Stellar Blade

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.

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.

Simply it's perfect, everything in this game is amazing, the combat the world the exploration are amazing. It's wears seeing ign rating this game a 7, and I don't like this game because it's se*y, honestly it's the only thing I hate in this game.

I really hope that this game get the goty I know it might be impossible but I think that it kinda deserve it if there will not be other games that are smas good as this game.

The reason why I love this game because it reminds me of nier automata and devil may cray and sekiro.

And for me I think that it deserve a 10 out of 10. And if you didn't buy this game I really suggest this game to you if you like action rpg games.

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.