Stellar Blade is a great game hindered by a lot of small annoyances that kind downgrades itself into a good game. After completing Stellar Blade I do look back fondly on it and it's misteps didn't ruin it altogather. For a team that this is their first attempt at a non-mobile game I would say thats its a great start. For the most part what Stellar Blade sets out to do it does accomplish it.
Stellar Blade is a post apocaliptic third person hack and slash action game with light RPG mechanics. It is comprised of open world set peices connected togather with some linear dungeon like story sections and a hub where you can buy things and accept side quests. Pretty standard for the most part. My favorite parts of the game where surprisingly the open world enviroments. I think the game does a great job of exploration and collecting. It really does benefit the player for going off the beaten path and experimenting and rewards you with your mentality of "I wonder if I can get up there" or "Whats on the opposite side." Another aspect I really like is collecting all the cosmetic items and customize my character. The game does have a rather large outfit count and they are sprinkled throughout the game at a good pace. The more you search the more you get and I found myself chaning my get up quite often. I was even happy to be able to change my hair and get rid of those awful bangs on the default character. By the end though I was quite pleased with my look and it always seem fresh and never stale watching my character run around and do things. It also helps the game is very good looking, even if most of the enviroments are rather drab. Character models are great though and coupled with good animations it's easy to stare at Eve all day.
When it comes to the gameplay I feel like Stellar Blade is okay. I feel like it has a lot going for it but it doesn't really do any of it particularly well. While there is some combo variety it's very easy and effective to use the same two or three attacks over and over again. The start of the game does feel extremely limiting as well. Like most modern games this game has a skill tree and you really have to unlock every basic kind of thing imaginable to make the character feel not sluggish. Like double jump should have been acquired much much sooner. The game just feels so much better with it and for traversing. Just felt off with out it. Skills do meager damage until you spend so many points to max them out, so like I said you will be using the same few ones over and over again. The worst part for me though is the way game feels when attacking. Attacks feels sluggish and the responsiveness of it feels off. It's like sometimes I have to wait for the animation to finish before inputing the next button for it to combo or if I mashed square four times and let go the character would sometimes play it all out. It's kinda weird and hard for me to describe. I don't wanna say it's input delay because it doesn't feel like it is. It's like the attack animations are slow and I have to match the pacing which is uh unique I guess. It's not as smooth and free flowing like a DMC or restrictive as a fighting game combo but somewhere in the middle and it was hard for me to get a grasp on it. It really didn't matter in the end as I used the same few combo's over and over and most enemies will make you block or dodge before your combo even ends so most of the time I just the basic four hit light string as that was one of the only things that ever let me finish a combo. The game does have a parry and dodge system and it does feel great when you pull them off but I think the balance is all out of whack. On your base character your timing has to be very good to be able to perform the actions. I found it to be really hard and kinda igorned it unless it was required. After spending upgrade points on it and selecting item that made doing both easier, it became too easy to do.
That's a main problem with Stellar Blade is balance. There are so many small things in the game that have no balance or the balance is off. Like for example the exo spine item slot that you can equip to approve your abilities. There is only two slots in the game and you get the second one rather late into the game. Think of them as accessory slots. They can fundementally change the way the character can approach battles with things like faster attack speed, increased combo damage, double sheild strength, improved long distance damage ect. There are a lot of interesting stuff I would like to try out but it feels so limiting because once I had the one that had easier dodges and parry's it was too good to not always have one as that is two of the main mechanics the game wants you to use. I don't wanna rag on the combat too bad but it looks and sounds promising but just ends up being a whatever thing for me. Im not coming back to this game for the combat is all I'm saying.
