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I thought it was "Anime girls operating heavy military hardware vs. Giant monsters that are a byproduct and/or representation of the darkest excesses of the human intellect"
Just so you know, most men wouldn't prefer being a hot woman. I mean, maybe as a joke for 5 minutes, but their ideal body would still be male. If you have thought like this as a man, chances are you aren't a man at all, but a trans woman. I'd advise you to check it out, you'll be surprised by how good modern medicine is at making you into a hot girl with a big bum.
@@OccasionalGoof Just because those are different people doesn't mean they don't have things in common. Like republicans not talking about what their pastors are up to and anime nerds insisting that the fact she's 1000 years old in the lore is really significant and absolutely doesn't cover any moral issues whatsoever.
"It's not like the Bayonetta thing where the flamboyant personality of the protagonist is expressed through the medium of large bottom gyrations." Okay, that is sheer genius.
I mean, to be honest, as far as the shit-flinging about this game, this is what people kept bringing up about Bayo and Hades. I don't know if it justified any humongous moral high-ground, but there really is a difference at least.
I wish more games would approach sex appeal in regards to character design in the same way Bayonetta did instead of doing the anime thing of sticking a 12 y/o in a metal bikini
I dunno if there really needs to be a moral high ground even, if we assume sexy bodies depicted in games are morally neutral. It boils down to the difference between "fun and funny, tells me something about them" and "that sure is a body you have there". Which is more a judgement of storytelling quality.
@@torreykat I think that that was pretty much the point Yahtzee was making. Both Bayonetta and Stellar Blade have protagonists that are eye candy, its just that in one case (Bayonetta) the creators put in the effort to also make their character original and stand out, both visually and in terms of personality. Even people who have never played Bayonetta (like myself) instantly recognize her. Stellar Blade's heroine is just Anime Cut-Out Girl Serial No. 37609.
@@FredCDobbs-rd5wi One thing a friend of me recently reminded me of though is that Bayo absolutely got a TON of pushback at the time of its release about her seuxalization. And I almost kind of forgot about that give how people kind of embrace her nowadays.
@@dubstepbee6892 honestly just from looking at a few clips you can tell it is Temu Nier. Everything from the music to the flashy action to the character design screams Nier, just with maybe half the depth, if we're being generous.
Story-wise, Stellar Blade has brain damage. Gameplay-wise, Nier Automata was straight-up lobotomised. Nier has some of my least favourite hack n' slash gameplay. It's so basic and undercooked.
Yahtzee makes a good point about “wearing” an improbably sexy body. Reminds me of that one post about cyberpunk creating killer hips and pouty lips, where the two cyberpunk genders are “sex: yes” and “tank.” You either make yourself impossibly sexy, perhaps even to a genuinely surreal degree, or you bolt Dr. Octopus tentacles to yer back and go full adeptus mechanicus.
@@WarriorCicada To quote Manly Guys - Genji - "When you rebuild me as a cyborg, I want to have a really great butt!" After cyberization - Genji - "It looks pretty good. But it's no Jet Stream Sam Butt." Mercy - "That's because his butt isn't the cyborg part. Sam earned that butt."
It was kind of expected given the company behind the game is also in hot water for advertising borderline pornographic content to children on youtube, frequently, so they dont exactly have the best track record.
You know what one of my favorite games of the 7th generation was...Lollipop Chainsaw. Not because it's some grand world changing masterpiece or anything but because it is to me the quintisential example of how to properly do theming and stylization of your videogame. Not one...not even for a second...there's not even an attempt for Lollipop Chainsaw to take itself even remotely seriously. In the slightest and why is that? Because the protagonist is a chainsaw weilding blonde bimbo cheerleader with the literral head of her former boyfriend hanging from a holster close to her ass. And it works. It works flawlessly. The protagonist looks ridiculous because the entire game is fucking ridiculous. In contrast, while Eve is very much attractive and some of her outfits are downright sublime, i just couldn't help but be utterly distracted by just how fundamentally different she looked in comparisson to literally everyone else in Stellar Blade, even the other sexualized female characters. It would be the equivalent of the Doom Marine being the protagonist in Pikmin. What's more, the tone of Stellar Blade is actually rather somber and serious, meanwhile you have eve strutting around like an Amsterdam stripper while all this suffering is around her...like the two styles just don't connect to each other TLDR: Stellar Blade doesn't have the balls to be actually sexy
Well said they could take a page from Nier Automata in making a sexualized main character and actually make her look and fit right in with the game's serious tone. This one just looks like one of those fake korean mobile games that rips off from established titles
@@shawklan27 Nier is really clever in this regard, weaving sex and violence together. The game almost equates them; not to spoil anything, but it very cleverly censors a key phrase so that you think it's sexual, but it is very violent.
I mean, she looks different because she’s an assault android and most of the other npcs are just regular people. It fits just fine. By your logic 2B doesnt fit because she’s a human looking android but is surrounded by a bunch of old basic looking robots. Also, how does Eve dressing sexy in a somber world not fit but 2B doing the exact same thing does? Lol. If anything Eve’s base outfit looks more fitting as a futuristic body suit for a combat android compared to 2B’s base outfit being a frilly dress.
