Stellar Blade is out today, and fans can finally play the full game to see what all the fuss is about. If you didn't get a chance to try the demo or just wanted to go in fresh, it is worth knowing that the half-second input delay when parrying or dodging is a feature, not a bug, as the game's director recently explained.
Speaking to Japanese outlet 4Gamer (translated by Automaton, thanks, VGC), Shift Up's Kim Hyung-tae was asked about the half-second or so of input lag present in the demo, the slight delay between the player inputting a command and the character onscreen executing the manoeuvre. He claims this was a deliberate design choice made to keep the animation smooth:
"In Stellar Blade, there is about a 0.5-second lag between the moment you press the button and the moment the skill is visible on-screen. It's a time lag that can't be reduced any further. We made it so that the character's movement does not get triggered immediately upon button press, as we felt this would not fit the game's style of animation. Thus, we made it so that the skill itself is activated the moment you press the button, but the animation of the movement follows afterwards."
Kim added that if feedback from players shows that the delayed animations make the game materially more difficult, it would consider making changes in the future. This already appears to have been addressed in some sense in the game's day one update.