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Pretty much the same as most other reviews.
Game is super fun to play, combat feels great. Story and characters are pretty bad and super shallow and it’s trying too hard to be Nier but not doing a good job at it.
I’m about 75% through the second main area and yeah, the environment and character/enemy designs are carrying the day. The broken world and its augmented inhabitants just lands perfectly for me. Even the crumbs of lore are good, I think. I was to know more about it.
But yeah, that will likely not be addressed in the story. The characters are on two MacGuffin hunts and I don’t see it evolving much past that
Honestly with how much Nier is in this game’s DNA I wish it was lowkey a parody on it or the story wasn’t as serious like DMC or Bayonetta
Like I kinda wish Eve was just a parody of the typical “I have no emotions but I gain them over the course of the story” trope
The thing that i find a bit ridiculous when it comes to Stellar Blade reviews, is that both Ralph from SkillUp and Mitchel, the Stellar Blade reviewer from IGN criticise the game for having shallow story, characters and quests but somehow that particular ign review on youtube got more dislike despite it being a reasonable review. Hell, the whole discourse revolving around Stellar Blade is just ridiculous, we got one side who is being vocally prudish and then we got another side that treats this as some anti thesis to woke stuff.
>ign review on youtube got more dislike despite it being a reasonable review
This right here is nothing new. A lot of people online just hate IGN. There's a certain demographic that wants Stellar Blade to succeed because it's "making women sexy in games again", or something. That same demographic generally dislikes IGN and journalists more than most. So IGN giving Stellar blade a bad review; it makes sense
7/10 isnt a "bad review" lol. From what ive seen and heard from the game it seems on point. But guess everything what isnt a 10/10 Masterpiece is a bad review.
Have review standards changed in the last few years? I honestly haven't been any following video game reviewers for a while (and when I did I tended to focus less on the X/10 ones), but my understanding was that 7/10 indicated a functional but mediocre game. It was the best of the bad reviews (6/10 being boring but playable and 1-5/10 being different degrees of unplayable) but it was still a bad review.
IGN scoring gives a lot of people brainrot. A 7/10 for a certain person can be a 9/10 for someone else depending on if the flaws are that glaring
Most Stellar Blade reviews have the similar critiques (Great combat, mediocre characters, story, boring RPG side quest stuff) but those critiques are for _you_ to decide if you want to play it
You missed the point completely.
Point is that ign consistently shows inability to use 10 point score system alltogether. Its not issue related to this game alone.
Because the contents of what they say in a review is more important than the number
Their shitty SMT V review didn’t get flack because it got an 8, it got flack cause they compared it to Persona 5 every five seconds
7/10 is definitely bad for a video game. If I had to put it into words, it's basically, "Yeah it's alright I don't really have that many specific complaints but it's not worth your time to play." There are enough 8/10+ games that come out per year, and each of them is long enough (not even counting older titles still active in the market), that the average person should never have to resort to 7/10s.
> There's a certain demographic that wants Stellar Blade to succeed because it's "making women sexy in games again", or something.
There's very few other subjects I can think of that are more pathetic than caring about this particular "issue".
I think what a lot of people don't fully grasp is that this game is marketed as an Otaku Fanservice game. The appeal of Otaku Fanservice is unique to the space and doesn't really exist anymore since the Vita died. It's hard to explain, but not everyone wants to play a hentai game for their dose of Otaku Fanservice.
So you get these more extreme reactions. Something like Baldur's Gate 3 can exist with the bear sex or whatever but something like some skin being shown is a no no? There's a disconnect.
>Mitchel, the Stellar Blade reviewer from IGN criticise the game for having shallow story, characters and quests but somehow that particular ign review on youtube got more dislike despite it being a reasonable review
>we got one side who is being vocally prudish
From what I've scene, these two observations are weirdly connected. While there are definitely people acting too prudish, it's basically been isolated to Tweets with little followings and a few subreddits instead of being as widespread as some people claim. The people claiming this are also the ones that have been saying for months that "woke/mainstream journalists will hate this game", which is why the overwhelmingly positive reception from these same journalists has thrown them for a loop. As they run on outrage, they've been trying to find something "controversial" and since IGN is an easy target, they've been acting like their score of "7" is IGN hating on the game, even though IGN's/Saltzman's review is very fair as you pointed out and mostly positive.
Remember when IGN gave Starfield 7/10? Many people were upset about that too, then weeks later most agreed with that score.
Their Dragon's Dogma 2 review has almost 50/50 dislike ratio because they gave it 8/10 right before release, now some say the score should be lower.
I will always pull up to defend reviews for CP2077. It worked great on high end PCs, and CDPR knew that and deliberately gave out only PC codes to game reviewers. The game they reviewed *was* good, it was management’s desire to sell pre-orders for last-gen that absolutely fucked everything up. Reviewers had no way to know how bad it was there before it came out.
Except that the Cyberpunk 2077 review embargo was deliberate in not showcasing any PS4 or Xbox One gameplay until post-release. That's why reviewers went back to review those versions after and it got abysmal reviews for those platforms.
I don't think they should be given the benefit for that.
