Stellar Blade (PS5)

[hudson]

Stellar Blade is a hackey sack (hack and slash) game based in California (Earth). If you juggle just right you can hit the passing seagull.

Ahem, I've barely scratched the surface of this, but I can tell from the combat, exploration (you'll need to be smart and sniff every pixel to find those special exospines), big ol skill tree and of course, the combat (so good he say it twice!).

The combat has that rhythmic feel to it. It can feel tough at first, but once you understand the enemy, you have you combos down, your parrying and knowing when to dodge etc, you start to look like that graceful warrior who came to conquer all the costumes.... I mean kill all the baddies.

This is a game I need right now. Something I can dip into without too much thinking going on

[hudson]

Oh and does anyone think the pick up item sound effect is reminiscent of Nights Into Dreams when you fly through gates?

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[hudson]

I've been playing this all day. I can't put it down.

The game has opened up a bit. There's a section that's a bit of an open world where you can do your side quests and stuff. Nothing amazingly in depth, but I am just mopping it all up in the name of combat. Levelling up my exospines (these are mods to your spine. You can have two, but I only have room for one unlocked - these range from tanky builds, extra dmg for combos, crit based build and stealth. I think there's over 10 to collect), gear (similar to previous, you can have upto four slots for these buffs - things like plus percent dmg, shield, attack speed etc and thse can be levelled up), skill points and crafting of new costumes, drone costumes and buffs. There's quite a bit of upgrading! Oh yeah and one really cool thing about the skill trees is that the game allows you to enter training mode for any skill - to practice it, see if you think if it's worth buying.
Graphically the game reminds me of Final Fantasy VII Remake in that on close inspection, the textures ain't all that, but they're serviceable.
Great art style and enemy design is really good.

Combat though, it's so cool. I especially like 2 skills call Blink and Repulse which you use for 2 different situations. First one is when then the enemy is about to do a fatal attack (they say fatal, but I've not been one shot by these attacks), there's some blue (magenta if you need to Repulse) flashy indicators on screen. The first time you see it, it's to let you know to get ready for the window of opportunity, then a blue cross will 'shing!', that's you window to input. Things like this just make you feel bad ass. The Repulse specifically, puts the enemy in a downed state a little distance away from you and the game highlights a weak spot. If you've unlocked it, here you can pull out your gun and blast away at the weak spot. So cool.

I wouldn't say this is too hard so far. I've played for 9 hours, beat 1

->Open Spoiler<-

of 6 alpha bosses

, plus I have been sniffing very pixel of land for pick ups.

If you like Ninja Gaiden (but I think it's not as difficult), FFVII Remake, Sekiro, just a good action RPG, then I highly recommend Stellar Blade.

[Lebowski]

I've got out of the first city and pretty much done the entire of the first open world area, and am about ten hours in, theirs so much to the world and so many secrets and stuff to find its a real treat to explore. It's a pretty fleshed out world, and so far I'm enjoying the exploration as much as the combat. The rhythm to the combat is excellent, I'd say it feels more Devil May Cry than the weighty combat of souls, parrying and dodging windows are quite generous and make you feel like a real badass. It has a story mode too which dials down the difficulty as well as a screen prompts setting to get you used to the timing of dodged and parrys, so it's pretty user-friendly and a lot easier to get used to than many other games in this genre.

I've also unlocked a few of the more, Risqué Costumes including the bunny girl outfit, but I felt like this was a step too far so went back to the black planet diver costume as I felt like some sort of deviant playing with that much skin on show, and it made all the cut scenes feel very out of place and not really in keeping with the rest of the game

[Lebowski]

No one else playing this?

Did a super cool area last night

->Open Spoiler<-

got into a Secret Lab area last night, when you go in your sword gets disabled, turning this into a survival horror style game where the only weapon you can use is your limited ammo drone gun, lots of jump scares and some really cool new enemies It's like they put a futuristic Resident Evil level in their sci-fi slasher

Loving how polished and inventive this game is you think you know what's going on and the rhythm of the game, and it throws you a curveball GOTY for me and it's only April

unlocked a load of new outfits again last night which is quite refreshing as usually this sort of stuff is a £20 per skin dlc.

[hudson]

I think this will be slept on. I must admit when I saw this in a State of Play way back as Project EVE, I wasn't really interested. Same when I saw Helldivers 2.

It took a few people on the internet whose views of games I look out for (I know - shallow aren't I?), to get me interested. Helldivers 2 ended up making me look like a fool inside Another great.

But daaaaaaamn, this game is brilliant. I've since picked up Nier Automata. A similar game I've slept on also. I can't wait to get home and carry on playing it!

[Asura]

No one else playing this?

I am! Really enjoying it. First PS5 game I've bought, as it came out around the same time I got a PS5.

[hudson]

"finished" it this evening. A lovely treat of a game. My GOTY so far (was DD2).

[Lebowski]

I'm getting there now, you get a bit of a natural break where it warns you that leaving Xion means you can't come back, so I finished up all the side quests and fishing quests before pushing on. I'm thinking of new game plus to get all the cans, I may need to consult a guide for this as I have big gaps in my collection. It's nice to be carrying on with the story though as I feel like I've combed every area of the great desert and the wasteland and gone back to the story mission areas a fair bit too, It's got some fantastic level design how it hides secret areas and shows you them making you back track and puzzle your way into them is superb.

If there is one weak point to the game I'd say it's the platforming, it never asks too much from you and is happy to put you right back where you are if you fall, but it's very imprecise and goes for style over practicality. there seems to be a bug where it sometimes goes straight into your second jump too, which can be pretty annoying. thankfully, climbing and General traversal is solid and pretty fun, it just feels like the jumping parts could have done with a little more refinement.

[Neon Ignition]

I've finally started to settle into a groove with this, I'm not bothered with the can collecting or fishing but I do find myself doing all the scouring and side objectives even if I'm not entirely sure why as it feels like a relatively straightforward playthrough would be fine, it just has the right balance between pulling you to venture without it feeling chore like. I'm only now at the end of the Wastelands at around 8 hours in apparently so still a very long way to go.

[hudson]

Doing side quests helps build your character much more quickly. Inturn, making later battles a bit more forgiving. You also get to see more of the maps. Might find a lovely frock along the way. The side quests are actually decent.

In the end, I enjoyed the open worlds so much that I wanted to see all for corners of them.

[Neon Ignition]

I feel I'm keeping pace with the enemies so I'm not sure how dependent the levelling up is on the side stuff, not that it matters as it's more fun than I'd expected it to be. I probably have around 10 outfits unlocked so far though the OG remains the best.

[Golgo]

Might find a lovely frock along the way.

[Lebowski]

Hey dont diss the frocks, It's pretty refreshing not to see them sold in a "skin store" for £20 a pop.

Did I deplete the seas of the last remaining fish for a lovely frock / Bathing suit? why yes I did, and I'd do it again.

New boss rush mode with preset builds, and a super hard mode has been added.

https://blog.playstation.com/2024/05/23/stellar-blade-adds-new-boss-challenge-mode-on-may-24/

Not mentioned in the patch notes above is that they have also added some skimpy summer outfits, (as well as skins mentioned), they know their demographic.

[hudson]

I feel I'm keeping pace with the enemies so I'm not sure how dependent the levelling up is on the side stuff, not that it matters as it's more fun than I'd expected it to be. I probably have around 10 outfits unlocked so far though the OG remains the best.

My ultimate fave frock was the one from the box art.