Stellar Blade

This game wouldn't have survived in a release window with stronger competition. As it stands, it's a passable button masher with triple A graphics, tacky design and a ridiculous script.

Our protagonist, a comically modeled schoolgirl dressed like an early elimination from an episode of Drag Race (complete with heels, black lace choker and thirty six inches of virgin remy) rushes about like Danté or Bayonetta hacking up generic Whatevers, while disposable music takes you out of whatever moment the devs were going for.

The script and voice acting vacillate between WAY over the top, and bizarrely calm. It breaks the connection to the character and I'm left feeling that what I'm doing with my controller has nothing to do with what's unfolding on the screen. I don't like the latest iteration of the Tomb Raider series, but character and plot development is something those games do very well: Stellar Blade fails on this front.

Which would be fine if there was some blistering gameplay to sink my teeth into!

Nope. Bash bash bash. Done. And, as one other reviewer pointed out, character movement feels funny - it's stilted and lacks flow.

Stellar Blade isn't the worst PS5 title I own - far from it! - you might get some enjoyment from the campaign mode if you're nursing a hangover, and need something undemanding and basic. But for a full price release, I expect far better than that.

Stellar Blade has been the center of various discussions and drama due to the design of the ladies in the game. I like the visual design of Eve and the various other ladies met throughout the game. I enjoy looking at pretty women whether they're real or fictional and most other men will as well.

Making the main characters attractive and appealing won't carry the game on its own though. Stellar Blad however has enough other qualities that made me want to finish it even though I had to take considerable breaks from time to time as something either bored or annoyed me.

The combat is very action oriented and provides a lot of options on how you can deal with enemies. You have basic attacks and combos and then various types of special attacks and their combinations. Memorizing all of it will be tricky to put it mildly. Most players will probably pick their preferred combination of attacks and specials and stick with that. My short description of the combat in Stellar Blade would be that it's combination of Nier and soulslike games on steroids as it is very fast paced and requires a lot of active fighting as well as reactive defending with blocks and dodging.

The enemies and bosses are mostly fair fights and will require you to use your various abilities. Quite a few enemies have learning curves as well as you can easily go down if you do not pay attention to what they're doing.

Among the bosses there are a few that are extremely challenging. Especially towards the end the last few main bosses took my quite a few attempts to defeat and I only managed it by using "cheese" tactics as fighting them normally often ended up with Eve being defeated in one or two hits. This can be pretty frustrating. There are a variety of attacks the bosses have where some of them require very specific actions to avoid them and if you do not use those actions then you will end up restarting the fight.

Also there are some situation in the game that are just outright unfair und frustrating. There's one spot in the game where you have 5 automated turrets firing constantly into your direction in sequential order where your window of opportunity to do something and getting to the next cover is like 2-4 seconds. If you don't act quickly enough you will go down and have to restart the entire section again. Getting hit also doesn't make you immune. So if the first or second turret hits and stuns Eve she can eat another hit right away causing her to die. Also the cover positions may not protect your character entirely if the turret gets a lucky shot. So you can get hit while being behind the cover.

Anyway the environments overall are okay and the map design is good. There are linear and open world sections in the game. The open world sections could've used more variety though as there are only two of them and one is a rocky wasteland with sand while the other is a sandy desert with some rocks. So in the open world sections you will mostly see yellow-brownish color pallets which got boring to me by the time I entered the second open world area.

The linear sections of the game are overall better and more enjoyable. You have some side paths to explore where you're usually rewarded with equipment, general items or some kind of world building text note.

The progression of the skills and equipment are overall pretty good. You can feel Eve slowly but consistently getting stronger throughout the campaign.

The music is good but repetitive in some areas. Each area has it's own theme but if you're running around in them for a few hours you will notice that it's always that one same track and it can get on your nerves. There are also at least 1-2 memorable musical pieces during boss fights.

The cut scenes are well done and the voice actor performances are decent. The facial movements when the main characters are talking also seem to be on point for the most part. The side characters on the other hand are lacking when it comes down to their design and lip syncing. You see basic movement of the mouths (if they have normal mouths) but it is minimal effort and doesn't fit what they're saying.

My biggest gripe regarding Stellar Blade is the story. The way the story is told is pretty good. The cut scenes are not overly long and you have a lot of sections where story bits are told while you're walking/running or fighting. So the game doesn't take the control constantly away from me like some other games are doing. There is quite a bit of text telling background information as well though. Most of the documents you find in the game are pretty short reads. So it's not to bad.

What is somewhat bad is what kind of story the game is trying to tell as it's pretty bland, predictable and full of (plot) holes. The way the characters are written also doesn't really make me care about them. Although I like Eve's design she lacks a personality. If you look at the story one could see this is as intentional to make her appear somewhat naive to what is happening. But throughout the game we're lacking a lot of background information about our own character. So one can often just guess how for example Eve came to be in the first place. And even though filling in the blanks yourself can be interesting and leaves room for interpretation it still doesn't make her character more sympathetic. She just seems to be a standard "good" character going along with what most people tell her. The other characters also have problems and the game tries to keep a lot of story aspects cryptic. Also the ending is a bit "meh".

With all being said Stellar Blade was a fun game which in my opinion dragged on a bit to much towards the end. It's fine for one playthrough. I'm not sure however if or when I will ever pick it up again for another run.

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.

Stellar Blade is an amazing game that blends stunning graphics and flawless performance to create a visual masterpiece. The soundtrack is breathtaking due to Okabe (did Nier soundtrack), making every moment have emotional depth. Fans of Nier: Automata will find a similar fusion of philosophical storytelling and stylish gameplay, while the precise parry system takes cues from Sekiro, offering satisfying challenges. The combat is exhilarating, blending hack-and-slash fluidity with tactical depth. Combined with its compelling narrative and immersive world, Stellar Blade is a total must play for action RPG enthusiasts.

Even on story mode it's inanely difficult to move across terrain, let alone fight. Has anyone there in Korea played Tomb Raider? Similar mechanics but I could actually finish Tomb raider. How is this designed for play station when every inch you move there's a controller related hazard? Combat is ridiculous. I don't know afar the attraction to perfect dodge and perfect party are but doing things at the last possible fraction of a second makes for a repetitive bore. That's not perfect. It's stupid. The graphics look great but this game is simply not sun. I'm not going to die 1000's of times just to progress. An epic failure with pretty visuals.