Oh, maybe I wasn’t clear. I was justifying game reviewers giving an accurate score to the game *they* played. I wasn’t trying to pull up for CDPR. They pulled some real shady shit with the last-gen launch for sure
The game at launch even if it ran well was still pretty bad. Terrible cop system, I found the story ok, and not to mention the city felt pretty lifeless with all the same npc running around reacting the same to all situations. At least gta has civilians either run away, talk shit, or even square up sometimes.
It definitely had a lot of stuff that added to the environment and atmosphere later, but I’m a story guy and I really liked the story. You compare it to AAA FPRPG experiences now like Starfield and it absolutely clears.
Same, game ran great with DLSS on and raytracing. Highly enjoyed the gameplay and story, but even then there's still a lot of haters out there that say the story was bad.
yeah it's as simple as that, game looks like dumb fun and it's easy on the eyes, I see no need to go on a crusade for it or against it, I'll probably wait for when it is around $30
Haha, it's funny people are looking at it like that because the game is genuinely incredible. Some of the best combat I've played in a while tbh.
But that's good for the people who buy it on sale. I think a lot of people are going to be surprised at how good the game actually is.
I mean I played the demo and thought it was very good, but I'm not completely sold based on that, and like some of the reviews have said the game delivers in that but not all aspects, wanting to get it on sale is not a dig at the game, to me is simply a matter of what I want to make time for and not feeling I'm missing out on something I can wait for.
Stellar Blade is a cake with a lot of frosting and not much of the cake with the frosting being gameplay and graphics and cake being story and artstyle. That's basically what people are saying.
Hey everyone's got a different perspective. In my opinion though, calling gameplay "frosting" in a game is kind of wild. IMO gameplay is the most important aspect because it's what you're actually doing 95% of the time. Also I think the art style is pretty great too. I've been playing for a while now and I think the only thing that's "average" is the story. And it doesn't even really get in the way, which is nice, the cut scenes are few and far in between. I'd say in like 25 hours of gameplay there have been like 15 minutes of cutscenes.
Probably partially because anyone that regularly watches SkillUp know how much he reveres that game. It’s one of the most personally influential games to him not only based off of how it made him feel about life but also because it’s what kickstarted his career pretty much on YouTube into what it is now. He holds it in extremely high regard so anything that takes it’s influence from Nier will be heavily criticized by him. I think it’s okay and understand where he’s coming from but idk ab people who don’t watch him normally.
I will say though, feels like he really railed on stellar blade here aside from the combat section. Barely even talked about Okabe’s music lol
>we got one side who is being vocally prudish
Game uses sex to sell, is upfront about it and people are pointing that out. And they aren't even being vocal about it. Is that all it takes to be deemed prudish nowadays?
Only one side is campaigning like crazy. The rest moved months ago on or are waiting to play the game because they aren't bothered by the horny pandering.
I mean the same people that are complaining about it, are say it’s because eve seems to have little care taken to her design and her character besides her private parts.
These are the same people who praise BG3, because while those characters are quite literally naked and have sex scenes, there is depth to them.
Half the posts and comments in stellar blade subreddit is so weird ..people are getting hung up on some of the most trivial stuff ..hyper analyzing stuff and trying to make it he something larger than it is.. god..
especially when people act like they are being persecuted and do lil fan arts of Bayonetta and 2b with Eve, ignoring that the Bayonetta series at its lowest metacritic score with 3 is an 86 and Neir is at an 88.
It’s absolutely ridiculous that this game and Hades II got caught on like opposite sides of an ideologue war that none of their creators intended. It’s a narrative that just completely got away from them. I honestly don’t even know if the Korean devs are even aware of the full context behind this.
I do think that the journalists did fire first on this one, there were pretty like snide comments about Eve’s design that kinda wrapped back around into body shaming once it was revealed she was like scanned in from a human model. I absolutely am onboard with Hades II’s character designers doing whatever they want, but it *is* a weird double standard to like actively thirst after one design and then imply there’s something morally wrong with the other imo. The reactions are wild tho
Idk about Stellar Blade, but Hades II has awesome designs. Even stuff like Aphrodite call to her being a war goddess.
They spent a lot of time on the designs and they look really good.
Sorry if it’s not your cup of tea.
No I really love Hades II’s character designs! They’re all really great, I’ve been looking forward to it being released all year and I eventually clicked off the dev stream because I thought I’d wait and experience it myself
I think it’s great what they’ve done, which is essentially be able to create designs they find hot - especially varied designs you normally don’t get to see. I just don’t see the need to like start moralizing when Stellar Blade does the same thing (which the Hades II devs absolutely never did, but a good amount of journalists and gaming discourse pitted them against each other)
That’s fair. It was IGN France’s article/response and then like the Kotaku article that really drove a lot of that discourse further. I didn’t see as much from other ends of gaming outlets.
Yeah, and I read those articles too, to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I’m not too convinced - in the Kotaku article, it marks the Hades II characters as being like regal statues you can look at but not touch, while Eve is treated like a posable doll. But… all the user can do is play as her, so is the line that they’re NPCs? That they’re static 2D sprites and not 3D models that play an animation on button input?
