Came for some cool combat, a serviceable story, and some booty.
Stayed for some cool combat, a serviceable story, and some booty.

I enjoyed Stellar Blade overall, but some major flaws kept me from truly loving it and I'll get into that.
First of all, this is a very visual and gameplay centric game that lacks any real depth or personality. It's kind of like "do judge a game by it's cover."

Graphically this game is just beautiful. 10/10 in that department, it is just a extremely good looking game that has some great performance options as well. The entire time I played, my framerate was consistent and high. (I played on the balanced graphic mode.) No complaints on visual fidelity!

Gameplay wise it has been compared to be souls like and yeah it is very reminiscent of it. The combat loop is mainly very reliant on perfect parries which will take some time to really master but once you do and the combat clicks, it really is fun. Stellar Blade's combat is great for the most part. Satisfying and hard-hitting. However don't forget I did say for the most part. There is no animation cancel and a considerable delay on some inputs so it can become frustrating at times. Also this game was NOT designed with multiple enemy fights in mind. The one-on-one fights are great and have an awesome flow, but when you are fighting against 7 different monsters with different attack patterns hitting you from every side it's just a clunky mess. And that's not because I'm bad at the game, it's just an underdeveloped aspect of the combat that was not thought about enough. The combat's design simply doesn't allow good crowd fighting. And don't get me started on the platforming. Jeez... Yeah it's true, the platforming in this game is garbage. In a nutshell, the combat is fun with minor flaws but is still definitely one of the strongest reasons to play.

I think that boss fights were great and definitely a real challenge at times. However some of the variation between boss fights was a little bit dull and there was even some reused boss fights which we do not like to see. Boss fight bars are also sometimes "inconsistent" (hidden, regenerating, or even just ending the fight midway bars) which I'm not a fan of. Messing with the factual metadata just because is something I don't really like. Speaking of challenge, the difficulty in this game is just strange. I tried both story mode and normal mode and wow even story mode had some ridiculous difficulty spiking that felt a little bit wrong.

Now I wanna talk about a topic midway through the game that really started to eat away at my will to play. This is also just a general problem in the gaming industry. And that is... open world. Yeah Stellar Blade is another open world game and let me tell you it is just not good. This game's open world is the perfect representation of everything wrong with bad open worlds. Desolate. Dull. Boring. Tedious soul-sucking fluff that just exists to exist. I don't know who decided for the two open world zones to both be BARREN DESERT ENVIRONMENTS that serve no purpose other than to complete quests and fight the same old generic randomly scattered enemies. It's just a chore to get through. Getting an open world to be genuinely exciting is hard which is why I love FF7 Rebirth and RDR2 so much. But stellar Blade just does not succeed in any way there.

The music was definitely something that had some great highs and an overall solid lineup. Just like the gameplay though, sometimes it got a little bit repetitive and boring but still a very respectable soundtrack.

Kind of niche thing I want to compliment is the UI. It's simple, responsive, and feels nice to use so I just wanted to talk about that because so many new games just have the most eye searing UI's ever.

Now onto the topics that I probably have the strongest opinions on and that affects my enjoyment of something the most. The core of a videogame. The story, characters, writing, script, narrative, and all that juicy stuff. Remember to when I described Stellar Blade as a very look centric game? Well that should insinuate what I thought about these elements. When I went into this game I was really hoping and relying on the story and characters to be great but unfortunately I was left a little bit disappointed. The story does exist, and it was interesting enough for me to play through the game, but it lacks anything truly captivating or super fresh. It's just fine, nothing incredible but also nothing terrible. Quite (extremely) predictable and strange at times but again this game is mainly focused on the outside of things. And on the topic of the outside of things, of course I need to bring up the giant... voluptuous... elephant in the room. The controversy that got Stellar Blade so infamous in the first place... Eve. I'm talking about the over-sexualization debate regarding her and other characters and what I think about it. What I think is that you can have a sexy, attractive character design. However you cannot ONLY have a sexy, attractive character. The character cannot exist to simply rake in money and stand there pretty. It has to be remembered that the pretty person has a soul, a personality, and agency that has to be properly acknowledged. Or else they are simply just a hot, one-dimensional doll. In order for a sexy protagonist or character to work she needs to have much more depth that simply, "hot girl" with a personality of, "hot girl." There are some great examples of well written women who are also pretty that exist that I think many more mainstream games and movies could learn from. Some examples include Tifa Lockhart (especially Remake series), 2b from Nier: Automata, and Ellie from The Last of Us. These are all characters that are exemplary examples of how you can have a hot character that above all else has meaningful writing and proper agency in the story. Their looks are not what simply defines their character but are just an added bonus, the icing on the fulfilling, developed cake. When evaluating a piece of media and how it handles this topic it's also important to note the setting of the story and how the design fits in. It's also helpful to examine how other characters are handled. One more thing that needs to be considered is to what degree the character is sexualized. You can have an exceptionally well written character with in depth traits, but if they are walking around an intense battlefield with nothing more than a transparent bikini then it kind looks silly doesn't it? A bit of relativity I guess you could say is needed. Now where does Eve from Stellar Blade land in all of this? And to be honest, I really wanted her to be another great example, but I simply can't really say that. Let me say first that the characters in this game are about as interesting as a brick wall. None of them have any charm, hardly have any personality, and just feel bland. The voice acting + dialogue also does not do them any favors. You won't find much joy out of the characterization and script. This is all sadly true with Eve who isn't flat anywhere else except for her personality. This already may bring her character down to just "pretty woman who fights monsters" and that's about it but there are some other aspects I need to address. During the game you collect different outfits for eve and some of them are just, how do I put this lightly, completely tone-deaf and ridiculous to the story. When your strong action RPG protagonist is fighting disgustingly horrific monsters in a "realistic" environment in literal lingerie it feels a little bit strange. There is a difference between a sexy design with taste and elegance in mind, and a sexy design meant to distract you from the actual fight and pander to a certain demographic. Granted, some of the outfits are in the former, but a lot of them are in the latter and to a very weird degree. When you look at Adam's design it just becomes more damning, completely covered bulky baggy clothing. Now if we go back to the relative aspects I was talking about it and compare it with what I described it all really does point to Eve just being plainly over-sexualized with no good excuse. It doesn't make sense for the setting, the other characters aren't similar, and the degree to which it can get is embarrassing. HOWEVER there is one thing I do need to compliment the game on. Aside from some of the outfit options, the game never over-sexualizes Eve as a character. There are no tropey situations she's put in or perverted lingering shots of her. (There are battle cutscenes in which you may get an upskirt but it's not terribly offensive.) The point I'm trying to make is that the tone that this game tries to set and it's complimenting character does not mix. I like the premise, theme, setting, and gameplay, but none of how Eve is portrayed is believable. She lacks any real depth and instead is marketed as, "strong and pretty." And it just seems to clash with what the rest of the game is trying to set.

In the end, I think that the amount of drama that was created from this one game for one minor part of it was completely unwarranted and shouldn't have to be such a problem. I personally think that the characters could have been fleshed out more and maybe toned down some of the outfits to a more realistic and believable standard but that's just me. At the end of the day this is not a children's game, and it's the developers choice on how they want to make the game. These are just my thoughts and how I think that over-sexualization should be addressed and how I think good writing matters above all else.

All in all, Stellar Blade is a fun gameplay and graphical experience with a good soundtrack that will leave you longing for a little bit more of an impressive story. I highly recommend playing Nier: Automata if you want something more impactful.