It's like I said earlier is that balance is this game main problem. From enemy health to your damage output it feels off at times. Then there are big boss battles that should have felt more epic but were not because I steam rolled them. Then I fight a regular enemey that put up more of a fight than the boss did. Even in it's shops I felt it lacking. There is the informant that sells information and minor things. The very first time meeting them I was able to buy out their entire inventory and max out their bond in a single visit. I wasn't grinding by any means but was that like their intention. Why were things so cheap? Now I have nothing left to buy from the rest of the game. Heck items, money and resources are so plentiful you can buy almost everything immeaditly. Whats the point of opening all these chests just to get more useless resources I have an abundence of? The map system is kinda of annoying as well. I wish I could put marker's on the open map and have a way point with how large an area can be but nope. Also sections of the game where there is no map and waypoint and has collectibles scattered around in it can fuck off. Points in the game where you are in a dungeon of sorts and you get no map and you can't use your weapon outside of a shitty gun. Wow so fun. Let's take the combat out of our combat heavy game. Who thought that was a good idea? There are several sections like this. As for sidequests they are as lazy as they could be. Go to point A grab item at point B and return to point A. They don't diverge much from that and there is quite a lot of quests that unlock constantly. This is where you bulk of your time is spent. I don't always have a problem with that if the quest is fun enough along the way. I did enjoy adding a another checklist of somthing to do and explore in the open map even if it was kinda contrived it helped the exploration a bit. I just wish the stories or quality of the actual plot of the quest filled out some characters and more background of the world but they really didn't for the most part which kinda made them feel like filler.
As for Stellar Blades story im afraid it's painfully genaric. I really hate comparing games to other games but man does Stellar Blade really wants to be Nier Automata and wants to be it so badly. Sad to say playing Stellar Blade really did make me wanna fire up Automata because at least that game while very similar in the story department also had better gameplay and world. Even trying not to compare it to Nier, Stellar Blades plot is so one dimentional and yet nonsensensical at the same time. Everyone can guess it's one twist in the first few hours and by the end of the game when the character finally gets it, it doesn't feel satisfying to the player. It just feels like you are chasing magical mcguffins to appease a character and fight a boss to obtain them. Not much there beyond that. Characters don't really grow or have much personality. The writing is quite bad and the script even worse. I feel like the localization could only do so much.
Even if there is a sequal I'd rather the team not and try something new. I just don't think there is much to work here with this title, but if there is another one and they iron out the problems with this one, then we would truly have a Stellar Game. Seriously though even though I feel like I have been ragging on it I did enjoy my time with Stellar Blade it was a fun romp even if it's edges had a lot of sharp points. In the end it did enough to keep my interest and complete 100%. It's an above average action game, it's just easy to talk about it's flaws because it was so so close to being a great game instead of a good game.
Platinum #206
Stellar Blade is a post apocaliptic third person hack and slash action game with light RPG mechanics. It is comprised of open world set peices connected togather with some linear dungeon like story sections and a hub where you can buy things and accept side quests. Pretty standard for the most part. My favorite parts of the game where surprisingly the open world enviroments. I think the game does a great job of exploration and collecting. It really does benefit the player for going off the beaten path and experimenting and rewards you with your mentality of "I wonder if I can get up there" or "Whats on the opposite side." Another aspect I really like is collecting all the cosmetic items and customize my character. The game does have a rather large outfit count and they are sprinkled throughout the game at a good pace. The more you search the more you get and I found myself chaning my get up quite often. I was even happy to be able to change my hair and get rid of those awful bangs on the default character. By the end though I was quite pleased with my look and it always seem fresh and never stale watching my character run around and do things. It also helps the game is very good looking, even if most of the enviroments are rather drab. Character models are great though and coupled with good animations it's easy to stare at Eve all day.
When it comes to the gameplay I feel like Stellar Blade is okay. I feel like it has a lot going for it but it doesn't really do any of it particularly well. While there is some combo variety it's very easy and effective to use the same two or three attacks over and over again. The start of the game does feel extremely limiting as well. Like most modern games this game has a skill tree and you really have to unlock every basic kind of thing imaginable to make the character feel not sluggish. Like double jump should have been acquired much much sooner. The game just feels so much better with it and for traversing. Just felt off with out it. Skills do meager damage until you spend so many points to max them out, so like I said you will be using the same few ones over and over again. The worst part for me though is the way game feels when attacking. Attacks feels sluggish and the responsiveness of it feels off. It's like sometimes I have to wait for the animation to finish before inputing the next button for it to combo or if I mashed square four times and let go the character would sometimes play it all out. It's kinda weird and hard for me to describe. I don't wanna say it's input delay because it doesn't feel like it is. It's like the attack animations are slow and I have to match the pacing which is uh unique I guess. It's not as smooth and free flowing like a DMC or restrictive as a fighting game combo but somewhere in the middle and it was hard for me to get a grasp on it. It really didn't matter in the end as I used the same few combo's over and over and most enemies will make you block or dodge before your combo even ends so most of the time I just the basic four hit light string as that was one of the only things that ever let me finish a combo. The game does have a parry and dodge system and it does feel great when you pull them off but I think the balance is all out of whack. On your base character your timing has to be very good to be able to perform the actions. I found it to be really hard and kinda igorned it unless it was required. After spending upgrade points on it and selecting item that made doing both easier, it became too easy to do.