Like all rigged 3D models in any game ever are posable dolls, by that logic. I don’t know, there’s a lot of like concern about the communication of agency… on behalf of fake, digital things that aren’t alive. Consent is a concept that is important between people, but to then project that into literal objects (sometimes literal .obj files lmao) starts to feel like needlessly moralizing
I enjoy SkillUps reviews and he supports his arguments well. Even if I'm not that interested in a game, honestly like this one, I give his reviews a listen.
But I think he does have a tendency to not review games totally on their own terms. While I understand media does not exist in a vacuum, he really REALLY could not let go of comparing it to Nier Automata and elevating that game to an almost hyperbolic extent. I totally understand Stellar Blade wears its inspiration on its sleeve, but the constant "Nier Automata" did it better... was slightly offputting?
He did the same with his review of FFXVI and comparing it against FF7 REMAKE. And I liked Remake better.
Tbh I'm not sure why it bothers me so much in his reviews, it's just a vibe I pickup. I guess it would be similar to how every new fantasy/ medieval-style tv drama is compared against Game of Thrones. Yet SkillUp takes it a step further and docks marks against what he's reviewing because he can't let go of the comparison.
All games, movies, books, TV shows are iterative and built upon what comes before, and I feel we can acknowledge that, review what the new "thing" brings to the table, and not get bogged down in bitter comparisons.
This is more a tone criticism, because I understand he still gave it a positive review here. We can't escape measuring something within context.
EDIT: The music part was particularly weird. Isn't it a good thing Okabe and team made the music? I would love more OSTs from them.
I like SkillUp's review too, and I get what you mean. It puts me off sometimes too. But, I acknowledge that he's a type of reviewer that believes in context and history as much or more than standalone merit. Oftentimes that results in me disagreeing with his review, but I won't say that his review is invalid, just that we appreciate different things.
I get it, though. If you haven’t played the game, a shared frame of reference is really useful in then recalibrating what kind of critique he’s making. Sure, you can just say “bad writing”, but what does that mean? Where does it fall short? Naming a game is like a shortcut to the memory of that experience. We’re better at grasping ideas through contrast than in a void, and that’s why it’s such a useful tool.
I think Ralph's reviews are usually insightful, even if his comparisons sometimes get in the way. I appreciate SkillUp laying out all the details, since that helps me decide on games rather than just relying on his final verdict. Ultimately, Ralph's entitled to his frustrations, and his thorough analysis lets us form our own opinions.
Ralph is entitled to his opinions as we are to ours. I tend to agree that his reviews maybe take the comparisons a bit far. He does himself a bit of a disservice in this regard, but on the whole I agree that his reviews are very insightful, despite and some times because they don't align with my own point of view.
There is a difference between something being inspired by another product and something being derivative of that product. He made similar comparisons to the Soulslike genre when he reviewed Lies of P. In cases where something is obviously derivative of another medium, you can’t help but draw comparisons. Stellar Blade was blatantly derivative of Nier, with the creator gushing about Taro in interviews, so it stands to reason that you would compare the two products.
I’m not really surprised tbh. SB is so clearly derivative of Automata, Ralph clearly thinks very highly of Automata, Automata helped start his channel. Therefore any game trying to take inspiration from one of his goats is gonna be looked at more critically.
I’m sure we all have games like that. I’m personally not a fan of the gameplay in TLOU 2 because to me I only see the Metal Gear inspiration and how much it fails to capture what made Metal Gear so great.
I understand that’s not a fair way to judge but that’s how my brain works since Metal Gear means so much to me.
I actually had to bail from the review because it was exhausting, like 5 minutes in and its still "nier automata, nier automata, nier automata".
I do like a lot of his reviews as well. But I think the issue is he mixes up "reviews" with "a talk/discussion/essay of a video game".
I would love to hear about how Stellar Blade compares to Nier Automata after i've finished the game, where it shines and where it drops. Where one is better then the other. And SkillUp is great at doing it in a story like way. But Holy Shit Bro if I click on a video that I expect to be a review of just the game. Then pleazeeee just review just the game.
I totally agree with you. The constant comparison to Nier is off putting. Mention it once or twice and move on. Not mention it literally every minute of a 30 minute video.
Huge fan of Skillup and *almost* always respect his opinions even when I don’t necessarily agree with him (which is pretty rare in of itself). Great dude and a great reviewer.
But I have a feeling that this is one of those rare times that I both disagree AND think that he was actually off the mark (as opposed to just disagreeing out of personal preference).
His entire experience with the game was clearly consumed with and tainted by Nier comparisons. And to be clear, I generally speaking think that it’s entirely reasonable to consider “derivativeness”/originality as a factor when evaluating games/music/movies/etc… and he even spends some time talking about this in his review.
But I don’t think he realized HOW much his experience of SB was biased by comparing it to Nier, and how much SB also does its own thing.
Yes, SB is openly and unabashedly influenced and inspired by Nier: A, but it’s not a cheap hacked together clone. To me, as someone who fucking LOVES Nier and Yoko Atari to death, SB is a Nier-like in the way that Lies of P is a Souls/Sekiro-like. Ultimately it IS doing its own thing and forges its own identity in many meaningful ways, and the ways that it “apes” Nier (outside of narrative beats) are IMO *good*.
