as well.

Overall, Stellar Blade was fun to play with a story that kept my interest. I liked the main trio even though the remaining story characters are lacking. Definitely would like to see a direct sequel based on how the endings turned out.

GOTY contender c'est assez certain , on est sur un jeu qui frôle la perfection si le manque d'identité n'était pas un critère car il réside ici le plus gros point négatif du jeu.

Sur la fin on trouve un semblant de D.A intrinsèque à Stellar Blade et ça marque un grand final donc le jeu n'arrête jamais de croître en qualité , ce qui change de la plupart des titres de nos jours.

Gameplay parfait , OST mémorables et vastes pour chaque type de paysages , la meilleure optimisation graphique et performante qu'on ait jamais vu dans un jeu-vidéo.

Je dirais aussi que les personnages sont un peu plats malgré eux , ce qui nous met la puce à l'oreille concernant une certaine révélation importante durant le jeu , outre ça les quêtes secondaires sont plutôt poignantes , le jeu sait te montrer que tu es vraiment dans le dernier bastion de l'humanité.

must-play

Stellar Blade is a game that knows exactly what it wants to be, even if it isn't the greatest on all fronts. While the combat and soundtrack are clear standouts, the story leaves a bit to be desired. Apart from these obvious points, I think there's more reason to speak positively about the game as a whole than there is to linger on the negatives.

Let's start with the great things about SB. The combat is exceptional. C'mon, there's a parry; of course it's a 10/10. You have this option to use burst and beta abilities while fighting, and while those abilities are fun and flashy, the game allows you to take a more “pure” approach. If you want, you can zero in on using parries to beat your opponent to the point of using a Retribution attack. Most people will be familiar with a critical attack after breaking posture, but there's something so satisfying about draining such long posture bars in Stellar Blade. Each strike of your sword or spark of your abilities is a beautiful light show as well. It's very much a rhythm game that will leave you in its dust if you can't match it in time. I found myself getting 1 or 2 shot by plenty of enemies when I missed an important parry or dodge.

Overall, the game's visual aesthetic isn't something I'm mad about. Some cyberpunk-style designs feel a bit uninspired, but the world is highly detailed and wonderful to look at. It feels like one of those titles that was meant to be on the PS5. I really loved when the camera work would turn super dynamic in the cinematics. I think all the boss fight executions were brilliant. I also loved alot of the Naytiba designs. They take inspiration from many forms of life and almost always provide some sort of nightmare fuel, which I love. One small bit about them that I adored was the flourishes on the boss type Naytibas. It gives a stylized look to them and gives them a sense of grace that contrasts their violent existence. I think the MAIN character design in general is a standout in this game. Many of those main characters are so much fun to look at. There are always standouts in games that have mixes of organic and mechanical. The freedom that allows is something I'm sure character designers love.

Shoutout to the costume designers for EVE. Every time I thought they were at their limit, I got a new one and GYATTTTTT. I'm not too high and mighty to acknowledge the fan service of this game. You caught me. I enjoyed it. Pretty sure the devs made her ass bigger when she's wearing certain outfits too. Yoko Taro would be proud and disgusted, I'm sure.

Now, the music. Holy shit, these are some FF16 type tracks. I won't name some bosses, but Belial and Karakuri were just exceptional standouts to me. Don't even get me started on Democrawler. Breathtakingly incredible. We get such a beautiful blend of instruments and musical mediums throughout this whole game. It's hard to focus during some fights, and I think the camp's theme will be burned into my eardrums for awhile. Overall, I'm so impressed with soundtracks like this. I can't see anything topping these tracks this year, but I'd love to hear someone try.

Shoutout to the final boss theme being a rendition of the main theme. We LOVE that shit around here.

The story and characters just fell a bit flat to me. I didn't feel much chemistry between EVE and her companions. Some characters seemed like they knew they were NPCs and took that assignment seriously. I felt like many emotions weren't there when they needed to be. I wanted to like the story more, but I saw the ending coming from a mile away. The only reason it isn't more of a knock for me, personally, is because there were a few nice twists in the lore that I enjoyed. It isn't horrible, and maybe I'm judging it too harshly, but it was by no means cinema.

Overall, I think this game is very much worth playing, even if for the combat alone. There are plenty of side quests and the platinum trophy is there for the taking. Another wonderful example of a game I saw the first teaser for ages ago, hyped up, and then happily received it when it finally released. That's a breath of fresh air anytime it happens.

