It’s really a shame that reactions to Stellar Blade are more focused on the fanservice or the coomer reactions. You got one group of people who just focus on the fanservice and hail the game to be the savior of sexualized women in gaming, and then you got the other group who view the game in a negative light because of the first group. And you know what? I can’t even blame them because the first group is really insufferable.

I don't care in the slightest about Stellar Blade having a "sexy" protagonist. I saw a trailer for it once and was immediately interested, because of how fun and unique it looked.

But coomers saw the female Protagonist’s butt and were obnoxious about it ever since. Like come on, it’s bottom of the barrel fanservice you’re going all crazy for. Literally everything I've seen about this game online is people with underaged anime character avatars cream their pants over how this game is "destroying wokeness" or whatever. Nothing against Eve, because she is really pretty and I actually really like her, but she looks like every female character in every korean MMO ever made. It's like people going to war over white bread. Apparently, these guys are now whining about censorship, signing petitions, and making videos of themselves (they look about as you'd expect) about why their cause matters lmao. These pathetic gamerbros will never not be incredibly annoying and cringe to me.

Because Stellar Blade is just so much more. Picture all those apocalyptic gachas and their really great world-building, fantastic atmosphere but really cheap and dull (chibi) gameplay, then amp it up to AAA levels – that's the magic of Stellar Blade.

The environments are beautifully crafted and the atmospheric soundtrack is another aspect I deeply appreciate and thoroughly enjoyed in this game. There's nothing quite like losing yourself in a captivating melody as you journey through vast, lonely landscapes and cities. Just like Nier, Stellar Blade really nailed its soundtrack.

The gameplay is just so much fun and showcases an exceptional level of refinement and polish. Every movement, dodge and parry hit the mark perfectly. The more skills you unlock, the cooler and more fun the combat gets. There's never a dull moment - the gameplay remains consistently exciting and stylish from start to finish.

I found the plot to be really intriguing, and I really enjoyed uncovering plenty of secrets and snippets of lore. But what really surprised me were the sidequests. Sure, some were usual filler content, but most served to make the world feel alive and deepened the lore. Completing them was enjoyable, they never felt like a chore. So good job there.

Oh, and I'm pleasantly surprised by Eve! Initially, I expected her to be the typical "waifu" (ugh, I hate that word), merely there for visual appeal with little personality beyond conforming to generic “anime girl” tropes. Most of these tropes revolve around being “innocent”, "naive" or a "sweet flower girl." But Eve defies those expectations, and I couldn't be happier about it.

Even though Stellar Blade took huge inspiration from Nier and other apocalyptic gacha games, it's still an extremely unique and fun game that everyone should give a chance. Don't listen to the manchildren throwing tantrums or all the buzz about the “fanservice," which is honestly vastly overexaggerated due to some optional skins. Honestly, aside from the optional skins, there are absolutely no horny aspects present in the game.

There are just so many little touches to the point where you can tell the developers really cared about making this game great, and they succeeded. Stellar Blade is simply a beautiful game.

Night in the Woods is a game by all rights I should have liked, I wanted to like, even. 2 Months ago when I was utterly fixated on Pentiment I watched every interview and talk Josh Sawyer has ever given, kind of obsessively. It was from these talks that I got the recommendation to play Night In The Woods, cited as the main game inspiration for Pentiment, as well as Mutazione and Oxenfree. After Playing the game I can definitely see what he was talking about, the minigames, dialogue structure and format of the setting, even the subjects broached are all pretty similar.

And yet I find myself wondering why does Pentiment work for me so well and NITW really doesnt? The protagonist, Mae Borowski is in theory the most relatable character in fiction to my life circumstances in pretty much every way except for our gender. I also had a complete breakdown when I moved out and utterly crashed spectacularly at uni and came back to try and go back to the stability of home. I also struggle with becoming a "proper adult" and finding meaning in existential questions. I also dread seeing a lot of people here back home cause of embarassing shit I did and feel kind of stuck at times. I also wonder if Im holding back my friends who seem to be making something of their lives unlike me. I am also Bi. I am an atheist, and yet somehow with all of this said and done I found myself relating to Andreas Maler, a deeply religious german renaissance painter 100 times more than Mae.

