2/5 ★ – SilverScroll's review of Stellar Blade.

DNF: dropped at the start of the mission orcal's testimony 60% of the way through the game. I'm gonna try and be as unbiased as possible here but straight from the top I'm gonna say that I did not like this in the slightest. Stellar Blade, to me, is a game that lacks a soul due to how much inspiration it takes from Nier Automata, the story, world, music, everything that makes a game great instead of good is unable to stand on its own two feet and have a sense of self because of how much of the nier vibe this is giving off. I think It's important to review games in a vacuum, discussing other games later on to provide context and the like, but when so much of your game takes inspiration from something it's impossible not to bring it up in the first paragraph. This is a well made videogame, it's mechanics and core gameplay systems are, for the most part, excellent and noone can argue in good faith that it's poorly made or objectively 'bad'. Combat is good, with a light and heavy attack, parry button and two sets of special abilities, both of which have its own separate energy bar. The boss fights are the highlight for me, they're all high octane and difficult if you don't pay attention and truly help the combat systems shine. If shift up could have modeled the combat system around its parries for a sekiro like experience then it would have been even better, because upgrade trees consist of combo extensions and stat boosts that aren't fun or (in the case of stat boosts, for example more beta energy when parrying) rewarding to unlock and you don't necessarily feel more powerful for unlocking them. Fights against multiple enemies also sucks, and it feels like the combat wasn't built with quantity in mind. Stellar Blade's level design is also quite good, it could be described as souls like due to its use of checkpoints and rest areas but this is one of the few areas where the game feels unique and it feels like its doing its own thing. The game also has two big open world explorable areas that act as side quest hubs in which you can run around and explore and while these side quests don't necessarily have a strong narrative grip, they feel rewarding to do and complete, so I did most of them anyway. This is also a good looking game that runs excellently, with no major performance issues in my 17 hours with the game. Music is also pretty good, with nier composer Keiichi Okabe coming in to help with some of it and yeah you can tell, it's pretty nier I'm not gonna lie. I will stress that I have not completed the game, as said at the top I dropped it about 60% of the way through because I was not liking it, so it could get better, nevertheless, Stellar Blade's story is absolutely awful, a paper thin plot filled with even more paper thin characters, with dumpster level world building and twists and turns that are so obvious you'll see them coming about 10 hours before they happen. Eve has garnered alot of attention for quite obvious reasons but she is a terrible protagonist and it feels like about 99% of her character is sex appeal, she helps people for seemingly no reason and has absolutely no emotion to speak of. The other main character, Adam is an even bigger offender of this, he's just SO. FUCKING. BORING. He has nothing interesting to say, no meaningful lessons to teach eve about how to be human (which I think is the message this game tries to give) and no defining personality traits, he's just a dude with a ship and a drone. If I say that a plank of wood has more character than both Adam and Eve it would be an insult to the plank, and for a game that reveres Nier Automata so much it missed one of the things that made it so special: emotion. I have to dedicate a paragraph for this because so much of what Stellar Blade is lies at the feet of Nier Automata, to the point where it struggles to be its own videogame if you've played it. Everything that Stellar Blade models after Nier is ten times better IN Nier that it is here, which isn't a problem normally but when so much of your game is based around another it becomes impossible to not directly compare the two and its honestly a shame, because the in the few times that Stellar Blade is truly it's own video game, it's quite good. I never like leaving games unfinished but I had to make an exception here, because I really didn't like this one at all. Stellar Blade is a game that takes so much inspiration from Nier Automata that it lacks a soul, the characters are horrendously thin with an unlikeable protagonist that exists purely for sex appeal, the story is not interesting in the slightest, with predicable plot twists that never grab the players attention and worldbuilding that is so uninteresting it hurts. Stellar Blade is a good game with solid combat and great mechanics held back by its weak narrative and reverence of Nier Automata.