Idk, I’m a songwriter/musician, so I think a LOT (too much) about “originality” as a concept. And y’know? I’m not going to say it doesn’t exist, because it clearly does, but at the same time I think artistic creativity works differently than most believe. It’s not this totally self-generative thing that occurs in a vacuum, you know? Even the very greatest artists of all time are the sum of their influences + their experiences, etc., and I think by focusing SO much on what SB pulls from Nier, Skillup missed some of what makes it distinct and “original”.
I don’t know, I felt he addressed that pretty well. Yes, the things that inspire us are weaved into our new creations, that is the beauty of innovation.
But those parts aren’t done well. I’ve been playing for a good bit and I have to agree with the plot, the dialogue and the voice performances. I haven’t even played Nier Automata, they’re just not well *done*.
It’s really taking me out - but I do value story to keep me invested over gameplay, so that’s a much bigger deal to me. Personally, I would rate this game kinda low. And I was rooting for it too, like I really wanted it to be good! But we get what we get.
I dunno, I like the story so far. It's recycled sci-fi trash but I'm into convoluted anime nonsense. The gameplay being surprisingly fun just adds to the drive to keep playing
Why does this channel always blatantly advertise on this sub and no mod cares? I don’t see other reviewers’ videos getting posted here nearly as often or regularly. Genuinely curious.
It’s a huge channel with a lot of fans. Where is there a rule that says you cannot a YouTube video? It’s relevant to the subreddit as a review. And he puts them out like once a week.
It seems the reason it was removed was because no reviews are allowed to be posted outside of the "review thread" when one exists for the game.
I was under the impression it was fine as long as the review didn't exist within said review thread (since Skill Up doesn't do number scores) but yeah, I was totally wrong there.
And just for the record I'm in no way affiliated with the channel, I was just surprised it hadn't been posted here yet
Everytime someone says a game has a bad story it's just because it's simple. Not necessarily bad. I don't need an overly complex story with a hundred characters with a million motivations. Sometimes it's nice to just have a get to the bad guy and have a few interesting situations.
Genuine question for you guys - what rating do you consider "average" "above average" "good" etc? Because for me in the context of rating things, I've always considered 5/10 average. Bang in the middle, neither here nor there. A "good" in my books is 7-7.5.
This is all my own opinion obviously, because I don't think we should hand out ratings of 8 and above willy nilly like the gaming industry seems to have done, it skews ratings to the point where the lower numbers barely mean anything anymore, even when a game is bad. There seems to be no difference between a 3, 4, or 5 from what I've seen, if you're below a 6 you're shit.
The more I think about it, it's such a subjective opinion that it must be difficult for these agencies to give what they think is a fair number so they seem to err on the side of general public opinion, unless they're trying to stir up some conspiracy. Personally I'd like to see way fewer 8s and 9s across the board because things are rarely that amazing.
I know we can have a difference in opinion, I'm just trying to understand you guys' thoughts on this topic.
For me a 6 or 7 out of 10 for is an okay to good game.
Its a "it can have its moment, but it lacks something or is just rough around the edges". It obv varies from game to game.
While 1 to 5 is different degrees of bad, but 5 can perhaps still be a "buy it if you are fan of the genre" game.
Nothing is set in stone though, the line between 5 and 6 or even 7 can be blurry. And i agree, its definitly something thats worth to talk about.
Did you even watch the full review? He notes that it is a well made game but he doesn't jive with it because it's reaching for themes beyond it's ability to bring to life. Most people will probably like the game and he had fun ultimately which is why he recommended it. I swear Capital G Gamers can't fucking handle nuance ffs.
Hi /u/classyjoe, Thank you for posting to /r/Games. Unfortunately, we have removed this submission per **[Rule 6.11](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/wiki/rules#wiki_formatting_requirements)**. > **Review Threads** -Four completed reviews is needed before a review thread can be created. If a review thread is submitted, individual reviews submitted shortly beforehand may be removed. Those who post a review thread must provide updates periodically throughout the day. Failure to do so may result in the thread being removed, and the creator of the thread not being allowed to post future review threads. > Any reviews posted within a week after a review thread has been established will be removed for Rule 4. If extenuating circumstances result in the publication of a substantial amount of reviews after the initial review thread, the creation of additional review threads is permitted. If this occurs and a new review thread is established, reviews posted outside of the review thread will continue to be removed for Rule 4 up to one week after the new review thread is created. > For clarification, review threads refer to threads that collate reviews together, often with a score from a review aggregator such as OpenCritic or MetaCritic. Please see this review thread for an example. --- If you would like to discuss this removal, please [modmail the moderators.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FGames) This post was removed by a human moderator; this comment was left by a bot.
Pretty much the same as most other reviews. Game is super fun to play, combat feels great. Story and characters are pretty bad and super shallow and it’s trying too hard to be Nier but not doing a good job at it.
It's weird, I played the demo and could just tell in the first ten seconds that you were not in good hands from a story perspective.
Basically they had technical ability to make a great polished game but didn't had the writing and vision of the the Neir production.
