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 what 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 template until it coalesces into god of war 2018: titty edition. mechanics lack any real depth while combat design is shallow and simplified. why is it combo-based if these are so heavily disincentivised? why are enemies so static, not playing to the strengths of the system? i’m glad they took the ninja gaiden route (e.g. letting you cancel an attack with a block) over sticking to animation priority, but my respect for the combat system mostly ends there. level and encounter design also lack anything beyond perfunctory consideration. enemy configurations often feel like a copy/paste job and never encourage a change in playstyle (e.g. switching between singular enemies/groups) or utilise risk-reward strategies. btw, there are only so many times you can pull the ‘enemy laying in wait behind the door/wall’ bit. if you must, then at least show me some intent, some playfulness. this shit just feels like getting 40 minutes into dead space and realising you’ll be repeating the same boring jump scare for the next twelve hours. bosses are, unsurprisingly, the best part, but sorely lack the dynamism required for what (i think) they were going for. all of these things are literally, categorically, the most important aspects to nail for a successful action game! it speaks volumes that they all feel half baked.

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!