Topic: What PS5 Games Are You Currently Playing?

@JohnnyShoulder man, do I look like Eddie Murphy from the ‘80’s!?!?

@colonelkilgore No, more like Robert Duvall from the seventies.

I took a break from other gaming to satisfy my curiosity about Stellar Blade, and I came away from the demo with mixed feelings.

The positive:

• The setting is well done and since Nier Automata is one of my favorite games, the returning from space to an abandoned post-apocalyptic earth is something that I’ve always found interesting. Some of the dilapidated buildings also have a The Last of Us vibe, design-wise.
• The graphics are really nice. Special shout-out to the enemy design.
• The gameplay is fun. Eve is fun to play as, she moves so athletically and gracefully, very much like 2B, or Cal Kestis. The combat system is also really intricate and satisfying. We’re really getting to a point where the term “Souls-like” is becoming harder to define. I wouldn’t technically call this Souls-like, but it borrows a lot from the genre, if nothing else. The main thing it appears to lack is the loss of “souls” or XP currency upon death, but it has the ‘bonfire’ respawning checkpoints, intersecting paths with shortcuts, the timing based calculated gameplay, cheap hidden enemies around corners, the epic boss battles, and crushing difficulty. Speaking of…

The negative:

• The game is pretty difficult. I finally had to turn down the difficulty and even then I kept struggling. I just really don’t do well with parry mechanics and this relies heavily on that. I upgraded my dodge window but didn’t end up with enough skill points to upgrade the parry window, and presumably that helps. But still, I’m going to go down kicking and screaming against this trend now where every game has to rely on parrying. (Even after many hours of Spider-Man 2, I’ve still struggled with it there. I’ve had to adjust the difficulty sliders there too)
• The fan-service is quite strong. I’m okay with it being there (as it was in Nier), but it’s bordering on distracting, so I wish/hope there’s a way to tone it down a little. Part of my issue isn’t so much the latex, the jiggle, the high heels, the thicc design, the revealing outfits, or the Barbie dress-up nature to having customizable glasses, earrings, etc, but also how Eve’s character is the half-step between a realistic design and an anime design. The proportions of even her face are weird to me - exaggerated size of her eyes and small sharp triangular chin and dainty mouth, and the size of her head compared to her body… well it just looks borderline bizarre to me. The problem is Adam looks normal. He’s a handsome man who was also made to be attractive, but he looks like a real person, rather than an anime. I had a similar complaint about Jill’s anime face design in FF16 compare to Clive (and about every other character in the game) but of course it’s even more magnified here with Eve. I get it that Eastern developers are moving toward Western design elements and probably want to also keep some of their roots too, but in my opinion they ought to just go one direction or another.

It’s a lot to say based on a couple hours with a demo, but it has me both simultaneously excited for the game and also thinking that I’ll give it a pass. I’ll have to see how the final product reviews. Especially about the difficulty thing. I assume I could ‘get gud’ with enough time and practice but that’s not what I was hoping for this game.

@JohnnyShoulder exactly 🤣

@Th3solution as we’ve discussed previously, parrying does not come naturally to me neither… but I do find if I stick with something that requires it (like Sekiro it does click eventually. It’s whether the game appeals enough to get through that initial period of discomfort I guess.

@Th3solution I know you can make the open world Assassin's Creed games into parrying combat games as well if you choose to, and I'm not half bad at that in them, but that is discouraging to see that Stellar Blade is quite difficult. Granted Bayonetta can get difficult at times, I was hoping for something more along the lines of that than something closer to the Souls games.

I know you said it's not quite a Souls-like, but if the difficulty is along the same lines, I may end up cancelling my pre-order. I play games to have fun, not to want to throw my controller across the room. Or like I did once with my Series X, and that was slam the controller off of my bed and have it accidentally bounce all the way onto the floor. I may have to break down and try the demo, something I prefer not to do much anymore as I like to go into games blind (and the fact that the game appears on my profile twice then now).

@KilloWertz If it’s any consolation, there’s a message that pops up at the beginning of the demo which states that your progress and save file will transfer over to the full game when you boot it up. Not sure if that makes any difference or not for you.

Indeed the demo is just the beginning cinematic, the tutorial, a few cut scenes, then the starting area up to the first boss. Then after that, it unlocks a little trailer with some gameplay sections we haven’t seen before (for example there’s some gameplay scenes of gun combat too, so eventually Eve gets firearms too, which is cool) but it’s a quick series of teasers with minimal spoilage. Then there’s a boss challenge unlocked also which you can do and it has a lot of the upgrades unlocked so you can mess around with how it might feel to have access to those. But that’s where I got quite frustrated because the boss was really tough. I was able to beat the boss in the first area, but the boss challenge was too hard for me and after 3-4 deaths I gave up. I reckon there’s a degree of timing and muscle memory that will come along as you progress through the full game and so perhaps a mid-to-late game bosses won’t feel quite as hard when you get there… hopefully? In my defense I’ve recently played FF16 and SM2 which both have these combat ability wheels where you press a shoulder button and also a corresponding face button to trigger a special ability and this game does that too but it’s a different shoulder button and there’s was many times I was pressing R2 in the middle of combat when I was supposed to be pressing L1, so that would be reprogrammed in my brain eventually, given enough time.