That's not to say that relatability is the be all and end all of storytelling, but I felt as if in the case of NITW I was SUPPOSED to be relating to her somewhat. Shes just really kind of unlikeable for most of the runtime and of course being a videogame you have to actively aid her in being shitty and doing shitty things at times. I was ready to abandon this game at the 2 hour mark although apparently that wasnt enough of a fair shake so I kept pushing through hoping maybe something would happen beyond the standard coming of age stuff and angst. I can say now that I finished it that something did eventually sort of occur.

Im not slapping this game with a 0.5 cause even though I disliked it, and it takes way, way, WAY too long for it, some good moments eventually do happen in the second/third act. Like 4 hours in this game actually starts (I could have watched Lawrence of Arabia in that time) and we get some kind of intrigue. Some character moments get some actual fucking payoff and one or two lines finally managed to get a light chuckle out of me. I like the gay bear dude, and I also like Angus. And look, I like Wayward Strand, which is a game in which bugger all happens, but that game was full of sympathetic (and unsympathetic too) and interesting characters with lovely dialogue. Being narrative focused with little mechanics focus is FINE, but you are riding on that narrative to hold up everything else and man this dialogue. I really dislike this dialogue, nobody talks like real people; which is fair enough I suppose given they are anthropomorphic animals but this Webcomic from the 2010s type dialogue just poisoned everything else especially for the first couple of hours.

There is some light platforming but its kind of a waste of space. Especially the dream sequences that scream filler to me. At the end of it all, all the existential stuff is the payoff for the game but Ive honestly seen it all before tackled better elsewhere (well, in Pentiment for one thing but I guess thats cheating given the timeline). Nothing is really tackled with much depth and it just makes me scratch my head when I see reviews being like "this is the first time I had played a videogame that explored these subjects" and like theres no way to say this without sounding like an asshole but what? You need to play more videogames then. I love EEAAO but if this is how that movie looks to people who dislike it then I'm sorry for recommending it to people. I think I'm just done with media about positive Nihilism (and yeah I get it, the Null Symbol, you are very clever Mr/Mrs writer), its unfair to rag on NITW for this reason, cause its from 6 years ago now but I have to be honest with how I feel. The art style and sound design/soundtrack are good though.

If you've gotten this far into this horribly written, mess of a review I ask you consider the fact that my life is a mess, which is coincidentally why its weird that I didnt like this game.

being a xenoblade fan is the jrpg equivalent of cult indoctrination, which is saying a lot because being a jrpg fan is like joining a cult in and of itself, so really it's like separating into an extremist faction of a larger cult that simultaneously infights at every given opportunity while taunting non-members for not finding Dunban "being over there" ticklingly hysterical even after the 167th time it's referenced in deeply brainrotted twitter circles.

I am allowed to say this and mean it endearingly because I am myself an unfathomably deranged xenoblade fan far beyond the brink of salvation. this game has irreparably changed me. I have been ruined. my brain is broken. I'm not sure it ever worked right, but my xenoblade fandom experience has ensured that it will always work wrong. otherwise innocuous terms such as "44 seconds" or "bestest" have pavloved me into laughing forever. when I see shulk take a bite of a sandwich and that bite does not animate on said sandwich, I emphatically applaud. the mere sight of Juju, a child whose only crime is loving his people, makes me black out with vitriolic rage. anytime I slice a hot knife through butter, I cry. anytime I walk on ice, I scream. when I check the time, all I see is Reyn's face on the clock - it is always Reyn time in my world now.

the other day around Reyn time (lunch) I was slicing open a bagel with a freshly sharpened serrated knife in order to make myself a toasted chicken salad sandwich. delicious. yum. bestest. unfortunately, the bagel slipped out from underneath my hand and I ended up slicing my own thumb instead. despite the alarmingly large amount of blood and even more abundant visceral pain, I luckily did not end up needing stitches. was I relieved? no. grateful? no. all that could cross my mind in that moment was that "your blade... it did not cut deep enough."

