This week on Fully Ramblomatic, Yahtzee reviewed Stellar Blade. Support us on Patreon: / secondwindgroup Second Wind Merch Store: sharkrobot.com/collections/se...
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I thought it was "Anime girls operating heavy military hardware vs. Giant monsters that are a byproduct and/or representation of the darkest excesses of the human intellect"
Just so you know, most men wouldn't prefer being a hot woman. I mean, maybe as a joke for 5 minutes, but their ideal body would still be male. If you have thought like this as a man, chances are you aren't a man at all, but a trans woman. I'd advise you to check it out, you'll be surprised by how good modern medicine is at making you into a hot girl with a big bum.
@@dubstepbeecorsi6892 honestly just from looking at a few clips you can tell it is Temu Nier. Everything from the music to the flashy action to the character design screams Nier, just with maybe half the depth, if we're being generous.
"It's not like the Bayonetta thing where the flamboyant personality of the protagonist is expressed through the medium of large bottom gyrations." Okay, that is sheer genius.
I mean, to be honest, as far as the shit-flinging about this game, this is what people kept bringing up about Bayo and Hades. I don't know if it justified any humongous moral high-ground, but there really is a difference at least.
I wish more games would approach sex appeal in regards to character design in the same way Bayonetta did instead of doing the anime thing of sticking a 12 y/o in a metal bikini
I dunno if there really needs to be a moral high ground even, if we assume sexy bodies depicted in games are morally neutral. It boils down to the difference between "fun and funny, tells me something about them" and "that sure is a body you have there". Which is more a judgement of storytelling quality.
@@torreykat I think that that was pretty much the point Yahtzee was making. Both Bayonetta and Stellar Blade have protagonists that are eye candy, its just that in one case (Bayonetta) the creators put in the effort to also make their character original and stand out, both visually and in terms of personality. Even people who have never played Bayonetta (like myself) instantly recognize her. Stellar Blade's heroine is just Anime Cut-Out Girl Serial No. 37609.
@@FredCDobbs-rd5wi One thing a friend of me recently reminded me of though is that Bayo absolutely got a TON of pushback at the time of its release about her seuxalization. And I almost kind of forgot about that give how people kind of embrace her nowadays.
For those that don't know, Stellar Blade is made by a company that makes gacha games, namely Nikke: Goddesses of Victory. In that game the titular Nikkes are girls shoved into advanced robot bodies and sent to fight an alien threat. Hmm
I'm distressed to see that the nascent Korean games industry appears to have no better idea than "imitate Japanese games but with less coherence." And "microtransactions."
I felt like I was going insane when before release no one was talking about how nikke was already a (heavily) discounted nier in terms of story. Stellar blade just straight up ran it back, assumingly because all the devs were too busy designing her 100 finely detailed costumes.
@@OccasionalGoof Just because those are different people doesn't mean they don't have things in common. Like republicans not talking about what their pastors are up to and anime nerds insisting that the fact she's 1000 years old in the lore is really significant and absolutely doesn't cover any moral issues whatsoever.
Yahtzee makes a good point about “wearing” an improbably sexy body. Reminds me of that one post about cyberpunk creating killer hips and pouty lips, where the two cyberpunk genders are “sex: yes” and “tank.” You either make yourself impossibly sexy, perhaps even to a genuinely surreal degree, or you bolt Dr. Octopus tentacles to yer back and go full adeptus mechanicus.
You know what one of my favorite games of the 7th generation was...Lollipop Chainsaw. Not because it's some grand world changing masterpiece or anything but because it is to me the quintisential example of how to properly do theming and stylization of your videogame. Not one...not even for a second...there's not even an attempt for Lollipop Chainsaw to take itself even remotely seriously. In the slightest and why is that? Because the protagonist is a chainsaw weilding blonde bimbo cheerleader with the literral head of her former boyfriend hanging from a holster close to her ass. And it works. It works flawlessly. The protagonist looks ridiculous because the entire game is fucking ridiculous. In contrast, while Eve is very much attractive and some of her outfits are downright sublime, i just couldn't help but be utterly distracted by just how fundamentally different she looked in comparisson to literally everyone else in Stellar Blade, even the other sexualized female characters. It would be the equivalent of the Doom Marine being the protagonist in Pikmin. What's more, the tone of Stellar Blade is actually rather somber and serious, meanwhile you have eve strutting around like an Amsterdam stripper while all this suffering is around her...like the two styles just don't connect to each other TLDR: Stellar Blade doesn't have the balls to be actually sexy
Well said they could take a page from Nier Automata in making a sexualized main character and actually make her look and fit right in with the game's serious tone. This one just looks like one of those fake korean mobile games that rips off from established titles
@@shawklan27 Nier is really clever in this regard, weaving sex and violence together. The game almost equates them; not to spoil anything, but it very cleverly censors a key phrase so that you think it's sexual, but it is very violent.
