Stellar blade

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.

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.

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.

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.

In a strange reason for refunds, but also opens a conversation up about censorship, Sony refunding Stellar Blade purchases because Shift Up patched the game day 1 to make a couple.of outfits less revealing (they added lace over cleavage and to a micro thong thingy I think). "Fans" have started a petition to have it reversed or added as an option. Claims the gore was reduced, but this may be due to the graphics options (quality having the most gore).

Stretching the term censorship imo. But will also take away from the fact its not a bad game overall.

I hadn't progressed far enough to see anything soo skimpy, then I unlocked level 2 ans 3 with the information broker and saw the cocktail dresses. Doesn't surprise me there's a bikini. The skin suit isn't available from the beginning like it is in the demo.

Exploring the Wastelands and associated quests now. Hope we get something to make movement a bit quicker if most hubs will be like this. Kaya is going on about a bike so hopefully that leads to something.

Just finished up with this, and I have to say that I've enjoyed my time. The story is more or less predictable early on, but it's still enough to keep one going. It's all about the fan service combat really, and the combat is fun. It's a pure action game at heart, and incredible from Shift Up considering this is their first foray into AAA space after a gacha game and some other mobile anime fan service game auto battler. The combat is indeed fun, and there's plenty of it. Souls style respawning, but that's about it for the comparisons at this stage.

The game lets you get powerful, and the minions turn from an annoyance to welcome fodder and practice. Plenty of combat options to work with, comboing different skills into one another and learning new patterns. The killshots and action moments are action-cam orientated like the recent PoP and SF games, and the boss fights are tough but relatively fair. By end game, if you collect everything for it, you can have 8 health packs per checkpoint save, along with up to 2 of 3 different types of consumable healing items, along with grenades, your drone doubling as a gun, 8 special moves which have a second move or combo moves, exospines and gear to change your combat style and parries/dodges with subsequent counters… lots to initially take in but it introduces it all slow but quick enough to keep it interesting. Combat similar to games like Nier Automata, God of War, DmC, etc.

The costumes can't be ignored from a comment standpoint, but they're purely cosmetic so there's no need to change outfits if you don't want to. Most of them are grand, skin tight clothing with some blatantly obvious fan service with attempts to give a reason for a bikini or a literally named "Cybernetic Bondage" outfit. Collecting all cans gives you arguably the least covered, if not for the Skin suit. They are targeting a specific look, and 16 year old me would be a very happy gamer right now. Compared to the borderline smut we got in gaming in the 90s and early 00s, this would have tickled my teenage fancies. In my 40s, shur tis nice to look at. Does indeed remind me of my younger gaming days. Don't think it really needs to be involved in the debate it's involved in though.

Visually, it looks stunning in places but you can see the lack of experience in certain areas. Nothing is terrible, and the character animations during dialogue is spotty but no glitches or bugs noticed during my 37 hours. Effort was obviously put into how Eve and co looked, but there's no world effects happening, ie: water changes absolutely nothing about the appearance, no blood or mud splatters save for a few specific times. The long hair, in Balanced mode, is not the best but again tis grand. Platforming is minimal, which is a good thing as it's the worst part. There's only a few times one needs to be jumping from floating service robot to another, but it took a chunk of my deaths. It's clunky and not very accurate, the lack of experience here is obvious again. Good thing the combat is good. Environments are varied, levels are mainly linear with paths to be opened for easier later navigation, and two open hubs. Each has a different look but mainly all sad and dreary or sandy for one hub. There's fishing, because of course there is. Audio is good, meaty combat sounds and effects. While exploring there's a singing Korean girl with airy music in the background, which intensifies somewhat when fighting. Bosses have their own theme songs, mostly EDM and metal based. Really do add to the fights though. And somewhat gory too.

I've got 2 of the 3 endings, and all trophies aside from 1. All that's left is to play through it again but without doing any side quests in order to get the worst ending. This can be easily achieved by starting NG+ and dropping the difficulty to Story, even though you now have the option of Hard mode if you want. So I think I'm done for now, most likely wait for it to come to PS+ in the future, and do the NG+ playthrough which will result in the Platinum. Aiming for the Plat isn't bad, you don't have to collect everything, just most of everything and most of which you will complete just doing the main story and side quests. A bit of hunting is required for some of the outfits, and some of the camps you may have missed. If you enjoy the game and want the Plat, you won't miss anything anyway and I didn't feel most of the time going.

Overall, I recommend it if you're looking for a good action game that has a serviceable story to keep you going from boss to boss. A solid 7/10 for me. Would be an 8 or even 9 for the combat alone for me, but the platforming deserves to bring it down a notch, again thankfully not too much of it. Don't expect a ground breaking game. It's a popcorn game. And it's a good popcorn game imo.