I mained Shulk competitively in super smash bros. for wii u because of my love and loyalty for this damned game. for those of you unfamiliar with Smash 4 - Shulk is booty buttcheeks doodoo dogass tier in Smash 4. he is fundamentally fucked. hopelessly hoed. maining Smash 4 Shulk is like marathon training for months only to tie a boulder to your ankle at the starting line, or maining Sharla in xenoblade 1. for four whole memorable-but-not-wonderful years I would mosey to local tournaments having extensively practiced my Arts Landing Lag Cancels and Monado B-Reversals and Purge 50-50s and Airslash Ledge Snaps (in AND out of Jump Art!) only to get utterly dicked and shitted and pissed and vomited on by some iron-deficient 14-year-old Kirby player who sucked the monado into his disgusting mouth hole and used Jump and Speed arts to Run The Fuck Away for 6 minutes. all that suffering to appease the cultish urge to remain steadfast in my xenoblade chronicles brainrot. peak fiction. I hate myself. I live for this game, and therefore want to die.

I am a shattered man. I come to you as a cautionary tale. I love xenoblade 1. it is a good game. some might call it a great one. I could even wager that it's a classic. but it is not worth a total fundamental collapse of the self. this game has significant faults that time has further illuminated. sidequests are trash. the game's third act is a disaster. characters have chemistry but very few have arcs. women don't exist in this game. why doesn't unfinished battle loop in that one fight. juju. I have heard it all. it is no longer cool or trendy or tasteful to praise xenoblade 1 as the jrpg bastion it once was.

I do not care. It is far too late for me to view this game objectively, yet I find I am more grateful to have loved a game to an extreme degree beyond objectivity even if it has cost me an entire lifetime of mental fortitude. I wish Dunban was my real dad and was "over there" instead of "forgetting me because of dementia." Riki eats your favorite jrpg mascot character for breakfast and still has time to canonically fuck his probably-smokin-hot-by-nopon-standards wife before lunch. expert worldbuilding dares to ask "what if we were all on A Guy and we climbed up his ass" and thats raw as fuck. expert OST dares to ask "what would it feel like if ears could cum" and then made my ears uncontrollably bust jumbo nut wads for over a decade running. I am one of the deranged freaks who mained Melia and therefore thinks the combat is Pretty Sick Actually. stop maining Shulk, losers. stop cradling that milquetoast monado like a security blanket and get in Melia's pain train, we're starlight kicking god in his Klaussy.

I don't care if this game is "overrated," or if i'm "scaring the hoes." I don't care if xenoblade 1 is "too anime" or "predictable" or "nonsensical" or "boring" or "not a replacement for proper nourishment." I love this game. I eat it up. I consume it in its totality - characters, world, combat, music, fandom, memes, merch, a decade of irreparably damaged culture and identity. like Shulk, it changed my future. Xenoblade Chronicles ruined my life, and I am forever thankful.

If the idea of a Sonic-themed RPG sounds like a bad idea to you, this game is to blame. A bizarre presentation of horrible character models and animations against ugly backgrounds, the use of nothing other than the touch screen to control everything (even things that could be easily assigned to buttons, like menus), a battle system that works like a more punishing version of a rhythm game, where missing one note will cripple your entire action, a dreadful soundtrack with the most boring and lazy MIDI files you will ever hear, and weird implementation of a dialog tree system where you can turn Sonic into the biggest asshole you will ever see.

I know some people still wish for a good Sonic RPG, but we all know how this franchise works. If a new concept for a Sonic game isn't a home run from the very first attempt, they will simply kill that concept out of fear of failure, instead of giving it another chance and hopefully improve upon it.