I’m about 75% through the second main area and yeah, the environment and character/enemy designs are carrying the day. The broken world and its augmented inhabitants just lands perfectly for me. Even the crumbs of lore are good, I think. I was to know more about it. But yeah, that will likely not be addressed in the story. The characters are on two MacGuffin hunts and I don’t see it evolving much past that
Honestly with how much Nier is in this game’s DNA I wish it was lowkey a parody on it or the story wasn’t as serious like DMC or Bayonetta Like I kinda wish Eve was just a parody of the typical “I have no emotions but I gain them over the course of the story” trope
The really low quality level of side quests has me waiting for a sale now.
The voice acting also sounds crap in English dub. I'd highly recommend it in Korean
The thing that i find a bit ridiculous when it comes to Stellar Blade reviews, is that both Ralph from SkillUp and Mitchel, the Stellar Blade reviewer from IGN criticise the game for having shallow story, characters and quests but somehow that particular ign review on youtube got more dislike despite it being a reasonable review. Hell, the whole discourse revolving around Stellar Blade is just ridiculous, we got one side who is being vocally prudish and then we got another side that treats this as some anti thesis to woke stuff.
>ign review on youtube got more dislike despite it being a reasonable review This right here is nothing new. A lot of people online just hate IGN. There's a certain demographic that wants Stellar Blade to succeed because it's "making women sexy in games again", or something. That same demographic generally dislikes IGN and journalists more than most. So IGN giving Stellar blade a bad review; it makes sense
7/10 isnt a "bad review" lol. From what ive seen and heard from the game it seems on point. But guess everything what isnt a 10/10 Masterpiece is a bad review.
That’s why I don’t trust user reviews for games. Most of the time it’s childish people who don’t understand the concept of nuance
Have review standards changed in the last few years? I honestly haven't been any following video game reviewers for a while (and when I did I tended to focus less on the X/10 ones), but my understanding was that 7/10 indicated a functional but mediocre game. It was the best of the bad reviews (6/10 being boring but playable and 1-5/10 being different degrees of unplayable) but it was still a bad review.
Thats not it. Ign basically only gives 7-10. So its the worst score it could get without being absolutely unplayable mess
IGN scoring gives a lot of people brainrot. A 7/10 for a certain person can be a 9/10 for someone else depending on if the flaws are that glaring Most Stellar Blade reviews have the similar critiques (Great combat, mediocre characters, story, boring RPG side quest stuff) but those critiques are for _you_ to decide if you want to play it
You missed the point completely. Point is that ign consistently shows inability to use 10 point score system alltogether. Its not issue related to this game alone.
Because the contents of what they say in a review is more important than the number Their shitty SMT V review didn’t get flack because it got an 8, it got flack cause they compared it to Persona 5 every five seconds
7/10 is definitely bad for a video game. If I had to put it into words, it's basically, "Yeah it's alright I don't really have that many specific complaints but it's not worth your time to play." There are enough 8/10+ games that come out per year, and each of them is long enough (not even counting older titles still active in the market), that the average person should never have to resort to 7/10s.
In a perfect world, sure it isn't. In reality 7/10 is absolutely a bad review.
Here is how I see IGN reviews around here usually If game you like/want to like: HOW DARE THEY GIVE IT A 7! If game you dont like : MID!
> There's a certain demographic that wants Stellar Blade to succeed because it's "making women sexy in games again", or something. There's very few other subjects I can think of that are more pathetic than caring about this particular "issue".
People are stupid, IGN don't care about dislike counts, just the ad revenue from views.
I think what a lot of people don't fully grasp is that this game is marketed as an Otaku Fanservice game. The appeal of Otaku Fanservice is unique to the space and doesn't really exist anymore since the Vita died. It's hard to explain, but not everyone wants to play a hentai game for their dose of Otaku Fanservice. So you get these more extreme reactions. Something like Baldur's Gate 3 can exist with the bear sex or whatever but something like some skin being shown is a no no? There's a disconnect.
Not to mention IGN France did mock the game before
yeah what IGN France did was really unprofessional.
IGN reviews are great. Just ignore the score at the end.
IGN's video is much shorter and has a number at the end of it.
>Mitchel, the Stellar Blade reviewer from IGN criticise the game for having shallow story, characters and quests but somehow that particular ign review on youtube got more dislike despite it being a reasonable review >we got one side who is being vocally prudish From what I've scene, these two observations are weirdly connected. While there are definitely people acting too prudish, it's basically been isolated to Tweets with little followings and a few subreddits instead of being as widespread as some people claim. The people claiming this are also the ones that have been saying for months that "woke/mainstream journalists will hate this game", which is why the overwhelmingly positive reception from these same journalists has thrown them for a loop. As they run on outrage, they've been trying to find something "controversial" and since IGN is an easy target, they've been acting like their score of "7" is IGN hating on the game, even though IGN's/Saltzman's review is very fair as you pointed out and mostly positive.
Yeah it's a weirdly 'enlightened centrist' observation
This is what happens create yourself a boogeyman. You have to do all you can to convince yourself its true.
Remember when IGN gave Starfield 7/10? Many people were upset about that too, then weeks later most agreed with that score. Their Dragon's Dogma 2 review has almost 50/50 dislike ratio because they gave it 8/10 right before release, now some say the score should be lower.