I mean, she looks different because she’s an assault android and most of the other npcs are just regular people. It fits just fine. By your logic 2B doesnt fit because she’s a human looking android but is surrounded by a bunch of old basic looking robots. Also, how does Eve dressing sexy in a somber world not fit but 2B doing the exact same thing does? Lol. If anything Eve’s base outfit looks more fitting as a futuristic body suit for a combat android compared to 2B’s base outfit being a frilly dress.
It was kind of expected given the company behind the game is also in hot water for advertising borderline pornographic content to children on youtube, frequently, so they dont exactly have the best track record.
I think the devs appropriately made the game not require too much brain power, as many players will likely be experiencing reduced blood flow to their brain
try playing the game with "no damage & no heal" challenge, then you'll apreciate it But yeah, design, theme & art direction is kinda messy, some good or bad Eve could have better face for example
I know, right? I've been trying to figure this out the whole time. Specifically, I just wanted to know the game structure: Is it standard hack and slash game linear hallways only, or open exploration, or what? That's a more subtle aspect of the game that brief combat clips simply don't answer, and nobody seems to discuss stuff like that in the coverage at all. I ask because I like hack and slash combat, but HATE the linear, forward only hallways world design that style of combat is always, always paired with. So if we finally got a hack and slash game with a more open and exploration-friendly world design, I'm far more interested. If this is another Metal Gear Rising Revengeance situation, for example, where really good combat is ruined by being set in a short and linear roller coaster ride game structure, then I'm in no hurry at all. It's impossible for Eve to be sexy enough to make up for how done I am with ghost train ride, practically on rails game structure.
@@Alloveck it has a generous open world environment with some linear segments where the plot progresses. Very similar to Nier Automata if you played that
I'm just happy to see more Korean studios developing something that isn't a mobile game. Lies of P started the trend, Stellar Blade is continuing it, and I can't wait to see more.
Between grindfest MMOs, Bayonetta with brain damage and "Bloodborne with Timothee Chalamet", the Korean game industry really isn't making me yearn for more, lol.
@@_furydance8890 Eventually. They made Library of Ruina after Lobotomy, and it was just re-released on Switch. But, more to the point, Limbus is barely a gacha in that you can (and should) just grind for everything like in conventional free-to-play games. It'd be fairer to ding them for perpetuating the Korean grind-a-thon game design philosophy
Oh, that's adorable, you two pretending to be shocked anya wasn't getting r34'd literal minutes after her conception. I remember seeing youtube shorts showing her off for how 'cute' she was, and that was it.. If you see an anime girl of any age getting flaunted around in youtube shorts or tiktoks or whatever, that's the big red flag nobody wants to talk about.
If you think underage girls in fiction getting sexualized is unnerving then I have some bad news about basically every female character ever... *_Especially_* anime ones...
Something I realized playing the Demo for Stellar Blade is that 10 years ago it would be a comfy cult classic type of game. Not regarded as outstanding but charming in its combination of earnestness, goofy fan service, and some unique design choices. I also realized that 10 years ago Eve's commander would have been the main character, the elite soldier who survived when all the standard soldiers died. I think I would have liked that better, Eve is written as the naive/pure rookie of her squad, but is also basically a robot who doesn't understand why people would want things like books. With the commander it feels like her character would be intentionally juxtaposing how serious-minded/no-nonsense she is with the inherit goofiness of having her fight flying squids while dressed as a bunnygirl.
I haven't played Bullet Witch which may be loosely comparable for that time period but I think we'd still have her as the lead and that this game has missteps which make it difficult to place in an decade as a AAA game. Devil May Cry and Bayonetta in the 00s. Most of PlatinumGames catalogue in the 2010s... I won't cut it slack but it feels like a first AAA console game as it effectively is. Loosely grabbing from a lot of influences with only so much cohesion.
I've just realized something: your description of what could have been sounds like what would happen if they went and turned NIKKE into a hack and slash, and somehow, what Yahtzee describes sounds also like NIKKE turned into a hack and slash, but without the player as the commander in game.
