I just finished Another Crab's Treasure with all achievements with about 21 hours of playtime. One of things I really love about this game is that is comes off as a vibrant, silly, innocent kids game but in reality it's just like every other souls games, it's difficult, it has a dark story, hard bosses, swamps, and... vibrators? but I love every bit of it. There was a few moments in this game where I was soft locked or a bug occurred which was kind of annoying, luckily nothing really ruined my run and the devs are patching the bugs super fast. Other than that, this game is an amazing souls experience and I highly recommend it if you love the soulslike genre.

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.

Here is a list of every single joke review I considered making:
Shellden Ring
Floodborne
Dark Shoals
Lies of Sea
Black Myth Dugong
Shellkiro: Shallows Rise Twice
Coral Shell

I couldn't pick one.

Anyway, weird how the funny-ass crab game is the best soulslike ever made that wasn't made by fromsoft. A fun art direction, a surprisingly good story, a really cool shell mechanic, and some very strong boss encounters. It's certainly lacking polish in a few areas and the music is occasionally quite bad, but I had a really REALLY good time with this game!

It feels so odd to play a video game and have an actual reaction to the game's story like wtf?? game stories can be good???

Anyway, some parts were a liiiittle unpolished, it's missing some of the bigger advancements of metroidvanias over the past few years, and some of the combat encounters were a bit stupid in their balancing, but for a first-time team, it feels so crazy to me that this game looks and sounds this good on top of having some really fun combat and platforming sequences and a genuinely touching story. I am incredibly impressed by this game and I can't wait to see where they go from here.

Story and Characters
-Alan Wake is a fairly interesting character that is flawed, but also occasionally charming. He is a writer and can be arrogant at times, but he is also trying to save his wife and he is likable enough.
-Most of the side characters in the game are fairly basic and are not very fleshed out. Barry, Alan’s agent, is one of the main side characters and he is probably the most likable character in the game.
-Some of the side characters like Thomas Zane or Agent Nightingale could have used a bit more development as it is hard to truly understand them and their motivations unless you do research outside of the game.
-The story is an intriguing one that can be hard to follow at times, but it certainly feels unique. There are some aspects of the game that I feel were not addressed clearly enough, but for the most part the story is structured in a way that the player can follow. The ending feels very vague however and I would have liked something a bit more definitive.

Gameplay
-The gameplay is the weakest aspect of the game unfortunately. The combat can feel very tedious at times even though it is a unique idea to fight enemies with both guns and a flashlight. The combat starts feeling quite repetitive though because there is a lack of enemy variety and a lack of weapons or any sort of weapon upgrades. The guns don’t feel all that different and neither do the flashlights. Almost every chapter ends with you losing your weapons so you are constantly just getting the same weapons back again, but they all feel the same.
-The dodge mechanic in the game is very frustrating as the timing feels off on when you should do it. Oftentimes, you need to dodge well before the attack is near you which feels off.
-The enemy spawns are atrocious and are one of the worst aspects of the game. They will spawn behind you constantly and sometimes they spawn directly behind you so you are guaranteed to be hit. Sometimes the enemies will hit you two or three times in a row and you are unable to move until they finish attacking you. This leads to many frustrating deaths that feel cheap because the player didn’t do anything wrong.
-There are not really any puzzles or much gameplay outside of the basic combat, so the frustrations that come from the combat are magnified. The movement can also feel clunky at times and it is frustrating how quickly Alan will lose the ability to sprint and how much faster all of the enemies are than you.
-The game also has possessed objects that will throw themselves at you which also can lead to a lot of unavoidable damage as there is no way to destroy them all in time or avoid them. That is the biggest frustration with the game for me, there are too many times I would be hit or killed and it was because of bad gameplay mechanics, not necessarily because I made a mistake.

Side Content
-The game is mostly quite linear and there is no side content featured. The closest thing might be looking around the map for collectibles or extra ammo, but that doesn’t really count.

World/Level Design
-This is the game’s biggest strength as the map and town of Bright Falls are quite aesthetically pleasing and the game does a great job nailing that Northwestern United States vibe. Each location that you visit feels detailed and they all made sense to be in a small town. The game has a creepy, but beautiful atmosphere that works very well.
-One downside with the level design is that there are often areas that are quite large that the player can explore, but they don’t often have any purpose. The game gives you plenty of ammo and resources, so you don’t really feel a need to explore, but I also didn’t like the feeling of skipping over content. This issue was particularly prominent when you are in the car and can get in and out of your vehicle whenever you want. There are many locations you drive past on your way to your final destination and it can be hard to tell what is worth stopping by and what should be skipped.

Graphics, Music and Glitches
-When playing the remaster of Alan Wake I did not encounter any major bugs which was great.
-The graphics for the environments are good and the character models in this version have been updated from the original so they do look better, but obviously still worse than a new game released recently. I wouldn’t say any of the visuals are anything too remarkable, but it is a good looking remaster that allows the game to hold up pretty well in 2023.
-The music for the game is rather good and adds to the ambience and danger of the story. The soundtrack rarely ever really stood out to me as anything too incredible, but it complimented the game well.

Main Positives of the Game
-The setting of the game and the overall vibes of a small town in Washington really worked for me and it made the game enjoyable even when the combat was frustrating.
-The story is very unique and while at times it was a bit too convoluted, it managed to remain interesting throughout the game and I enjoyed following it.
-I do like how unique this game is with its meta narrative, some fun characters and a different combat system using light, there is nothing out there quite like it. This does not mean the game is amazing, but I like to see games do something different from most other games out there.

Main Negatives of the Game
-The combat can be repetitive at times and also very frustrating. The enemy spawns are awful and will often leave you being hit or killed without you doing anything wrong. The dodge feels a bit janky and does not work well when you are being attacked by multiple enemies.
-The story can be a bit too hard to follow at times and does not really wrap up in a way that feels satisfactory.
-Some characters feel underdeveloped and their motivations are not fully clear. For example, Agent Nightingale is relentlessly hunting Alan Wake, but it is not really clear why and I didn’t find out until I looked up more about his character after I beat the game. It could be that I missed a document that explained his motivations, but for a character that is as prominent as he is, I think his motivations should’ve been more clear.
-There is not a lot of enemy variety which again leads to the repetition with the combat.
-Large areas that can be explored, but the player does not always know when they should be or do they have much incentive to do so.

Overall Score: 7/10