I very much enjoyed playing this game. Great combat, great graphics ( I played on balanced ), incredible soundtrack, and found the story to be fine.

Combat is probably what I loved the most in this game, parrying and dodging feels very satisfying, and the final few bosses can genuinely be hard.

Soundtrack is incredible, hanging around the camp and hearing the music just feels very nostalgic for some reason.

I liked the level designs, but felt that it peaked with the first area ( Eidos 7 ). Character designs are great, and I love Eve's outfits.

I played on balanced mode, and while the levels are mostly 60fps, in the main hub and in like two boss areas, the frame drops can be pretty noticeable.

Story is fine, but a bit on the shorter side. Can definitely complete it in about 10-15 hours.

Após jogar a demo do jogo no ps5, acreditei que seria um ''soulslike'' genérico, enquanto estava esperando um hacknslash, e felizmente eu queimei minha língua... Durante a demo, após ver a árvore de habilidade, fiquei com esperanças de que não seria como citei acima, e seria um jogo com um combate diversificado e polido, e é realmente isso!

Pra começar, vi que teve muitas criticas a respeito da narrativa, e eu achei ótima, depois vou dar uma olhada nos outros finais pelo youtube mesmo, mas adorei o final que peguei e também sujeito a gancho para continuação!

Os personagens são bons, gostei bastante do desenvolvimento principalmente da EVE ( a protagonista ), os personagens de side e que a acompanham na jornada são bons também!

As boss fights são EXCELENTES, e só melhoram com o decorrer do jogo, principalmente por conta das suas trilhas sonoras PERFEITAS! Sem contar a última, que é UMA das melhores final boss fight que já vi, muito memorável e bonita.

A jogabilidade é excelente, os combos são ótimos de executar, e também algo que me agradou muito, é que o jogo não se mantém na mesmice, ele varia com várias mecânicas e cenários diferentes, alguns tornando ambientes mais fechados e impossibilitando de usar a espada, deixando apenas a arma com uma pegada mais Dead Space, puzzles divertidos, e uma exploração boa!

Já havia mencionado acima, mas não tem como não elogiar a trilha sonora, é simplesmente MARAVILHOSA, algumas mais calmas, outras mais frenéticas pra combinar com situações do jogo, simplesmente esplêndida!!!

Jogando na qualidade ''Equilibrado'', não tive nenhum problema com travamentos ou crash, e o jogo é super bonito, tem partes que é impossível você não parar pra tirar um print e deixar registrado!

Pra concluir, jogo foi muito além do que eu esperava e adorei bastante! Vale a pena dar uma chance.

Alright, strap in. I have a lot to say.

Let's get the elephant out of the room before I actually talk about this game. I am going to bring up issues I have with the game's art direction later on but none of that has to do with how sexualized the character designs are. I am fine with all of those other characters you want to use as a counterargument. That is not the core of my issue with this game, but before I get into that, I'll talk about what I DO like because I do still like this game.

I think on a graphical level, the game looks amazing. It runs consistently well and has been thoroughly play-tested which I shouldn't have to appreciate, but most great games usually have at least some small level of bugginess that this game does not have. Additionally, on this aesthetic front, I love the game's soundtrack, probably one of the year's standouts alongside Rebirth and Prince of Persia. I also think the linear and open-world missions in the game are, for the most part, quite fun! There are some survival horror-type missions that I found particularly memorable, even if they clash really hard with the rest of the game, but we're not there yet!

But the place where I have the hugest amount of praise for this game is its combat and enemy encounters. I'm gonna talk more about the game's "identity" later but this is where Stellar Blade's identity is strongest as it can't really be put in any camp for these 3D hack-and-slash games. It's not slow-paced and deliberate like a souls-like, but it's not super quick and combo-heavy like a DMC or a Bayonetta. The combat feels like a good mix of light comboing, really nice feeling parries, strong finishers, and a good amount of diversity in the way that you can approach combat. The enemies and bosses are also very well-designed and super difficult. The game shines brightest when focused on its great combat and there is a sequence near the end that works well for this game. It's great!

