I have been following Stellar Blade since it was announced as Project EVE. I was excited for it, bought it day one, and then got distracted and it ended up in my backlog like so many other new releases do. That was until I took a short break from video making in December, and decided that this was one of the first games I wanted to finally get to

Stellar Blade is stunning visually. The combat effects, the overall environments, and the character designs are all very pleasant to look at. The post apocalyptic futurism really gave me Horizon vibes, which is good because that is one of my favorite game franchises

The main selling point of this game though is of course the combat. Which I will say is pretty good. It had a pretty big learning curve, at least for me, but once it clicked it clicked and I found the challenge to be just the right amount where it was rewarding without being infuriating, with the exception of a couple late game bosses

The visuals and combat is where my praise for this game ends. The story is a complete mess of Sci-Fi tropes all sewn together to give a purpose to the combat system. There were some twists that were good, but I was able to call almost the entire story within around an hour of playing. They clearly wanted it to be super deep, but I believe it fell quite short and I found myself bored with the cutscenes before I was even halfway in

This isnt helped by the stale, cardboard, voice acting. There are reasons that characters like EVE talk the way they do (without saying spoilers) but this problem doesnt just apply to her, and instead almost every single NPC and interactable character act like they are a text to speech bot with almost no emotion

I wouldnt quite say I enjoyed my time. I liked the combat and vibe enough to finish it, but it was definitely a slog to get through. If you like easy to learn difficult to master gameplay, then I would suggest at least looking at it, while skipping the cutscenes

My final score for Stellar Blade is 5/10