Have you ever asked to get food while out with your parents, only for them to respond with “No, we have food at home”? Then, once you get the food at home, you realize it is just ok compared to your favorite restaurant. Well, that is the best comparison I can make for Stellar Blade. It is no secret Shift Up were fans of the Nier series. However, Stellar Blade takes so much inspiration from Nier that by the time you finish it, you will realize it was just an okay game compared to Nier. I would go as far to say you might as well play Nier Automata and get more enjoyment from that. Now, Stellar Blade does have some positives. The gameplay is pretty fun, especially in its boss fights. One of the best feelings I got from this game was parrying attacks right on time to hear the satisfying sound that indicated a successful parry. The soundtrack is also pretty, especially in the latter half of the game. Finally, the graphics are beautiful, especially in its open world segments. Unfortunately, I have more negatives with the game than positives.

Stellar Blade’s biggest flaw is its story. It is just boring, and incredibly predictable. Especially, with it being a retelling of Adam and Eve, that if you are aware of the original story, you can accurately assume where the rest of it will go. If you have played Nier Automata, you can also see certain story beats get ripped straight from that into Stellar Blade. It even tries to be thought provoking, but ultimately fails to do so because it does not have anything to say thematically. To make matters worse, characters are written to be so lifeless, and the flat voice acting causes any cut scene to be just a drag. I also found the world to be just uninteresting, even with a bunch of lore written about it. Overall, I found Stellar Blade’s story, characters, and world just incredibly boring. However, I should note that there are one or two moments when the main protagonist, EVE, is being badass and for a second, I would be engaged, but after that moment wears off, I lost interest quickly.

Now I should address the elephant in the room, that being the sexualization of EVE. As someone who enjoys making their characters look cool or attractive in games such as Cyberpunk or Baldur’s Gate, some of the character design in this game made me uncomfortable. This problem stems from its OPTIONAL outfits for EVE, where some outfits are just lingerie. Ironically enough, all the outfits are incredibly detailed and fun to look at, but they are just too revealing. Thankfully, these outfits are optional, and you could just use the base suit which sort of fixes that problem. Of course, you will still notice some unrealistic jiggling on certain parts of her body, but thankfully it becomes less noticeable in the latter half of the game. So if you have an issue with EVE’s sexualization in the marketing or social media talk, you might have some trouble with Stellar Blade. Of course, I am probably not the right person to discuss such topics but felt that I should at least point it out.

While it may have sounded like I HATED Stellar Blade, I thought it was fun. Sometimes video games do not need to tell an emotional story and it just needs to be mindless fun, which is okay. I am hoping Shift Up can learn some lessons from Stellar Blade’s mistakes because if they do, I can see a sequel being great. Overall, I thought Stellar Blade had fun gameplay, pretty music and looked amazing on the PS5, but found it lacking in quality with its story, characters, and world. As a result, my final score for Stellar Blade is a 7 out of 10. I just would not recommend playing this in front of family or significant others.