She doesn’t understand why people would want books because this is her first time being on earth and where she comes from books don’t exist because technology has advanced to everything just being data. Its not because she’s “a robot”.
if it was made 10 years ago it would have been forgotten besides maybe for a couple dozen people that would remember it fondly. and Josh Strife probably would make a video about it in the "was it good?" series, getting to a conclusion that it had really good gameplay for the time but overal didn't have much to offer. ok... maybe 15 years ago, 10 years ago is too early.
Bloodborne released almost 10 years ago and feels more complete, Stellar Blade reminds me a lot of the PS3/360 era hack n 'slashes like Darksiders, Ninja Gaiden's, DmC and such, missed potentials and all
I wasn’t disappointed. This game was being made by the Nikke guys so I knew exactly what the focus was going to be. Hell I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets retconned into the Nikke universe.
@@zigslotheon yes but with south Korean gender politics where young men are constantly shit on by the older people incharge and women arnt treated like humans
Look, I loved Lies of P as much as the next fella, so I think we can all agree that game would've been drastically less fun if it hadn't let us dress up our pretty anime boy in the silliest little outfits possible.
I think it'd be *slightly* less enjoyable without the costumes. Rest of the game pretty much holds up, so long as you don't look too hard at the details of the storyline and setting.
I don't recall ever messing with any costume options, but the look of the thing certainly mattered. It would have been much poorer with the same mechanics but without the grotesque contrast of your porcelain twink squaring up against a finger puppet of a bishop growing like a scorpion tail from sort of a bipedal frog monster.
You know you can do "To Catch a Predator" stuff without involving real children right? You can use adult pretending to be children, if anything is kinda fuck up to use real children as bait
This is definitely why Bayonetta succeeded where others didn’t, she knew she was hot and played off of that, having the character be hot without them knowing makes it out of place.
It also helps the fact that the entirety of Bayonetta, even in its most serious moments, is campy as shit. It rarely if ever takes itself seriously so Bayonetta's over the top sexualised presentation fits in the world. Meanwhile Stellar Blade is a really serious game about an apocalyptic scenario and Eve is walking around like she's on Dragrace. The styles clash significantly
This is also why those 20 million nude mods for the Sims never landed with me. It's no fun if the girl you've just put photorealistic-for-2011 nipples onto and given a properly-animated place to "Try for Baby" isn't self-conscious about it if you're making her walk around the overworld like that.
Bayo's personality is a huge selling point, it is over the top. Where god of war(og) is over the top mad, DMC is over the top edge, bayo is over the top sexuality. Most of what she says is an innuendo, and its amazing. It knows what it is and embraces the batshit craziness in strides. Also helps that it really is a great game mechanically. As a big fan of the combo based character action genre, which is certainly a pretty starved genre for new titles, bayo is a great game even removing all personality from it. It plays incredibly clean, combos are branching and flow together, there is a good pool of enemies and weapon types to make it diverse enough without being a game focused on builds. Bayo wouldnt be what it is without its characters, bayo enzo and rodin have such a fun dynamic, but i still think itd be regarded as a great game in the genre on its mechanical merits.
I mean tbf. If everyone else is fucking hot, it would kinda be 'business as usual' after awhile. Kind of a 'If everyone is Super, no one is' situation.
At least it finally has a resolution of: A) being generic hack n slash B) Copycatted Nier: Automata's homework, barely scraping by with a passing grade C) We have Nier: Tis say of thee at home A game based on another concept can only get by for so long. Even with plenty of reviews. If it lacks identity, or even comes up in recommended games years later. It's pretty much a fart in the wind. Majority of the time, it's usually Nier: Tomato that is usually the recommended nutritional supplement. Because it has that bizarre idea, and its audience even though divided on wtf it was about (myself included) Also if it's not your cup of tea, or interest, that's fine. Even though I played through Automata, I had mixed feelings after seeing the actual ending. I did not enjoy the ride or journey. I felt numb, bitter. Felt like I wasted my time.
@@kadosho02 Funny thing about NierA is that it copied it's own homework. Every theme explored in NierA was already done better in Gestalt/Replicant previously. Stellar Blade is a copy of a copy but I still enjoyed it. With a Steam library full of cerebral "existential" games, it's nice to play a game sometimes that's just trying to be a fun way to waste a few hours. Instead of redefining the genre or whatever.
The discourse now is just the people who were frothing at the mouths on this game's behalf are currently screaming CENSORSHIP over a bra on one of the costumes. I don't even think there was any real "feminist blowback" in the first place.
