Stellar Blade

Sex Sells, if you're sick of sweet baby bs, and looking for eye candies, then the game is ok. But it offers nothing but the eye candies.

The lack of a mini-map or proper in-quest guidance turns not only side quests but also main ones into chores, not a challenge. You cloud spend a quarter running your head dizzy without knowing where to go next in a quest, especially with the sad pop music in the background and the dark yellow colour shades (takes you back to ps3 era lmao).

The art style feels like a cliché mashup of Unreal Engine store assets-neon signs, glowing clothes, and brooding back alleys that we've all seen a hundred times before. They should take a research, dive into 2077, blade runner or another cyberpunk style works. Can't just do a cheap style knock-off just because cyberpunk was a hit 4 years ago.

Conversations with NPCs are especially painful: wooden animations, uninspired dialogue, and zero emotional depth. It's like talking to mannequins in a wax museum. The whole thing reeks of surface-level flair without any real soul. If you're looking for a meaningful story or innovative gameplay, look elsewhere. This one will put you to sleep before the credits roll (before you get to the main city really).

Earth has been destroyed and humanity as we know it is mostly extinct, with survivors living primarily on an off-world colony. To wage war against the grotesque monsters on the planet's surface, platoons of Very Sexy super soldiers are dispatched. It's not long until they're all wiped out save for a sole survivor, Eve, who serves as the player-controlled protagonist. As a vassal onto which overly sexualized violence is projected, her characterizations are anything but consistent. At times, she's a completely helpless fawn in need of rescue and devoid of agency. On the other hand, she's an unstoppable killing machine who can pull off gravity-defying displays of viscera against behemoth abominations without breaking a sweat. Perhaps my personal favorite, she's a nurturing and messianic figure helping bring humanity together by solving their everyday struggles. These dichotomies make for a conflicted, humanized character you can't help but hold out hope for to the bitter end.

Stellar Blade is an objectively great game, plain and simple. The love and passion poured into it is palpable, and despite my minor issues with frustrating platformer passages plaguing most role-playing games, the style doesn't outweigh the substance. Captivating combat, vibrant visuals, and a sublime soundtrack all come together to form a world almost as enchanting as our protagonist and make Stellar Blade very easy to recommend.

Stellar Blade is a blast. For external reasons, it'll likely be one of the most talked-about games of the year, so for the sake of brevity, I'll avoid those obvious points and instead get onto what the game itself has to offer.

The world of Stellar Blade is both beautiful and terrifying. The game strikes a nice balance between gorgeous aesthetics in environment design and brutal (and often bloody) enemies and combat. The two meshed quite well for me though, and this pleasant combination was helped by an absolutely phenomenal soundtrack that adds to the future/post-apocalyptic vibes in every level.

Combat is great. While I wouldn't venture as far to say that Stellar Blade is a soulslike, the difficulty in both random enemy encounters and boss fights is comparable, if not quite to the level of intensity that From Software games generally boast. Nonetheless, I found Stellar Blade to be a compelling and rewarding experience all on its own. The combat is quick and dynamic, and relies heavily on its dodge and parry mechanics, which it utilizes to (mostly) great effect. It functions as a risk/reward system that punishes the player severely for mistiming a dodge or a block, but it opens windows to decimate the enemy as well.

World exploration is mostly excellent, with a scanning system that reveals potential threats and secrets in a wide range. Numerous chests, costumes, and power-ups litter the multiple maps, making exploration and side quest-completing very worthwhile. Platforming is enjoyable, but wonky aerial movements and overly-precise detection zones for ropes and ladders can often contribute to frustrating retries that come off as cheap and unnecessarily difficult. It doesn't break the game, but it definitely detracts from an otherwise great setup.

In terms of the story, Stellar Blade walks a fine line between dark and melodramatic, but never quite ventures into standard levels of cheese found in your average JRPG. The characters are well-written and (mostly) well-acted. I can't say much more without spoiling the story, but suffice it to say that it worked for me, and you'll simply have to experience it for yourself.

In short, Stellar Blade is an incredibly promising start to what I hope will become a long-standing franchise. Its combat is excellent, its story and characters are loveable, and apart from a few mechanical hiccups, the world traversal makes for a very engaging experience. Whether you're a fan of tough, soulslike action games or are just looking for an awesome new game to drop 40+ hours into, definitely give this one a try.

Stellar Blade is a masterpiece that delivers on every front. The DualSense haptic feedback pulls you deeper into every fight, making every clash feel real The music is stunning, setting the tone for an epic adventure, while the combat is fluid, dynamic, and endlessly customizable thanks to a deep skill tree. The gorgeous graphics make every environment and character breathtaking, and the customization options; armor, earrings, glasses add a personal touch to the experience.. With engaging combat, a gripping story, and flawless attention to detail, Stellar Blade is an unforgettable journey and SHIFT UP has done a flawless job.

I just wanna start off this review by saying that the "controversy" over this game and its hot protagonist was completely made up by grifters and was most likely never real in the first place, trust me no one cares if you wanna touch yourself to Eve or not, and please stop acting like this is the first game to have an attractive female character in a while, it's not.

Besides, the fanservice is pretty much non-existent anyway, despite what people would have you believe, the most fanservice we get are skimpy outfits you can unlock and some close-up on Eve's butt before every boss fight and not much else.

But drama aside, I actually quite like this game, because while the story is nothing to write home about, the gameplay is truly what the game excels at, it's extremely fun, and frenetic, if not a little hard even in story mode.

The difficulty definitely spikes after a while which on one end makes defeating bosses more satisfying but on the other hand it's pretty freaking hard, at least for me it is, though as much as they caused me trouble during my playthrough, the bosses all look really cool, I can't lie.

The bosses and the Naytibas in general are very well designed and quite creepy to look at, they're also a pretty big contrast to Eve, who's obviously a very attractive character.

Speaking of which, Eve definitely isn't the most interesting protagonist out there, she's pretty plain in terms of personality but that's not really a problem when she just needs to look cool when she kills the Naytibas, which she does. (And her fascination with soda cans is cute)

But I have to say, Tachy might have been a better protagonist than Eve, she seemed more interesting to me despite not being in the game all that much, and you know what, a 'Stellar Blade' prequel with Tachy as the protagonist would be really cool but who knows if that's actually gonna happen.

If not, I'm happy with just this one, because not only does this game excels at gameplay as I said earlier, but the graphics are really beautiful and so is the soundtrack, it's so good i even listen to it on its own sometimes.

I don't exactly know how replayable it is yet as I haven't touched it since I beat it but this definitely seems like something I'd play again considering how much fun I had.