By the way, are the incels still mad at this game? They said it got censored?? I can't imagine seeing the fan service of this game and thinking it isn't “good enough.” Imagine using your limited time on this beautiful Earth like that when you could literally load up Stellar Blade, play as a beautiful android woman, and SAVE Earth instead.

very impressive that a game can try to be ninja gaiden, nier, devil may cry and sekiro all at once, yet still somehow fail to capture the essence of the character action games it aggrandises.

here’s the thing: this is not a real action game, it is a hollow facsimile of one. stellar blade tokenises action game design traits and shoehorns them into a dull modern game design template until it coalesces into god of war 2018: titty edition. mechanics lack any real depth, combat design is shallow and simplified, while level and encounter design lack anything beyond perfunctory consideration. these are literally, categorically, the most important things to nail for a successful action game!

we can only assume that, at some point, an active decision was made to focus on adding AAA bloat instead of further developing and refining these most crucial design aspects. had shift up not been so enamoured with sonymaxxing every aspect of their game, we could have seen something legitimately interesting. instead we have a bird’s nest of disparate influences, filtered through the money-making machine until a big grey bowl of no-identity slop comes out the other end. who would’ve thought!

Not sure what to say. I’m too old to care about the drama surrounding this game. I saw a cool action game with a sexy lady a la Bayonetta and I threw money at it. Unfortunately Eve (and the rest of the cast) has the personality of a wet rag. She’s no Bayonetta or 2B for that matter.

What this game does have going for it is some seriously fun combat. When it clicks it clicks and you’ll be pulling off slick dodges and parries in the most stylish way imaginable. The animations for Eves moves are pretty incredible and it never got old doing a blink dodge and watching her slide around the enemy for some damage.
I did feel some awkwardness when facing groups of enemies sometimes and the gun play isn’t perfect. But those were pretty minor issues.

I wish the studio had been more inventive or ambitious with the world and story because man does it just feel like a Nier/Nier: Automata clone. I mean that literally. The stories and concepts are so similar that it feels almost legally actionable. I was definitely hoping for more in that department.

There’s not really much in the way of “builds” but you do get gear that leans towards different play styles. More aggressive or defensive, speed or criticals, etc. I also had fun finding new fashion to try out. It’s a good dress up game even if a lot of it tends to be unnecessarily revealing. I guess it depends how much that is gonna bother someone. shrug

Anyway it’s just a pretty solid action game with some sci fi nonsense and a pretty lady. Playing through ng+ for a platinum.

Refreshing and engaging with new mechanics and abilities that always kept on being introduced throughout the entire game. Great OST, looks great, plays great and the story while a tad uninspired carries itself moreso with a genuinly likeable central cast and side characters you must protect!

Can't help stressing out how fun it is to play around with all the costume unlocks and alternate hairstyles, a rare treat to have this much cosmetic content actually as base content!

While at times difficult, the game is always generous with checkpoints and stocking up on consumables, this combined with how fun the mechanics are makes it a fun game to keep on mastering. Outside of combat there is a neat variation of different gameplay elements ranging from shooter sections, platforming and puzzlesolving to open world areas.

Still got new game+ to play through which apparently has a buckton of whole set of new unlocks and extra content.

In short, it's peak.

ASS story, ASS characters, ASS VA.

Some Bosses have way too much health, its like they really want you to spam beta moves, skills and Taki mode. Normal attacking just feels like a way to build the beta.

Open world was mid, sidequest give you no motivation to do more, pretty boring.

Combat was good most the time besides the stun lock when u miss 1 parry.

Stellar Blade, to me, felt like a B-movie whose budget was randomly doubled while in production. What I mean by this is: The production quality is top notch, but everything beneath that would be perfectly at home in a lower budget ""AA"" effort. From the sleazyness to the slightly undercooked gameplay to the agressively overconfident story (the story is mostly plot holes), Stellar Blade is highly polished trash. And I think that's very fun! It's not the best thing ever, but I enjoyed my time with it.

A complicated game.
If you can get past the voice acting (damn, Lily sucks), dialogue, and character design (for 90% of the male characters), this game will be a fantastic pick for you.

Combat-wise, this game is close to perfection. A combination of DMC-like combos and fast-paced combat with souls-like's "high-risk high reward" system, where your attacks are flashy and exciting, and combos can obliterate enemies, but dodging and parrying (especially perfect dodge and parrying) are still a "must."
The game's fast pace is a major draw, making it incredibly addictive and engaging. This high-intensity gameplay keeps you on the edge of your seat, always looking for the next enemies or boss fights.

Enemies variety is also a big bonus. Many different enemies with different attacks and moves require you to learn different strategies to counter each one of them. However, the same effort is absent when it comes to character design. Except for 90% of the female characters, the rest of the roster of NPCs you'll find is atrocious. It looks like the devs just wanted to "fill in" places so they don't feel as empty, so they randomly generated a couple of NPCs and that's it.