Honestly, I think that 2:47 perhaps describes the problem with the sexual content really well. If you have a character whose sex appeal is looped into the character in some fashion like Bayonetta and her over-the-top Devil-May-Care Dominatrix attitude and Infernal Origins in the way that she wears a skintight bodysuit made from her own hair and uses Vogue Dancing to summon Demons, or something like Nier Automata where the sexual aspects don't do that much for the character specifically, but the whole world is so deep and weird that it just becomes another piece of the world: You can get away with a lot more than you can if your protagonist is a generic stoic practical badass.
@@thecraftsman24816 In a way. Yea. I think it's a bit more complicated than just "Write a good character", but at the same time, if it actually makes some amount of sense for the character (or like Nier, the whole story has the right kind of je ne sais quoi) then the criticism has less power on deeper inspection.
Nier Automata is not really deep at all. It is a diorama of Philosophy 101 with cardboard cutouts labeled with European philosophers. Even the villains are generic anime rejects, like Sephiroth's weird cousins, but instead of Jenova cells they have nano cells.
@@arenkai It is Robot Carnival mixed with Blade Runner replicants dressed up in fetishware and filled with C3PO wastebins threaded together with the most cliche anime tropes of the 80s and sprinkled with shallow references to Hegel, Pascal, Nietzsche, and Kant. You need to read more. I would suggest Philip K Dick, Gibson, and, well, any book, really, if you are impressed with Nier.
@@danielgrezda3339Honestly, the gameplay really is the only non-sexy thing it has going for it. In all other regards, it feels like "Nier at home," largely because Sony is as sick of waiting for Automata 2 as we all are at this point.
There's plenty of original anime out there, it's just not what gets popularized with That Kind Of Weeb. Actually there seems to be something of a trend lately towards much more energetic, fleshed-out, non-doormat female characters even in male-oriented anime lately, which is nice to see.
Yeah at this point I see the internet as the containment protocol for whatever SCP phenomenon modern political discourse has become. I watch butterflies outside now. Its pretty rad. Everyone should do it.
these days whenever there's some silly internet boxing match over a product, i assume it's a guerilla marketing campaign and spend my energy on something else. even when it's not a guerilla marketing campaign, with this strategy you win
even though you've clearly spelled out that last one, I cant spell it neither pronounce it.......lets see what google says it means.....Copy paste FTW !
0:26 Now, imagine that there wasn't even people mad about the T&A, and it was only for the briefest period after the game company fired a worker for not being a misogynist. Now, imagine that the guys saying that it was artistic intent immediately went on to being extremely smug and annoying over it, and started saying the games without that T&A were the REAL villains.
While a lot of people would make themselves big booty ladies, I'd absolutely turn myself into a more bear/gorilla type. I'm a tank and I want to be more tank and strength.
The main issue with the story is that it tries to be super serious sometimes, but it’s kinda ruined when the main character is dressed up like a stripper magician with a bunny tail.
This is why I have serious glamours for FFXIV. The one time I left my character in the Tonberry glamour during a story cutscene, I couldn't keep my composure. I also kind of feel bad when the bear group I'm part of did an All Sexy Santa run and we were matched with sprouts in the final trial of an expansion...
Somewhere on the internet floats a quote by yoko taro where he says stellar blade is better than his nier automata and we all know its because he thinks eve is slightly hotter than 2b
i can respect yahtzee's honest review of stellar blade, it's so refreshing over the faux-criticisms floating all around about this game so thank you, truly
my primary criticism of those universes is that they're not absolutely lousy with furries. You CANNOT tell me that we wouldn't be seeing robo-werewolves carpeting the landscape, given how densely tech fields irl are packed with furries
I think the plot would be drastically different if there were robofurries. It would just shift the themes to what it meant to be human in a furry v robo chick war.
I feel like that's overstating it. "The newest thing that media hypes up as having a controversy that people are actually concerned about" seems more akin this time. Cause the there seems to be a lot of people mad that other people are mad at stellar blade for being sexy, but the examples they're pointing to of media demonizing it amount to "media saying there's a controversy, using citing a single tweet or something" and "media saying that they tried to cover boring character design with sexiness, it didn't work".
For a first major outing from shift up I think they nailed a lot. As a fan of the ridiculous, I had a good time with this game. Good combat, TONS of outfits and the silly can collecting was actually pretty enjoyable being tied to their own little puzzles more often than not. I like my Clouds and my Squalls...so Eve's personality didn't bug me, but the writing definitely needs a lil work. 7-8/10 the music, outfits, and combat do a lotta heavy lifting for me. Excited to see what they do in the future!
