ScuzzBlog: Diaries June 2025 Entry 19th June 2025: Post 1: Stellar Blade - NG++ and now Nikke DLC. Stellar Blade - NG++ and now Nikke DLC. Been a while since I last made a post and this has been due in the main to me playing on the SONY PlayStation 5 and more specifically at the mercy of one Stellar Blade. Having played the game now to an extreme where I have completed the story three times, leveled six characters, completed all quests and acquired all outfits in the game, I thought it was about time I posted my thoughts. This game has been on my radar for over four years. Originally titled Project Eve it very much had the vibe of another Nier Automata. My concern about the game is that it featured a rather scantily clad shapely young female and given the current trends to be less overtly sexy I sensed it would have gotten modified somewhat before release. Fortunately Eve managed to escape too much censorship and released very much as the character I had drooled over in the demo. For me I am a gamer with simple likes, and this generally revolves around a good story, following the experiences of an adventurer that explores and develops game skills along the way. A traditional Lara Croft fits the bill, though only one prior to Crystal Dynamics destroyed the franchise. Anyhoo what is Stellar Blade. Eve is the lone survivor of the 7th Airborne squad that attempts to retake earth from the Naytiba. During an opening scene she joins up with Tachy why sadly is killed by an 'Alpha Naytiba'. Eve fortunately is rescued by Adam who is human and has a Tetrapod flying ship which carries them around from location to location. Tachy, whilst sadly getting truly gutted by the alpha Natibia turns up later as a boss fight and has her skills incorporated into your own. There are lots of references to other fictional characters and such and I am surprised the makers haven't been called to task over some subject matter. Eve is referenced to as Angel throughout the story which from my understanding is a nod to Final Fantasy Lightning Angel of Valhalla and even Rita Vrataski in Edge of Tomorrow fighting with a sword against alien opposition taking over the earth. Other themes include Nier Automata, The Matrix with Orcle 'Oracle', Xion 'Zion' and telephones for traveling. There is visual aspects from Xenosaga which I relate to. The Yorha crossover got the support of Nier Creator Yoko Taro, who endorsed the game to the point of incorporating 2B nano suits into the game that can be obtained by a visiting Emil from the Nier games roaming the Grand Desert and the Wastelands. OK to the plot. Human kind lost the last great battle with Naytiba monsters and were ejected from the planet. Story goes that the human race were driven into body enhancing facilities that turned them into monsters that eventually ejected the robotic androids of Eidos to colonies in space under the guidance of Mother Sphere. The story goes that this guy called Raphael Marks created this breed to advanced sentients. Sadly Mother Sphere goes rogue and actually viewed the remaining humans is inferior and destroyed them. The remaining android forces are called Andro Eidos and only late in the game does Eve discover she's actually not human at all. Bonkers. OK like I say Eve Angel gets ferried around by Adam and later Lily in the Tetrapod which is a nod to the Nebuchadnezzar in Matrix. Then Adam and or Lily travel in drone form scanning and advising and also converting into a high powered gun. Her aim is to gather four alpha cores so she can enter the nest and destroy the Elder Natiba. Fight mechanics. Whilst being the star feature of the game they are a little tricky to master. Button mashing is pointless. To succeed to have to precisely combat attacks with parry, dodge and block to generate beta energy so you can execute special moves. Most mobs and bosses have a healthy shield that has to be removed before you can do any damage. At first the battles are a little tricky and you certainly die a lot. However with a little mastery and earning of special skills you can start to enjoy the combat system. The game is based around one button accuracy. This applies to everything in game. There is a special training area, similar to Bayonetta to practice new skills. Boss fights are particularly testing and are a mark of difficulty that will drive you insane. Sadly the game has one major deficiency and that is in the platform execution. Eve is no Lara and her silly antics will have you pulling out your hair. She basically will walk of ledges to her doom. Completely pass through ladders and ropes and simply struggle with rockfalls on the ground that a child of three could step onto. The game relies on you completing some rather complex jump scenarios and I found these the most challenging part of the game. And only cus she just does her own thing at times. The quests are easy enough to complete and the game has you collecting all kinds of things to complete tasks. The amount of nano suits in the game is incredible if you like dressing your Eve up. Warning, some of the outfits are a little revealing. The game starts hard and then slowly gets easier. Having completed the game you are gifted with NG+ which lets you keep all that you acquired through the first game and carry over into the second. Sadly by the time you finish the second game you will have done everything in game and have nothing else to do. I just completed Clydes fishing challenge to catch every fish in the game from various locations and that gifted me the last nano suit. Its quite amusing that Eve thought her reward for completing the fishing challenge would be new fishing gear or sonar. She is quite insulted to discover that Clyde gave her a skimpy bathing suit as reward and she half suggests he is a perv for doing as such. Interestingly if you look at Eve too much in game she will give you the dead eye. If she is wearing her Yorha garb she will actually kick you. Sadly the story is pretty poor and Eve turned out to be very boring. The plot has more holes than a 'thing with lots of holes' in it. A lot of what you do serves no purpose what so ever. She continues to amaze collecting a vast store of items and yet hides them somewhere on the most scanty of outfits. In terms of replayability there is none after the second play through. I did it three times and also started another user. The last encounter with the final boss I chose to continue at the end and fight him again as I had nothing left to do. Stellar Blade is a good game. It also represents a game that I fear may be the last of its kind. The world no longer values attractive shapely young women with curvy rears and long flowing pony tails. I may have just reached the end of my journey. As for the PS5 it managed to crash twice and of late spew out garbled sound which forced me to reboot. I wasn't impressed with the controller. They moved the buttons a fraction and they conflict for me with the thumbstick. And they are still insisting on having these two stupid buttons on the top when they could be much more easily accessed from switches below. The menu changes in this game were over complicated and the PS5 didn't handle the access very well. Anyhoo the game has now been released through Steam on PC and so is now being butchered by the mod brigade. I guess it was worth the four year wait but given I haven't seen another game on the horizon I may just have to go all the way back and fire up Manic Miner and start all over again. UPDATE: I have now progressed to playthrough NG++ on two user accounts and with the release of Nikke DLC latest update I get another 25 nano suits to go find. It never ends. Good fun though. Stellar Blade - NG++ and now Nikke DLC.

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Last updated 19th June 2025

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