Stellar blade

brady12

Just finished the demo . Felt like a souls like bayonetta . Really liked it . Dropped it down to story mode and even that isn't easy . Think I will buying it day one but will wait for reviews to be sure .

J. Marston

Played the demo too, it feels very good to play but it feels a bit soulless too. That probably sounds pretentious but it has the sexy main character, drone companion, post-apocalyptic Earth, sword combo stuff that ticks Nier: Automata's checklist and it has Souls' rest at camp stuff too. It just feels like one of those very polished Chinese knock-offs.

It's very anime too so I wasn't expecting much from the dialogue but I swear it could be AI.

brady12

Will be wait for reviews for me

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121958679#Comment_121958679

Reviews coming in as mostly positive; sitting at 83 on OpenCritic. Hadn't really interested me but decided to pick it up. Will start tearing into it tonight.

brady12

I would have probably bought it but I started Astral chain last week and I'm really liking plus I dropped back into BG3 too.

Penn

Played a short burst of it there. Seems decent enough, will take a bit of getting used to the combat.

But what I hate so far is that it's raining. And they have raindrops constantly hitting the screen and distorting things. I f*cking hate sh*t like that, especially in third person perspective. It's incredibly distracting and makes no sense.

CastorTroy

No option in the menu to turn the rain camera effect off? I know I've seen it in other games.

Played the demo and liked it so will pick it up at some point.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122067909#Comment_122067909

Not that I saw anyway. Turned off all the usual motion blur and film grain nonsense but didn't see an option for that. I presume it won't be raining enough to warrant it.

It's just always a stupid thing to go to the trouble of including. That and lens flare.

Potential-Monke

I'm kinda enjoying this. I started again rather than use my demo save, so I've only just finished the first Aplha. I can see why some people may refer to it as a Soulslike, it has the saving at camps and enemies respawn, and the combat is focused on parrying with the commit hits. But, I don't think it is like them. Firstly, the save locations are plenty and usually right before the bigger bosses, and the maps are made well enough that you don't need to repeat areas as you save. So far anyway. And the combat is a lot more forgiving, I haven't given up in frustration yet and have beaten the first major boss after only 4 go's. I'd imagine Souls fans would call this too easy (on standard difficulty, hard looks locked behind finishing the game). There's also a story mode for people who want less of a challenge, which is nice. It also has skills to make parrying and dodging easier.

Gameplay is smooth, mostly 2 button combos with special moves to extend or set them up. Plenty skills to choose from and an affordable shop option to reset them at any time. The story is... serviceable. Aliens invaded and destroyed earth, you're a space baby specifically designed to hunt out and destroy them but most get killed on approach, and you meet a random human who helps. It's a but cheesy, but not DmC bad. It's just about enough to keep you pushing forward, but the voice acting is sub par. The characters are well sexualised, and the second team NPC is, well, questionable, but it is an Asian game. Lip sync is in English though.

Playing on Balanced mode, upscaled 2K at 60fps, and it's fairly smooth, don't notice many drops even in hectic situations. Looks really well in some places. I'd call it closer to Nier Automata. Some people say Bayonetta, but I've never played that. I'll stick with it for another while anyway.