The game for the most part is really fun, super polished, and not particularly painful to go through. If someone might not have some of the same issues I do later on in this review, then I can see someone loving this game to pieces. But.. I have some SERIOUS issues with this game.

Starting off is the one that everyone, even the people who like the game is bringing up. On a narrative front, Stellar Blade is an absolute mess. The game's script is written so awkwardly, almost like it was machine-translated rather than actually localized. The dialogue is super awkwardly written and some moments in the side missions just feel kind of... embarrassing? The story setup is mildly interesting (until you notice something I'll bring up later), but the story's themes are barely explored apart from naming conventions and a couple of moments at the beginning and end.

The narrative didn't even need to be particularly deep or anything. Bayonetta and DMC games don't have deep stories, but A, they're not really trying to, and B, they do have a memorable cast with personalities at least. When I heard from reviews that Stellar Blade's cast isn't the strongest out there, what I DIDN'T expect to find was the most emotionless and barebones main character this side of The Callisto Protocol.

Eve is such a remarkably bland character, lacking a single actual personality trait. They try to develop Eve in a couple of ways regarding her ambiguous relationship with Tachy, who is also boring and has no character and then dies. They do a scene with this relationship in particular near the end of the game and it just felt so stilted and not super earned. But surely the other characters are better, right? I mean... I guess so? Lily at least has.. a personality and Adam, as boring as he is, at least has some interesting things happen with them later on, but the character writing is so incredibly weak in this game and the voice acting, both in Korean and English only makes it worse.

Okay, so that's the narrative stuff out of the way, what's that other major problem I have with the game that I've been edging you out of? This game does not have a fucking identity. I've been trying my best to hold back on comparing this game to NieR Automata up to this point, because I wanted to judge this game on its own, but it's so blatantly apparent just HOW MUCH of this game was derived from it. You play as a sexy android lady from a space base and are sent down to get rid of all of the bad guys that took over the Earth. You run around a semi-open world with a little drone that follows you around everywhere and talks to you. The game goes into detail on who the guys you are fighting and who you're working for REALLY ARE and there are themes of Identity and Religion and Life. The main character is very stoic and emotionless, but unlike 2B, here it's because they aren't written to have one. Hell, there are characters named Adam and Eve IN NIER AUTOMATA.

I know this all seems super surface level, but these comparisons wouldn't be such a huge problem if they had a super strong identity on their own and it really REALLY doesn't. The most distinctive thing about this game is that you're fighting Semi-religious gross penis monsters called Naytiba instead of robots. But that feels more like it clashes with the game's sci-fi aesthetic more than anything. Speaking of clashing, the character designs don't even really feel like they belong in the same game, most notably when you compare Eve, Lily, and Adam's designs. And they are the main 3 characters of the whole game. And most of the side characters don't even have faces, which is super weird? Why does the hairdresser have no hair? What are we doing here?

This also extends to the locations, Xion just feels like a pretty generic post-apocalyptic world. Half the time, in these linear missions, you fight in ruined cities and sewers and the two semi-open world areas you get are both bare empty deserts. I know asking for visual variety in a post-apocalyptic game is asking the wrong questions, but maybe have at least one of the open-world areas not be a desert??

All of these things combined, the art style clash between the different characters, friend, and foe, in this game, the super generic areas, the basic and derivative story, the lack of any characters with more than one personality trait, and the themes it doesn't touch on very much at all, leads to a game that doesn't really have an identity of its own. Hell, even though I love the music, it sounds very much like NieR music. The game's identity shines brightest in its combat, in its missions, in its boss encounters, and in one section near the end of the game that I thought was actually excellent.

This is clearly a talented team and the fact they were able to make a big console game this good on their first try is astounding. I can only hope their next game has more of a unique identity.

