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.

This game was previously a 4/5 for me and I looked forward to playing it everyday. But then the New York Times got their grubby little mitts on it. And you know what they fucking did? They got rid of swear words. Yep. Thats right. Now my daily tradition of using whore first and always has been shattered. What's even the point of playing anymore? This is everything thats wrong with capitalism. Big company buy little nice wholesome thing and ruin it and litter it with data trackers to spy on you and advertise you more of Gwenyth Paltrows goop. This is why I am now an anti-economist and will no longer be participating in the world with currency. The New York Times will NOT censor me. LADIES, NEVER FORGET WHAT THEY TOOK FROM YOU

the protagonist immediately outs herself as a sociopath, but she's by far the most righteous out of the entire cast. this is also one of the few pieces of media i can think of that accurately displays how fucked in the head white supremacists are... among other things

if that makes your head tilt in a positive way, check it out. i don't even have to hesitate giving this a 10. i laughed way too hard at the godlike voicework (some of the best va of any game/vn/whatever) to care about its shitty use of the renpy engine

huge bmx xxx fan excited to play it for the first time. no but fr this game has lived inside my brain since i was like 13 bc some youtubers i was into at the time played it. that video introduced me to taking back sunday bc cute without the e is in this games soundtrack and i think that's ruined my brain permanently bc 70 percent of everything i listen to is some flavor of shitty emo music.

anyhow this is like rlly good and rlly fun but also so incredibly cruel and nasty in a way that i understand anyone turned off by this. but idk i grew up on like jackass and stuff like that and i think what captured my eye even as a child watching shows like that is seeing smth similar to the town i grew up in on the television screen in a pre youtube getting rlly big type of world. and bc i grew up on stuff like that i'm naturally very into the aesthetics and vibe this game is going for. but it's like genuinely such a mean fucking game, like the soundtrack is rlly rlly good and i'm big into most of the songs on it but they're such small minded and petty AND misogynistic ass songs. even the stuff that's a little bit more fun and not emo/alt metal are like rude songs, that sublime song is actually so gross. there's a weird system at play here that i haven't seen in similar games, this completely ditches the time limit type restrictions in favor of a real health system, when ur health goes all the way down by failing a trick u get kicked out of the level. reminds me of like the fascination america had on young people getting hurt, this was present in news at the time of course but it's also how mtv and similar channels managed to stay afloat for the better part of a decade.

this rlly wants to be a satire of corporate greed in a post 9/11 world and tbh often i was charmed by how heightened everything felt, like a less biting gta but still way more than like the underground tony hawk games. occasionally there's rlly smart stuff here, the ramps made out of rockets w american flags painted on them is a nice little touch. the world the game inhabits is very often cold and hostile and i think that makes a lot of sense for where the culture was at the moment and where it would end up going. npcs are like fucking mean in this, everyone hates u and maybe they should lol. often though the game is kind of just racist and sexist and filled w gross out humor which yeah it is a shame.

levels feel rlly wide and expansive and every ramp and rail connects in a way that's kind of rhythmic? but mostly i'm just rlly impressed by the locales they picked. usually in stuff like this you get major metropolitan cities or fake ones loosely based on one that don't rlly have any thematic tissue, but this goes for either smaller cities like syracuse or tourist trap cities like vegas. and they all have their own visual identity even the skate parks or vague ideas of places like a dam. when i was a teenager and i watched the video of this game i always thought the layout of the bronx level looked similar to my hometown, i didn't live anywhere close to ny but the feeling of it rang true. it looked like my city and that resonated w me and i do think stuff like that is rlly important.

This game is really damn pretty, im stunned at the quality of this remaster. Driving through Lost Haven while its raining at night with all the neon signs was fucking beautiful. Story wise its pretty good, some really cool mission ideas and a good ending. Gameplay is fine, driving could be better, the linearity of the game makes having an open world kind of pointless and there's a very small selection of weapons but considering it came out in 2002 originally its easy to ignore when killing people and vibing as a mafioso is as fun as it is. Im not a fan of the way games have been doing blood lately, just like pasting it onto the models instead of making it is own entity but thats just more of a problem in general than with this game. Anyways besides a couple graphical graphical glitches and one crash, it was really great to see where it all began after having played Mafia II all those years ago. This is how you do a remaster.