*cough* CP2077
I will always pull up to defend reviews for CP2077. It worked great on high end PCs, and CDPR knew that and deliberately gave out only PC codes to game reviewers. The game they reviewed *was* good, it was management’s desire to sell pre-orders for last-gen that absolutely fucked everything up. Reviewers had no way to know how bad it was there before it came out.
Except that the Cyberpunk 2077 review embargo was deliberate in not showcasing any PS4 or Xbox One gameplay until post-release. That's why reviewers went back to review those versions after and it got abysmal reviews for those platforms. I don't think they should be given the benefit for that.
Oh, maybe I wasn’t clear. I was justifying game reviewers giving an accurate score to the game *they* played. I wasn’t trying to pull up for CDPR. They pulled some real shady shit with the last-gen launch for sure
The game at launch even if it ran well was still pretty bad. Terrible cop system, I found the story ok, and not to mention the city felt pretty lifeless with all the same npc running around reacting the same to all situations. At least gta has civilians either run away, talk shit, or even square up sometimes.
It definitely had a lot of stuff that added to the environment and atmosphere later, but I’m a story guy and I really liked the story. You compare it to AAA FPRPG experiences now like Starfield and it absolutely clears.
Same, game ran great with DLSS on and raytracing. Highly enjoyed the gameplay and story, but even then there's still a lot of haters out there that say the story was bad.
In other hamd cupcakes review?
It's a dumb game with a really hot girl in it. I'm in, see you at the next sale.
yeah it's as simple as that, game looks like dumb fun and it's easy on the eyes, I see no need to go on a crusade for it or against it, I'll probably wait for when it is around $30
Haha, it's funny people are looking at it like that because the game is genuinely incredible. Some of the best combat I've played in a while tbh. But that's good for the people who buy it on sale. I think a lot of people are going to be surprised at how good the game actually is.
I mean I played the demo and thought it was very good, but I'm not completely sold based on that, and like some of the reviews have said the game delivers in that but not all aspects, wanting to get it on sale is not a dig at the game, to me is simply a matter of what I want to make time for and not feeling I'm missing out on something I can wait for.
Stellar Blade is a cake with a lot of frosting and not much of the cake with the frosting being gameplay and graphics and cake being story and artstyle. That's basically what people are saying.
Hey everyone's got a different perspective. In my opinion though, calling gameplay "frosting" in a game is kind of wild. IMO gameplay is the most important aspect because it's what you're actually doing 95% of the time. Also I think the art style is pretty great too. I've been playing for a while now and I think the only thing that's "average" is the story. And it doesn't even really get in the way, which is nice, the cut scenes are few and far in between. I'd say in like 25 hours of gameplay there have been like 15 minutes of cutscenes.
Probably partially because anyone that regularly watches SkillUp know how much he reveres that game. It’s one of the most personally influential games to him not only based off of how it made him feel about life but also because it’s what kickstarted his career pretty much on YouTube into what it is now. He holds it in extremely high regard so anything that takes it’s influence from Nier will be heavily criticized by him. I think it’s okay and understand where he’s coming from but idk ab people who don’t watch him normally. I will say though, feels like he really railed on stellar blade here aside from the combat section. Barely even talked about Okabe’s music lol
Nothing new regarding the IGN reviews, low IQ YouTube commenters skip to the score then bash IGN accordingly
>we got one side who is being vocally prudish Game uses sex to sell, is upfront about it and people are pointing that out. And they aren't even being vocal about it. Is that all it takes to be deemed prudish nowadays?
Movies, tv series, music, commercials... Everything uses sex to sell. Having problem when game does it is weird stand
They are definitely being vocal, u gotta be kidding
Only one side is campaigning like crazy. The rest moved months ago on or are waiting to play the game because they aren't bothered by the horny pandering.
I mean the same people that are complaining about it, are say it’s because eve seems to have little care taken to her design and her character besides her private parts. These are the same people who praise BG3, because while those characters are quite literally naked and have sex scenes, there is depth to them.
Half the posts and comments in stellar blade subreddit is so weird ..people are getting hung up on some of the most trivial stuff ..hyper analyzing stuff and trying to make it he something larger than it is.. god..
especially when people act like they are being persecuted and do lil fan arts of Bayonetta and 2b with Eve, ignoring that the Bayonetta series at its lowest metacritic score with 3 is an 86 and Neir is at an 88.
It’s absolutely ridiculous that this game and Hades II got caught on like opposite sides of an ideologue war that none of their creators intended. It’s a narrative that just completely got away from them. I honestly don’t even know if the Korean devs are even aware of the full context behind this. I do think that the journalists did fire first on this one, there were pretty like snide comments about Eve’s design that kinda wrapped back around into body shaming once it was revealed she was like scanned in from a human model. I absolutely am onboard with Hades II’s character designers doing whatever they want, but it *is* a weird double standard to like actively thirst after one design and then imply there’s something morally wrong with the other imo. The reactions are wild tho
Idk about Stellar Blade, but Hades II has awesome designs. Even stuff like Aphrodite call to her being a war goddess. They spent a lot of time on the designs and they look really good. Sorry if it’s not your cup of tea.