Level design is complicated, to say the least. Basically, it's a combination of linear and open areas. However, the open areas have the "same setting: sand, sand, and sand. It can get repetitive very quickly and, consequently, makes you want to blast through it without actually stopping to take things in - and this is a major f*ck up because even the open areas hide some really amazing-looking places. Conversely, the linear areas are very good (although they can also feel like the same).

When it comes to story, however, it may not be your cup of tea. Lies of P suffered a similar problem: the game doesn't know if it wants to be a "narrative-focused" game (like GoW and some other single-player games) or if it wants to retain the mystery and "eerie" atmosphere of soul-like games. Consequently, the story feels "empty," low-paced, vague, and doesn't actually get you engaged until later (I'd even risk saying until the final couple of hours).

Finally, the soundtrack is fantastic, but you can quickly get sick of it - most of the time, it's the same song (often with vocals) that keeps looping over and over while you're in certain areas. This means that if you spend hours in the open areas, you'll hear the same song repeatedly. This is often okay when the soundtrack is primarily instrumental, but when you have lyrics that keep repeating and repeating for 3 hours or more, you want to mute the whole thing.

This game has some of the best combat I have experienced in a video game in a long time. Everything in your tool-belt feels viable, and I found myself using everything at my disposal on the final boss fights.

The exploration and sense of discovery in this game are great as well. It can definitely feel a bit checklisty at a certain point, but I found myself having a lot of fun and getting a nice hit of serotonin every time I found a new item or suit.

The story is the weakest part of this game. A lot of cool ideas and elements but it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of dialogue and the overall arc. Eve could definitely use a bit more personality and character development than what was delivered.

I hope this studio gets a chance to make a sequel and further refine this franchise, as there is so much great here, it could really just do with better writing and story direction.

Stellar blade is a ... stellar game! For the first time in a long time I actually had fun running around collecting things and doing side stuff. I wanted to spend as much time as possible with the game. Also, I am not gonna say why, but doing the collecting actually is important in a way I've never seen a game like this do. Below I will list my negative and positive thoughts about the game, starting with the negative.

NEGATIVE THOUGHTS:

- The story twists are rather predictable, I can't really remember any big surprises. The same goes for the characters, they don't really develop in unexpected or interesting ways.
- The second big area to explore, "The Great Desert" is one of the most exhausting and frustrating areas I've ever had to play through. I guess if you just go for story and ignore the side content, it's not as bad, but I am convinced this whole area was designed to annoy the fu- out of you.
- I don't understand why not all areas have a map, it makes backtracking so insanely time consuming. Without online guides getting to 100% is almost impossible.
- A lot of times you need to jump to ropes, ladders or edges and let me tell you: the physics in this game are either extremely bad or I am bad (which could very well be true), because EVE decided to jump through ladders all the time.

POSITIVES:

+ So many people, also in reviews on here, say EVE is a bland, uninspired character with no personality. That could not be further from the truth! If you spend a lot of time with her and see how she is around NPCs and even in the main story, it shows she is so much more than just a hot fighter. EVE is kind-hearted, determined and strong-willed badass! She can show emotions but also knows how to get sh*t done!
+ Just like with Star Wars: Fallen Order and Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, I am not a big fan of the soulslike combat, because it is extremely frustrating for noobs like me. I wouldn't say this is a soulslike, but the combat does have a lot of similarities. The good thing is, you don't lose everything when dying and the game is giving you a lot of tools to succeed. HOWEVER, I loved the combat in this. It's flashy, it's hot, it's fluid and most importanly fun!!! There are a lot of skills to learn, the visual and audio design in combat is 10/10 as well.
+ The OST is exactly what you expect and still delivers! So good. I always appreciate a good OST with actual singing.
+ Absolutely beautiful visuals, the cutscenes look especially crisp.
+ While the story is predictable, the execution is great. I was happy with how it all concluded and where the characters ended up.
+ Great side content and great customization. Even if you are not a fan of all the skin, there are enough options for you like full body suits that still look badass. Plus, there is a good reason for EVE to have a body like this which really shouldn't come as a big surprise to anyone.
+ Yes, I played in Story Mode. However, I love how this Story Mode is NOT an easy mode (at least for me it wasn't). Yes, it was easier for sure, but I was never bored and it did feel like an actuall game and not a movie with gameplay like most other Story Modes make games feel.
+ I can't speak for or against the VA in English, because I played in German and the German Dub is really good. Most German dubs are fine, but this one stood out to me, the voices fit the characters very well and you can tell they actually cared about what they are doing.

Overall I sooooo want a sequel to this game! A truly magical experience from start to finish. Will I dare to go for NG+? It will be in my nightmares, but yeah, I gotta go for the NG+ trophies... wish me luck!