The “story mode” difficulty did make it easier and I could make it through enemy encounters without depleting all my health items, but the bosses look tough. And the Souls style of “shall I use this save point to renew all my health and have to deal with everything respawning, or should I push forward with less health knowing I at least don’t have to beat those enemies again?” 🤔 The good thing about it is, unlike Souls bonfires, in this game the saving at a checkpoint and the sitting on the chair to renew health are two separate actions, so you can save there to respawn there upon death and not renew you health if you want, versus Souls games (and all Souls-likes that I recall atm) have the two actions connected, so you kind of have to respawn the enemies.

Another thing I noted was Stellar Blade does have other automatic checkpoints between save spots, because at one part when I died I respawned back to mid level checkpoint rather than all the way back at the save point, so that was nice.

Also, it’s possible there will be less backtracking in this game and it felt more linear, but it’s hard to say based on such a small sample size.

Like you I’m always annoyed at how the demo stays in your library so then you have two icons in there for one game, but I do think it’s probably worth your while to try it, since you may end up not clicking with the style of combat.

@colonelkilgore Yeah, I think it’s a matter of persistence. The timing in Stellar Blade feels different too. I’m usually not as trash at parry as I seemed to be in this game, but even in the practice arena I was having trouble with the practice dummy. I could parry maybe once out of 3 or 4 attacks. That didn’t bode well for a calm simple interaction in the practice setting so you can imagine in the heat of combat with multiple enemies that percentage went down further.

The dodge window is also quite narrow in the game. As a preferred dodger over parryer I couldn’t even rely on that very well either.

@Th3solution you’re not the only one who found it tough if that’s any consolation, I’ve watched a few streams of people who found the demo quite a challenge. Having said that though, they still seemed to feel really positive about the game, which I’m taking heart from

@colonelkilgore Yes, overall the demo showcased a really impressive looking game, especially for Shift Up’s first real attempt at a big console action game like this. Very impressive considering the team is fairly new to this. I was expecting something much less AAA and this appears to have all the signs of a big budget hit.

@Th3solution good to hear… and an impressive feat in and of itself.

I liked the demo a lot and while it's definitely not an easy game, it doesn't seem to take the difficulty to a level that would make it unenjoyable for me personally (tbf that rarely happens - I don't really enjoy From Soft games for different reasons altogether).
I actually found the bosses surprisingly easy, considering that a few basic enemies before made me use multiple healing items just for losing my focus for a second (this isn't meant to be a flex, just thought it was curious) - I really liked their animations though. Top notch stuff.
Anyway, I pre-ordered the game today.

@Th3solution It does not, as I always like to start from scratch even when there's a demo that allows that.

This will be a quicker reply than I thought it would be, but thanks for taking the time for the lengthy write-up. I will definitely check out the demo eventually. I'm concentrating solely on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth right now, but I'll try out the demo at some point since this not being what I initially expected it to be definitely has me on the fence. I don't want to totally dismiss it though.

As for dropping the difficulty, I do remember doing that for boss fights in Kena. I was fine most of the time with the regular encounters, but the boss fights would really kick my butt. I may end up doing the same thing here if it clicks. We'll see.

@Voltan Oh I hope you enjoy the game when it comes out. It does seem to be a game that seems to a large degree to stand on the shoulders of giants so to speak. With some clear inspirations from other games. Which I consider both good and bad in a way.

*I have not played the demo myself yet.

@KilloWertz No problem. I’ll be curious what you think. Although a very different game from Kena, this could be one of those that might need occasional difficulty adjustment at certain bosses. (Edit: I forgot to add that if you drop the difficulty during the game then you do have to restart at the last checkpoint. It’s a small thing, but it could become an issue if you want to do normal difficulty for the regular encounters and then just drop it for bosses)

It does also look like a game that could be exploited for level grinding to become OP, which is how I got through the three Souls games I’ve completed. The skills trees appear quite expansive so leveling the right way could make things much easier.

Anyways… Hopefully Rebirth is living up to expectations. 👍🏼

Still farming in DeS, going for the max build. 5 more levels of End to go and then 32 levels of Str, then it's complete, Vit & Magic already at 99 & 50, for those who've missed previous posts.

I have noticed boosting my End stat by 10 levels so far, up to 35 of 40, has enabled me to fast-roll in med armor, and also allowed me to swing my DBS at a faster speed.

@Th3solution Making it to a boss fight doesn't necessarily trigger a checkpoint?

Rebirth is for sure. I'm behind a lot of other people because I started it late due to real life getting in the way, but I figured it was best to start it when I was able to fully enjoy it (which was roughly 3 weeks ago). Ignoring the technical issues the game has in Performance mode since you are able to change the camera speed in the game, so the usual rough camera panning in 30 FPS isn't really noticeable, my only real complaint would be maybe there are actually too many mini-games in the game. Still loving the game regardless though.

@KilloWertz The demo has a checkpoint very close to the boss (just got to go up a couple flights of stairs) - obviously I can't be sure that will be the norm throughout the game but I wouldn't be surprised.

@KilloWertz Like @Voltan said, who knows in the full game but for the one boss in the demo, yes there’s a save station right before it.

I’m getting more excited to try Rebirth, but first Spider-Man 2 and FF Crisis Core later this year, so it might be a while before I get to hang out with Tifa on the beach.

@Th3solution Yeah, I'd definitely play Crisis Core first. You may already know everything from playing the games back in the day, but I never did (never finished the original VII), so I was glad I played Crisis Core.

Tifa on the beach... I kept it PG-13 and went with the actual clothes outfit for her and Aerith on the beach. I apologize to all of the men out there.