TLDR; The game is well-polished, has some great music, some decently fun linear and open world missions, and some exceptional combat and boss fights, but the character designs clash super hard with each other, the environments don't feel distinct, the story and character writing are incredibly bad, and the game just doesn't have a strong identity outside of copying NieR Automata's homework.

Played the demo. I like shiftup's gacha shit, it's usually generous and has some great live 2d art and ui design, music etc. And it's unabashedly horny. Unfortunately not perfect due to some of the designs they choose to include. Anyway. This is about the demo for stellar blade. I was nervous based on the controversy and praises being sung by chuds about the game altogether, but having liked their mobile games wanted to give it the college try. The gameplay felt stiff, unrefined and under-featured for a char action game and the set pieces felt constrained and basic. The bit of dialogue and story I saw was nonsensical, and not in a fun way. Too few interesting details given to compel me, generic sci-fi fluff with no meat. The character had a big ass though, at least that part did indeed happen. Not gonna pay 70 bucks or whatever for it though. And in fairness maybe it gets better, but the terrible dialogue makes it not worth checking out any further, so unless I hear some insane things about later game, RIP stellar blade. Good try, ShUp.

My favorite thing in the demo is there were some cool signs as part of the set, graphic ui and logo design is definitely the team's strongest strength, it just was featured here on top of some boring geometry and architecture that felt very mass produced vs bespoke for the game.

Edit: I'll probably check it out at some point if it's cheaper or comes to PC, I've heard enough positivity from folks I trust. But leaving this for my initial impression, and if it can turn it around at some point for me, that'd be awesome.

Wieder mal ein sehr starkes Spiel aus Korea und wieder mal ein Studio mit wenig Erfahrung im Singleplayer Action Genre.
Stellar Blade macht einfach richtig Spaß - Aufwendig inszenierte Actionsequenzen (wobei öfter mehr wert auf EVEs Hintern gelegt wird) gemixt mit einem Gameplay, dass nicht nur auf Block,Parry und Dodge setzt, sondern noch allerhand Kombos bietet, die man in seinen eigenen Spielstil einfließen lassen kann, Die Variation der Moves ist dabei nicht extrem hoch wie in einem DMC, aber trotzdem bietet das Kampfsystem genug Tiefe um sich für jeden Gegner die besten Kombos zu erarbeiten.
Die Kämpfe fühlen sich mächtig an. Gegnerschläge hören und fühlen sich schwer und kraftvoll an, der Parry Sound macht immer wieder gute Laune und die Special Moves haben Stil und Wumms. EIndeutig das Herzstück, des gesamten Spiels.
Artstyle und Grafik machen einiges her , jedoch sieht man an der einen oder anderen Stelle, dass dort ein wenig geschludert wurde und die Texturen nicht so ideal aussehen.
Man kann Stellar Blade vorwerfen, dass EVE sich in Plattformer Passagen ein wenig schwammig steuert, die Nebenquest nur selten richtig zünden und die Story einen weniger nachdenklich zurück lässt, als es noch das Vorbild Nier getan hat.
Trotzdem hat man sich die meißte Zeit bei denen richtigen Ecken inspirieren lassen und das daraus geschaffene Werk von ShiftUp kan sich durchaus sehen lassen.

Es ist ein Stück Unterhaltung, dass die übersexualisierte Darstellung für sich nutzt und sich auch nicht dafür schämt. Ob es einen Grund hat, warum EVE so hot aussehen muss oder man sie in jeglich erdenkliches luftiges Outfit stecken kann ist mal Nebensache, denn im Grunde ist es jedem Studio selbst überlassen, wie man seine Charaktere in Szene setzt, und ob man nun Super heiße Androiden spielt, oder Flubber ist dann eigentlich auch egal solange das Spiel bockt. Und das tut es!
Die Platin Trophäe ist relativ easy zu holen, mindestens 2 Durchgänge sind aber nötig.

Stellar Blade plays it pretty safe, it has taken inspiration from so many great things that it can be hard to be anything below mediocre (There will be many comparisons). But the things it does do right are amazing, resulting in a really enjoyable experience for me.