That's a main problem with Stellar Blade is balance. There are so many small things in the game that have no balance or the balance is off. Like for example the exo spine item slot that you can equip to approve your abilities. There is only two slots in the game and you get the second one rather late into the game. Think of them as accessory slots. They can fundementally change the way the character can approach battles with things like faster attack speed, increased combo damage, double sheild strength, improved long distance damage ect. There are a lot of interesting stuff I would like to try out but it feels so limiting because once I had the one that had easier dodges and parry's it was too good to not always have one as that is two of the main mechanics the game wants you to use. I don't wanna rag on the combat too bad but it looks and sounds promising but just ends up being a whatever thing for me. Im not coming back to this game for the combat is all I'm saying.
It's like I said earlier is that balance is this game main problem. From enemy health to your damage output it feels off at times. Then there are big boss battles that should have felt more epic but were not because I steam rolled them. Then I fight a regular enemey that put up more of a fight than the boss did. Even in it's shops I felt it lacking. There is the informant that sells information and minor things. The very first time meeting them I was able to buy out their entire inventory and max out their bond in a single visit. I wasn't grinding by any means but was that like their intention. Why were things so cheap? Now I have nothing left to buy from the rest of the game. Heck items, money and resources are so plentiful you can buy almost everything immeaditly. Whats the point of opening all these chests just to get more useless resources I have an abundence of? The map system is kinda of annoying as well. I wish I could put marker's on the open map and have a way point with how large an area can be but nope. Also sections of the game where there is no map and waypoint and has collectibles scattered around in it can fuck off. Points in the game where you are in a dungeon of sorts and you get no map and you can't use your weapon outside of a shitty gun. Wow so fun. Let's take the combat out of our combat heavy game. Who thought that was a good idea? There are several sections like this. As for sidequests they are as lazy as they could be. Go to point A grab item at point B and return to point A. They don't diverge much from that and there is quite a lot of quests that unlock constantly. This is where you bulk of your time is spent. I don't always have a problem with that if the quest is fun enough along the way. I did enjoy adding a another checklist of somthing to do and explore in the open map even if it was kinda contrived it helped the exploration a bit. I just wish the stories or quality of the actual plot of the quest filled out some characters and more background of the world but they really didn't for the most part which kinda made them feel like filler.
As for Stellar Blades story im afraid it's painfully genaric. I really hate comparing games to other games but man does Stellar Blade really wants to be Nier Automata and wants to be it so badly. Sad to say playing Stellar Blade really did make me wanna fire up Automata because at least that game while very similar in the story department also had better gameplay and world. Even trying not to compare it to Nier, Stellar Blades plot is so one dimentional and yet nonsensensical at the same time. Everyone can guess it's one twist in the first few hours and by the end of the game when the character finally gets it, it doesn't feel satisfying to the player. It just feels like you are chasing magical mcguffins to appease a character and fight a boss to obtain them. Not much there beyond that. Characters don't really grow or have much personality. The writing is quite bad and the script even worse. I feel like the localization could only do so much.
Even if there is a sequal I'd rather the team not and try something new. I just don't think there is much to work here with this title, but if there is another one and they iron out the problems with this one, then we would truly have a Stellar Game. Seriously though even though I feel like I have been ragging on it I did enjoy my time with Stellar Blade it was a fun romp even if it's edges had a lot of sharp points. In the end it did enough to keep my interest and complete 100%. It's an above average action game, it's just easy to talk about it's flaws because it was so so close to being a great game instead of a good game.
Platinum #206