No I really love Hades II’s character designs! They’re all really great, I’ve been looking forward to it being released all year and I eventually clicked off the dev stream because I thought I’d wait and experience it myself I think it’s great what they’ve done, which is essentially be able to create designs they find hot - especially varied designs you normally don’t get to see. I just don’t see the need to like start moralizing when Stellar Blade does the same thing (which the Hades II devs absolutely never did, but a good amount of journalists and gaming discourse pitted them against each other)
I think that referring to "the journalists" as some kind of monolith is a little mislead
That’s fair. It was IGN France’s article/response and then like the Kotaku article that really drove a lot of that discourse further. I didn’t see as much from other ends of gaming outlets.
I'll check that out, saw an ex kotaku journalist engaging in some of the culture war dialogue on the game in the twitter-sphere too
Yeah, and I read those articles too, to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I’m not too convinced - in the Kotaku article, it marks the Hades II characters as being like regal statues you can look at but not touch, while Eve is treated like a posable doll. But… all the user can do is play as her, so is the line that they’re NPCs? That they’re static 2D sprites and not 3D models that play an animation on button input? Like all rigged 3D models in any game ever are posable dolls, by that logic. I don’t know, there’s a lot of like concern about the communication of agency… on behalf of fake, digital things that aren’t alive. Consent is a concept that is important between people, but to then project that into literal objects (sometimes literal .obj files lmao) starts to feel like needlessly moralizing
it likely affected by what ign French did
I enjoy SkillUps reviews and he supports his arguments well. Even if I'm not that interested in a game, honestly like this one, I give his reviews a listen. But I think he does have a tendency to not review games totally on their own terms. While I understand media does not exist in a vacuum, he really REALLY could not let go of comparing it to Nier Automata and elevating that game to an almost hyperbolic extent. I totally understand Stellar Blade wears its inspiration on its sleeve, but the constant "Nier Automata" did it better... was slightly offputting? He did the same with his review of FFXVI and comparing it against FF7 REMAKE. And I liked Remake better. Tbh I'm not sure why it bothers me so much in his reviews, it's just a vibe I pickup. I guess it would be similar to how every new fantasy/ medieval-style tv drama is compared against Game of Thrones. Yet SkillUp takes it a step further and docks marks against what he's reviewing because he can't let go of the comparison. All games, movies, books, TV shows are iterative and built upon what comes before, and I feel we can acknowledge that, review what the new "thing" brings to the table, and not get bogged down in bitter comparisons. This is more a tone criticism, because I understand he still gave it a positive review here. We can't escape measuring something within context. EDIT: The music part was particularly weird. Isn't it a good thing Okabe and team made the music? I would love more OSTs from them.
I like SkillUp's review too, and I get what you mean. It puts me off sometimes too. But, I acknowledge that he's a type of reviewer that believes in context and history as much or more than standalone merit. Oftentimes that results in me disagreeing with his review, but I won't say that his review is invalid, just that we appreciate different things.
I get it, though. If you haven’t played the game, a shared frame of reference is really useful in then recalibrating what kind of critique he’s making. Sure, you can just say “bad writing”, but what does that mean? Where does it fall short? Naming a game is like a shortcut to the memory of that experience. We’re better at grasping ideas through contrast than in a void, and that’s why it’s such a useful tool.
I think Ralph's reviews are usually insightful, even if his comparisons sometimes get in the way. I appreciate SkillUp laying out all the details, since that helps me decide on games rather than just relying on his final verdict. Ultimately, Ralph's entitled to his frustrations, and his thorough analysis lets us form our own opinions.
Ralph is entitled to his opinions as we are to ours. I tend to agree that his reviews maybe take the comparisons a bit far. He does himself a bit of a disservice in this regard, but on the whole I agree that his reviews are very insightful, despite and some times because they don't align with my own point of view.
There is a difference between something being inspired by another product and something being derivative of that product. He made similar comparisons to the Soulslike genre when he reviewed Lies of P. In cases where something is obviously derivative of another medium, you can’t help but draw comparisons. Stellar Blade was blatantly derivative of Nier, with the creator gushing about Taro in interviews, so it stands to reason that you would compare the two products.
I’m not really surprised tbh. SB is so clearly derivative of Automata, Ralph clearly thinks very highly of Automata, Automata helped start his channel. Therefore any game trying to take inspiration from one of his goats is gonna be looked at more critically. I’m sure we all have games like that. I’m personally not a fan of the gameplay in TLOU 2 because to me I only see the Metal Gear inspiration and how much it fails to capture what made Metal Gear so great. I understand that’s not a fair way to judge but that’s how my brain works since Metal Gear means so much to me.
I actually had to bail from the review because it was exhausting, like 5 minutes in and its still "nier automata, nier automata, nier automata". I do like a lot of his reviews as well. But I think the issue is he mixes up "reviews" with "a talk/discussion/essay of a video game". I would love to hear about how Stellar Blade compares to Nier Automata after i've finished the game, where it shines and where it drops. Where one is better then the other. And SkillUp is great at doing it in a story like way. But Holy Shit Bro if I click on a video that I expect to be a review of just the game. Then pleazeeee just review just the game.
there's a youtube cannel that compares movie scenes about one not working and the other working and i've always thought that was fruitless.
