The main thing I hate about fighting games is how many combos there are and how you must execute them. Maybe I’m bad but there’s too many and I can never seem to get the inputs right. There is a plethora of ways to dispose of the Naytibas and somehow it never feels overbearing. Stellar Blade took my biggest gripe with fighting games and spun it on its head. It is definitely my favorite aspect of the game. Even though the many side quests in this game are played the same, the stellar combat held my interest. I was never bored doing these side quests despite them being boring by design. This game is so much fun to play.

I really like the music. Some of the best I’ve heard in a video game. The graphics are really pretty, but the true beauty lies in the female character designs. EVE, Lily, Tachy, Raven and all the other female characters are gorgeous. Stellar Blade has some of the coolest and most unique character customizations. I love playing around with the different outfits, glasses, earrings and hairstyles. It’s all so vibrant and colorful.

The first ¾ of the story doesn’t feel like it goes anywhere. It feels rushed, as though I missed a prequel. The final quarter is where the narrative starts getting interesting and everything gets explained. I like how there’s multiple endings. Most games nowadays don’t offer multiple endings. So Stellar Blade is refreshing in that sense. What sucks about the multiple endings is how you must restart the entire game to get the other ones. For some reason, you can’t manually save in Stellar Blade. You have one autosave. You progressed too far into the story and missed a collectible. Too bad kiddo. You must start over. I missed one can and the only way I can get it is by playing New Game+. I must play New Game+ anyways for the other 2 endings and the game isn’t too long but it’s still annoying. Manual saving is such an under the radar yet necessary feature in any single player game. The fact that Stellar Blade omits this feature, I consider it the game’s biggest flaw.