Stellar blade has a lot to love in it. Tons of outfit customization (over 30 outfits not including glasses and earrings) , enjoyable combat system, great music and quite a few interesting side quests (some directly resulting in unlocking entirely new areas). The game gets held back by having a mediocre main cast, average story, a lack of enemy variety and clunky platforming.

Combat in Stellar blade feels very satisfying to pull off. This game's strengths are very similar to a souls games in which one on one feels amazing, and getting swarmed feels god awful. Thankfully you unlock AOE special attacks later on that remove some of the annoyance, it still can feel bad. I found some of the enemy types to be a bit too spongey/annoying to deal with (fuck the shield armed natiyba), and that there weren’t nearly enough variants to fight. You’ll encounter the same few enemies (especially in the big open world maps) over and over to the point where I began to avoid combat (this games biggest strength).

The bosses, while being the highlight of the game, felt far too easy. This is especially confusing when paired with how sudden the difficulty spikes for the last three bosses of the game. If it had stayed as easy the whole time I wouldn’t have brought this up but seeing how hard the fights get (compared to the rest of the game) I wonder why there wasn't a more gradual increase in challenge. Regardless, the one on one fights really showcase how satisfying it is to parry several attacks in a row or responding correctly to dodge an attack. I’m aware they added a boss rush mode which I will definitely check out once I’ve had some time away from the game.

The other main thing I appreciated in this game was its side content. While some are exactly what you'd expect from an RPG, others lead you to unlock surprisingly large areas, or take you into some unexpectedly heavy subject matter. I'm being vague due to not wanting to spoil but there's a few side quests in there that really caught me off guard. This game also has a fishing minigame that uses the PS5 triggers resistance to impede you in reeling in the fish that proved enjoyable enough that I caught every last one of them.

The only aspect of this game I would label as downright bad was platforming. While functional, it never feels good to interface with. Many times upon double jumping EVE would just randomly turn a different direction and cause me to fall. Sometimes when doing the drone jumping challenges she would not grab onto them and fall to her death. I never felt completely in control of what I was doing once I had decided to jump and this caused most of my deaths in my playthrough. While not unplayable, it felt jarringly worse then every other part of the game and were the only parts of the game I disliked playing.

Overall I really enjoyed this game, I collected every can, did every side quest, unlocked all the skills and camps, but the cast and story did not engage me very much. In a few months I'll probably forget most of what happened in this game. Easily an above average game, and if you have lots of disposable income and it interests you, you'll probably have a good time.