Combat is great and basically everything feels fast and satisfying. The parry system could do with a bit more work, but maybe this is just me wanting a clone of Sekiro's posture bar + deathblow system rather than the common mechanic of 'reach parry threshold for a critical blow to the health bar', which was also seen in Lies of P.

Beta skills and the other trees are very fun to use, The animation team at Shift Up cooked extremely hard. The downside is that Eve is so strong with her cool as fuck abilities that you can basically skip some bosses' combos, it can take away from the entire point of parrying in the first place since you can just wail on them instead.

Dodging is also really satisfying, theres such a dynamic feel to every blink you pull off. The game also encourages you to do square and triangle combos to deal extra damage, but this can sometimes lock you into an animation that leaves you vulnerable. Its a nice touch and keeps you thinking about your inputs, rather than spamming the same button like in Sekiro. I do appreciate what its trying to accomplish, if I had to compare the combat its kind of like a mix of the Jedi games (abilities/parries), Lies of P (souls styled encounters/parry criticals), and Nier Automata (combos).

The gun is also a cool aspect of combat, it spices up some of the enemy encounters and levels that remind me of experiences from The Last of Us or Dead Space.

Movement and platforming is similar to how it worked in Jedi Fallen Order, wall running, double jumping and mid air dashing is what you'll be doing for most of the map traversal. I don't mind it at all and it gets the job done, nothing too special here but at least it isnt unbearably slow.

Visuals are great, a bit too many desert areas for my liking but aside from that it was all eye candy. High quality 2D iconography and modelling for individual assets, incredible lighting, colour direction, super dynamic cinematics and QTEs that put you right into the action (insane camera work). Character designs are great, Raven, Tachy, Orcal and ESPECIALLY Eve (I lost) with her many crazy outfits. The Naytiba designs are very interesting too, some pure nightmare fuel in that shit. Loved the inspiration from oceanic animals like octopi, land insects and mecha.

Music is unbelievable and might be the highlight for me, its absolutely my pick for best score of the year so far. Okabe - the Nier series composer, has done it again alongside Monaca sound studio. So many tracks in this game are bangers, with multiple different genres ranging from piano pieces to full EDM dubstep tracks (favourites being: Buzzsaw Slide, Karakuri's Theme, The Song of the Sirens, Belial's Theme, Hypertube Slide, and Tachy's Theme). The large amount of vocals used in the score push the themes of this game which I think is nice, its something the Nier series also does which makes sense.

Story is where the somewhat small cracks start to show, for the most part its predictable, some small twists I was surprised with but for the most part it was average. In this aspect it will stay in Nier's shadow, Eve could do with more of a personality rather than a sympathetic stoic who just wants to get her mission done, other characters just seem pretty barebones too. The side lore is quite good but nothing that helps the game stand out. Dialogue and writing is pretty basic. Side Missions were average at best, but didn't feel like a chore since some banger music was blasting and I could appreciate Eve's design at the same time. The voice acting (KR) can be pretty good at times within tense moments, especially Eve, Lily, Tachy and Raven, but aside from these few everyone else sounded kind of uninteresting and void of emotion.

Needs more of the Sonic tunnel grinding levels because that shit was sick as fuck!!

Overall I enjoyed my time, don't listen to the braindead controversy and form your own opinions by playing :)

Stellar Blade is one of my most awaited game in 2024 just because it is inspired a lot by two of my favorite games, Nier Automata and Soulslike games.

This game has a great combat system just like soulslike games and a GREAT OST just like Nier games. But i also was expecting amazing story and characters but the problem is that the story and characters lacks emotion and depth. It tries to copy nier automata too much and become very predictable. That being said, i am not saying the story is bad, it's actually pretty decent but compared to Nier Automata it definitely doesn't reach that point at all.

But i still really enjoyed my time with this game, just wish it was a bit longer. I guess you could say that there is a Nier-like games now.