[blog] churros are fried until they become crunchy, and may be sprinkled with sugar

Sometimes I just want to kill stuff with a lightsaber and this game fulfills that nicely.

The combat is pretty good, but not amazing. The moveset while using the saber is fine and there’s a nice sense of weight. The problem is the hitboxes and animations of the enemies, specifically the non-human enemies. The tells could be better and the feeling of hitting an invisible block is real. But I’m killing them with a laser sword, so it’s still fun.

The game is a souls like, but except for a couple of bosses, it’s not that hard at all if you are used to the genre.

The music is your generic star wars orchestra, which fits the adventure nicely. The game can be pretty at times, but it has that blurry look when you get too close to things.

I like how every planet is a little open world of its own. The thing that I don’t like is that sometimes the traversal is too linear. Many times I wanted to go back after taking some shortcut or going through some passage to realize the only way to go back is to go on a long different route.

While I don’t find the story that enticing, it’s well done. Great voice acting, characters have personality, and the plot is easy to follow.

Result: completed

Rating: 8/10



The sequel is alright. The game runs much smoother now and looks a bit nicer. Enemy variety is better and there’s way more combat options (even a heavy lightsaber!). My favorite is the combination of pistol and lightsaber.

The exploration is also much better know, thankfully you are way more mobile than last time.

The story though, it’s worse. The game changes the focus constantly of what’s going on, it was hard to care about anything.

They tried to make the game a ‘light’ RPG in some sense, with different vendors and currencies, subquests, and by inviting folks to your settlement. I kinda hate it. Every dialogue with npcs at the bar felt like random star wars garbage.

Result: completed

Rating: 8/10

(double post)

The combat in this game is amazing. The controls feel very responsive and the game runs like a dream on PS5. Blocking and parrying has nice feedback and the parry window feels just right (not too hard that is). It’s not your floaty super fast hack slash but it’s not slow and methodical either, it’s a refreshing middle ground. Combat is more about execution than figuring it out what to do.

The game is not open world but it’s ‘open area’, it has vast and beautiful landscapes. A couple of then are very similar, but I love deserts so that’s a plus for me.

The plot is on the nonsensical side of things, mostly an excuse for justifying cyborgs and monsters. There are some obvious biblical references (Adam and Eve for instance) but I can’t say much about it. It didn’t grab me but it didn’t bother me either.

Collecting costumes and accessories is genuinely exciting not only because you can wear them right away but you can see how much care they’ve put into them (lots of small details). Some of them are kind of a bad taste because it oversexualizes Eve, the protagonist (but not all of them, thankfully). There’s a serviceable fishing game too.

The combination of a great combat plus beautiful music and visuals made me go for a second playthrough (got a platinum trophy!). What an impressive first

The combo of great combat plus beautiful music and visuals made me go for a second playthrough going for the platinum trophy. An impressive first foray in the AAA market by the Korean developer Shift Up, which made only mobile games prior to Stellar Blade. Bravo.

Result: completed

Rating: 9/10

Pros:
+ responsive controls
+ beautiful graphics
+ great music
+ runs well on PS5
+ tons of costumes and collectibles

Cons:
- redundant skills
- uneven character models

I’m going to defend this game. It’s a good game. Could maybe be $30 instead of $40, but I got my money’s worth for sure.

There’s a pinch of maybe monster hunter here, a group of people slaying a big monster as the end goal. Maybe a pinch of Fortnite too (!!), you dive into some random place in the map and after sometime the maps start shrinking forcing you to go the middle. A pinch, this game it’s own thing.

There are two main problems with this game. One of them is the reused assets from Elden Ring. I’m not easily bothered by this kind of stuff (at all), but it feels a bit lazy on how much they have reused here.

The other main problem is the lack of stuff to do and unlock. The game is highly replay in a way that is just fun to play, but once you beat the 8 bosses there’s no reward to be earned.

There are other problems as well: no in-game chat (just pings on the map), no balancing for two character (if one teammate leaves you pretty much done), the that items you find can feel too random and useless… but they aren’t that big of a deal at the end of day in my opinion.

I took what felt like a long time to complete (50 hours) mostly because I was playing solely with randoms and that I played a lot of it in the first couple of days of release (everyone was learning the game together). I think with friends and knowing a thing or two beforehand would drastically reduce that time.

Now the good stuff: the new bosses. The new bosses introduced here are simply amazing. I love how gigantic and empty the final arena is. There’s plenty of room for the boss to perform some crazy dashes, aerial attacks, gigantic area attacks, etc. Also, the fact that the arena is empty makes it impossible to ‘cheese’ the fight with the scenario.

The characters and the character ultimate skills are quite nice as well. I played exclusively with the dead eye (archer) and Raider (melee) and had a blast with them, specifically when saving my teammates in some heroic moments that can only happen in games like this.

Result: completed (50h)

Rating: 8/10

Pros:
+ amazing new bosses
+ fun classes
+ costumes
+ great combat
+ great ost
+ fast paced

Cons:
- a single map
- relics are too random
- lacks basic communication options
- balanced only for three players
- bad auto targeting

Screenshots:


What a beautiful sky.


Best hammer ever.


Look at the boss health bar...

The combat in this game is amazing. The controls feel very responsive and the game runs like a dream on PS5. Blocking and parrying has nice feedback and the parry window feels just right (not too hard that is). It’s not your floaty super fast hack slash but it’s not slow and methodical either, it’s a refreshing middle ground. Combat is more about execution than figuring it out what to do.

The game is not open world but it’s ‘open area’, it has vast and beautiful landscapes. A couple of then are very similar, but I love deserts so that’s a plus for me.

The plot is on the nonsensical side of things, mostly an excuse for justifying cyborgs and monsters. There are some obvious biblical references (Adam and Eve for instance) but I can’t say much about it. It didn’t grab me but it didn’t bother me either.

Collecting costumes and accessories is genuinely exciting not only because you can wear them right away but you can see how much care they’ve put into them (lots of small details). Some of them are kind of a bad taste because it oversexualizes Eve, the protagonist (but not all of them, thankfully). There’s a serviceable fishing game too.

The combination of a great combat plus beautiful music and visuals made me go for a second playthrough (got a platinum trophy!). What an impressive first

The combo of great combat plus beautiful music and visuals made me go for a second playthrough going for the platinum trophy. An impressive first foray in the AAA market by the Korean developer Shift Up, which made only mobile games prior to Stellar Blade. Bravo.

Result: completed

Rating: 9/10

Pros:
+ responsive controls
+ beautiful graphics
+ great music
+ runs well on PS5
+ tons of costumes and collectibles

Cons:
- redundant skills
- uneven character models

I've heard some really good things about Stellar Blade. It seems very similar to NieR: Automata which is one of my favorites. I'll probably end up grabbing the PC release at some point, which is supposed to be pretty soon if I'm remembering right. Also I never knew the developer only made mobile games before Stellar Blade, that's quite the leap.

A quick to beat platformer that is sort of a Celeste clone. Took me an hour and a half to beat it, another hour on top of that to beat the third challenging bonus ‘world’.

I could notice a bit of lag on the jump. I think my brain adjusted to it and I was able to play the game just fine, but that’s never amazing.

Other than the platforming, the rest are OK but forgettable (graphics, music, story).

Result: completed (2h 20m)

Rating: 7/10

Pros:
+ easy to pick up and play
+ good level design
+ quick levels

Cons:
- input lag
- forgettable setting
- funky menu navigation