If people keep praising them for the wrong reason they can't rise to improve all that is average about the game. And that's the real damage the fanbase is doing by swooning over the character model and flooding the reddit and forums with talks of how sexy their doll is.
@@arenkai While I agree that they should take the fans complimenting them with a grain of salt, the people swooning over Eve are the fanbase they wanted. Again, look at Nikke. Shift Up isn't trying to reinvent the wheel, they just want to make games with good action and attractive women. For a first outing into the console game space, from a Korean studio no less, I think all of the praise is well-deserved. While I do agree with nearly every criticism levied at this game, bigger studios have done far worse and got criticized a lot less. People honestly don't realize how alien the concept of a non-mobile game is in South Korea and I am glad to see that changing. I'm sick of mobile games.
A fan of the ridiculous, you say? May i recommend Cookie Cutter from 2023 to you? And mayhaps the likes of My Familiar, Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip and, to an extend, the Zeno Clash series as well? That one had a recent prequel in 2023 in Clash: Artifacts of Chaos.
The thing thats refreshing here is that it's exactly what you expect. It's literally what people imagine the average ps2 game in 2024 would look and play like.
I find the plot funny because shift up also make the mobile game "Nikke: Goddess of victory" and the plot for that is pretty much identical when you describe it
not everything has to be a masterpiece, sometimes just being enjoyable is enough. like fast food. and stellar blade, much like burger king, promises a good time and big buns.
I don't know, for me a video game almost does have to be a masterpiece for me to play it. I don't have all that much time for video games anymore, and there are quite a lot of truly incredible games out there. Why would I play a moderately enjoyable 6/10 game when I could be playing one of the dozen masterpieces that have come out in the last 2 years that I still haven't gotten around to?
You’re not wrong, but still what flaws make a game mediocre can still bring it down and at the end of the day Yahtz is a critic so he criticizes these flaws, If you Enjoy Stellar Blade than by all means do! And this applies generally to almost all kinds of stuff, People these days just assume they either have to be extremely on either one end or the other of a thing or stay on the center and preach bullshit to both sides (like what I’m doing now lol) when there exists points on both sides rather than Extreme 1 or 2.
@@piperwalton I dunno, why would you? Nobody's forcing you, I certainly wasn't, so what's the issue? Edit: besides, who said objective quality is directly proportional to subjective enjoyment? I sure as hell had more fun with Arcanum than Bg3 when it comes to fantasy Crpg's even if the latter is objectively better hands down. Just because stellar blade is objectively a nier knockoff doesn't stop it from entertaining me in ways nier didn't.
@@SimuLord then probably don't look for beef at Wendy's. The marketing and demo was clear on what audience it's trying to cater to. The only question is whether or not you're a part of that audience, then spend/save your money accordingly.
I’m a girl and I enjoyed Stellar Blade. I really liked the male lead. Haha. 😂 I also enjoyed the lore but they can push it farther and flesh out the characters more. Gameplay was fun.
I don't have the patience for a full-on Souls-like experience, so I'm enjoying Stellar Blade as an unambitious dress-up-with-a-plasma-gun game. I play other things when I want an in-depth experience, but Stellar Blade has been good for some shiny soothing ultraviolence to unwind after work. Explore, eviscerate, explore, eviscerate, strike a pose, etc.
I love it when Yahtzee actually makes a profound observation about “games these days”, like how most are just some kind of excuse for playing dress up.
I like the emphasis on butts in this review as it's the number one selling point of the game. But I have to disagree on the combat statements, I think combat is more than serviceable and keeps you engaged throughout your time playing the game. Although yes, the story was most definitely a bite bigger than they could chew.
I didn't know it was possible to love and admire Yahtzee more than I already did! But now I love him even more for the reference to the Labyrinth of Pan!
I like melancholic athmosphere od Stellar Blade. Is it great? No. Is it fun for the time it requires me to fininsh it? Yes. Gameplay is good, IU is good, quality of life things are good (way better than AAA games of AAA developers supported by AAA publishers). No microtransactions, no bs, just how I like it.
Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is a solid one too. Not as strong on the UI part but gameplay is a good, almost God Hand-like 3D fighter/beat-em-up in a colorful prehistoric monster world full of weird freaks and nary a human.