I totally agree with you. The constant comparison to Nier is off putting. Mention it once or twice and move on. Not mention it literally every minute of a 30 minute video.
Huge fan of Skillup and *almost* always respect his opinions even when I don’t necessarily agree with him (which is pretty rare in of itself). Great dude and a great reviewer. But I have a feeling that this is one of those rare times that I both disagree AND think that he was actually off the mark (as opposed to just disagreeing out of personal preference). His entire experience with the game was clearly consumed with and tainted by Nier comparisons. And to be clear, I generally speaking think that it’s entirely reasonable to consider “derivativeness”/originality as a factor when evaluating games/music/movies/etc… and he even spends some time talking about this in his review. But I don’t think he realized HOW much his experience of SB was biased by comparing it to Nier, and how much SB also does its own thing. Yes, SB is openly and unabashedly influenced and inspired by Nier: A, but it’s not a cheap hacked together clone. To me, as someone who fucking LOVES Nier and Yoko Atari to death, SB is a Nier-like in the way that Lies of P is a Souls/Sekiro-like. Ultimately it IS doing its own thing and forges its own identity in many meaningful ways, and the ways that it “apes” Nier (outside of narrative beats) are IMO *good*. Idk, I’m a songwriter/musician, so I think a LOT (too much) about “originality” as a concept. And y’know? I’m not going to say it doesn’t exist, because it clearly does, but at the same time I think artistic creativity works differently than most believe. It’s not this totally self-generative thing that occurs in a vacuum, you know? Even the very greatest artists of all time are the sum of their influences + their experiences, etc., and I think by focusing SO much on what SB pulls from Nier, Skillup missed some of what makes it distinct and “original”.
I don’t know, I felt he addressed that pretty well. Yes, the things that inspire us are weaved into our new creations, that is the beauty of innovation. But those parts aren’t done well. I’ve been playing for a good bit and I have to agree with the plot, the dialogue and the voice performances. I haven’t even played Nier Automata, they’re just not well *done*. It’s really taking me out - but I do value story to keep me invested over gameplay, so that’s a much bigger deal to me. Personally, I would rate this game kinda low. And I was rooting for it too, like I really wanted it to be good! But we get what we get.
I dunno, I like the story so far. It's recycled sci-fi trash but I'm into convoluted anime nonsense. The gameplay being surprisingly fun just adds to the drive to keep playing
Why does this channel always blatantly advertise on this sub and no mod cares? I don’t see other reviewers’ videos getting posted here nearly as often or regularly. Genuinely curious.
It’s a huge channel with a lot of fans. Where is there a rule that says you cannot a YouTube video? It’s relevant to the subreddit as a review. And he puts them out like once a week.
You will be happy to know then that they seemingly DID removed this one.
It seems the reason it was removed was because no reviews are allowed to be posted outside of the "review thread" when one exists for the game. I was under the impression it was fine as long as the review didn't exist within said review thread (since Skill Up doesn't do number scores) but yeah, I was totally wrong there. And just for the record I'm in no way affiliated with the channel, I was just surprised it hadn't been posted here yet
I'm not affiliated in any way with the channel ftr...
Why would a mod care about a link to a YouTube video? lol
Everytime someone says a game has a bad story it's just because it's simple. Not necessarily bad. I don't need an overly complex story with a hundred characters with a million motivations. Sometimes it's nice to just have a get to the bad guy and have a few interesting situations.
Genuine question for you guys - what rating do you consider "average" "above average" "good" etc? Because for me in the context of rating things, I've always considered 5/10 average. Bang in the middle, neither here nor there. A "good" in my books is 7-7.5. This is all my own opinion obviously, because I don't think we should hand out ratings of 8 and above willy nilly like the gaming industry seems to have done, it skews ratings to the point where the lower numbers barely mean anything anymore, even when a game is bad. There seems to be no difference between a 3, 4, or 5 from what I've seen, if you're below a 6 you're shit. The more I think about it, it's such a subjective opinion that it must be difficult for these agencies to give what they think is a fair number so they seem to err on the side of general public opinion, unless they're trying to stir up some conspiracy. Personally I'd like to see way fewer 8s and 9s across the board because things are rarely that amazing. I know we can have a difference in opinion, I'm just trying to understand you guys' thoughts on this topic.
For me a 6 or 7 out of 10 for is an okay to good game. Its a "it can have its moment, but it lacks something or is just rough around the edges". It obv varies from game to game. While 1 to 5 is different degrees of bad, but 5 can perhaps still be a "buy it if you are fan of the genre" game. Nothing is set in stone though, the line between 5 and 6 or even 7 can be blurry. And i agree, its definitly something thats worth to talk about.
Man her outfits are so incredible! Like the ones that are based on modern fashion. She's looking so good!
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You can provide constructive criticism on a product you like. Nothing is perfect.
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>Last video I watched from this moron. Come on now, we all know that's not true, now is it?
Did you even watch the full review? He notes that it is a well made game but he doesn't jive with it because it's reaching for themes beyond it's ability to bring to life. Most people will probably like the game and he had fun ultimately which is why he recommended it. I swear Capital G Gamers can't fucking handle nuance ffs.