All true, the creative energy that went into this came from a 50 year old AAA battery. Despite all that, I did enjoy playing it. Combat is a bit more than functional, it is fun and the pacing is pretty good. The interesting comparison is with Lies of P. New Korean developer tried to make a game similar to one the love, but they mixed up Bloodborne enough with the Pinocchio storyline to make feel distinct. Shift up on the other hand seem to have have asked an AI to reshuffle Nier Automata and throw some Matrix references in, than called it at day...
Nice to know I'm not missing anything. I don't see the point of taking offense to certain character designs, it's meant to be shallow and broadly appealing (and kinda funny). It happens in novels too.
Yeah it seems to me to be far less Nier Automata or Bayonetta and much more P.N.03, one that will be swiftly forgotten but for the small crowd of die-hard fans.
The only reason I didn't engage with Stellar Blade was the discourse. Online "commentators" were lying in wait for anyone to have an opinion about they game that they didn't like. It was like the only reason they even covered the game was to attack whatever individual or group they didn't like at the time. Imagine dredging the internet, searching for any take on a game (that you didn't make) just so you can refute it. It sounds like a lonely existence. 😢
I engaged with Stellar Blade as a female player and enjoyed it a lot. But the online discourse is a mixture of brain rot and intelligent conversation. 😂 It’s interesting.
Admittedly this might just be because I deleted Twitter months ago, but I didn't really see anyone calling it bad for being sexy. The most I heard of it was occasionally someone would make fun of the people who were convinced it was the second coming of Christ just because it had a hot lady in it without waiting to see the game was actually any good.
Nah you are right. No body give a shit about Eve except the people who made an open letter against censorship since a small piece of cloth was added to like 3 outfits out of 40
There was an article in Eurogamer I think it was that accused the developers of not knowing what a human woman looked like. You can probably guess how that went.
Even though I’m one of those “chimps” Yahtzee used as a metaphor, I do appreciate his viewpoint to basically sidestep that argument and talk about the game itself.
@@TedWilder And let's not forget the gaming journalists who were criticizing the game for having characters that were "too sexy." There's actually a lot of context involved in the discourse.
Until release I saw lots of booty shots and like 1 combat sequence. Told me pretty much all I needed to know about the target of this game. This review is the final nail
To be honest, the game looks fun as hell. like a middle ground between Sekiro and Devil May Cry. I'm looking forward to playing the inevitable PC port. The mods alone would make this a wild time. And yes, eve is hawt AF. For DLC characters the makers should reach out to other Korean Models. Imagine characters based off Sunbiki's or Babbyang's body scans?
I was impressed by the demo and picked it up, and assume I'm at least 80% of my way through the game. Overall I like it. It reminds me of Nier Automata and Sekiro, both I'd consider some of the best games of last generation, so how does it hold up? On the Nier Automata side both have similar aesthetics along with plenty of anime tropes, but Nier uses it as a façade for some of the deepest and most impactful writing I've ever seen in a video game while Stellar Blade uses it simply as set dressing; it's nothing bad but not something I'd recommend the game over, with the exception that outfits and environment I found a step above and would love to see it as the new standard going forward. Likewise I don't consider the story or characters bad but there's nothing exceptional about them either. I will say the combat is better than Nier Automata, which also wasn't bad. On the Sekiro side this is probably the only imitator I'd call successful, with others simply missing the mark like Wo-Long or not committing enough like Lies of P. There're plenty of differences and SB likes giving you a lot of tools to work with vs Sekiro's more simplified and streamlined approach, Sekrio has the edge in parry-focused gameplay but SB feels like I have more diversity in how I can play. I think I'd still prefer Sekiro as the ceiling for how difficult the combat can be is higher but SB is far more accessible. While I'm a big fan of how From Soft does storytelling, both are pretty minimal and I suspect most people who like exposition will prefer how SB did the story and characters. Overall I believe people who liked either game will enjoy it, however it definitely has some faults, or rather areas that don't keep up with the quality of the rest of the game. As mentioned the characters and story are incredibly unremarkable, and areas are well made but lack enough diversity to stand out(okay, being honest it's mostly just that the two open areas are deserts). The core combat is good and you are given additional tools and moves over the course of the game, but they feel more tacked on than synergistic. While most traversal and platforming is fine some areas like the storage area or surfing were painful to get through. I feel like docking points for being $70 too, but I'll offset that by them releasing a demo. Currently on Metacritic the critics give it an 8.2 despite there apparently being some bias against it, and the user score is 9.2 which I assume is partly due to the discussion around it. Between the two is 8.7, which I feel is a fair score for the game.