I think the devs appropriately made the game not require too much brain power, as many players will likely be experiencing reduced blood flow to their brain
try playing the game with "no damage & no heal" challenge, then you'll apreciate it But yeah, design, theme & art direction is kinda messy, some good or bad Eve could have better face for example
I know, right? I've been trying to figure this out the whole time. Specifically, I just wanted to know the game structure: Is it standard hack and slash game linear hallways only, or open exploration, or what? That's a more subtle aspect of the game that brief combat clips simply don't answer, and nobody seems to discuss stuff like that in the coverage at all. I ask because I like hack and slash combat, but HATE the linear, forward only hallways world design that style of combat is always, always paired with. So if we finally got a hack and slash game with a more open and exploration-friendly world design, I'm far more interested. If this is another Metal Gear Rising Revengeance situation, for example, where really good combat is ruined by being set in a short and linear roller coaster ride game structure, then I'm in no hurry at all. It's impossible for Eve to be sexy enough to make up for how done I am with ghost train ride, practically on rails game structure.
@@Alloveck it has a generous open world environment with some linear segments where the plot progresses. Very similar to Nier Automata if you played that
Look, I loved Lies of P as much as the next fella, so I think we can all agree that game would've been drastically less fun if it hadn't let us dress up our pretty anime boy in the silliest little outfits possible.
I think it'd be *slightly* less enjoyable without the costumes. Rest of the game pretty much holds up, so long as you don't look too hard at the details of the storyline and setting.
I don't recall ever messing with any costume options, but the look of the thing certainly mattered. It would have been much poorer with the same mechanics but without the grotesque contrast of your porcelain twink squaring up against a finger puppet of a bishop growing like a scorpion tail from sort of a bipedal frog monster.
I'm just happy to see more Korean studios developing something that isn't a mobile game. Lies of P started the trend, Stellar Blade is continuing it, and I can't wait to see more.
Between grindfest MMOs, Bayonetta with brain damage and "Bloodborne with Timothee Chalamet", the Korean game industry really isn't making me yearn for more, lol.
@@_furydance8890 Eventually. They made Library of Ruina after Lobotomy, and it was just re-released on Switch. But, more to the point, Limbus is barely a gacha in that you can (and should) just grind for everything like in conventional free-to-play games. It'd be fairer to ding them for perpetuating the Korean grind-a-thon game design philosophy
I wasn’t disappointed. This game was being made by the Nikke guys so I knew exactly what the focus was going to be. Hell I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets retconned into the Nikke universe.
@@zigslotheon yes but with south Korean gender politics where young men are constantly shit on by the older people incharge and women arnt treated like humans
Something I realized playing the Demo for Stellar Blade is that 10 years ago it would be a comfy cult classic type of game. Not regarded as outstanding but charming in its combination of earnestness, goofy fan service, and some unique design choices. I also realized that 10 years ago Eve's commander would have been the main character, the elite soldier who survived when all the standard soldiers died. I think I would have liked that better, Eve is written as the naive/pure rookie of her squad, but is also basically a robot who doesn't understand why people would want things like books. With the commander it feels like her character would be intentionally juxtaposing how serious-minded/no-nonsense she is with the inherit goofiness of having her fight flying squids while dressed as a bunnygirl.
I haven't played Bullet Witch which may be loosely comparable for that time period but I think we'd still have her as the lead and that this game has missteps which make it difficult to place in an decade as a AAA game. Devil May Cry and Bayonetta in the 00s. Most of PlatinumGames catalogue in the 2010s... I won't cut it slack but it feels like a first AAA console game as it effectively is. Loosely grabbing from a lot of influences with only so much cohesion.
I've just realized something: your description of what could have been sounds like what would happen if they went and turned NIKKE into a hack and slash, and somehow, what Yahtzee describes sounds also like NIKKE turned into a hack and slash, but without the player as the commander in game.
She doesn’t understand why people would want books because this is her first time being on earth and where she comes from books don’t exist because technology has advanced to everything just being data. Its not because she’s “a robot”.
if it was made 10 years ago it would have been forgotten besides maybe for a couple dozen people that would remember it fondly. and Josh Strife probably would make a video about it in the "was it good?" series, getting to a conclusion that it had really good gameplay for the time but overal didn't have much to offer. ok... maybe 15 years ago, 10 years ago is too early.
Bloodborne released almost 10 years ago and feels more complete, Stellar Blade reminds me a lot of the PS3/360 era hack n 'slashes like Darksiders, Ninja Gaiden's, DmC and such, missed potentials and all
This is definitely why Bayonetta succeeded where others didn’t, she knew she was hot and played off of that, having the character be hot without them knowing makes it out of place.
It also helps the fact that the entirety of Bayonetta, even in its most serious moments, is campy as shit. It rarely if ever takes itself seriously so Bayonetta's over the top sexualised presentation fits in the world. Meanwhile Stellar Blade is a really serious game about an apocalyptic scenario and Eve is walking around like she's on Dragrace. The styles clash significantly
Bayo's personality is a huge selling point, it is over the top. Where god of war(og) is over the top mad, DMC is over the top edge, bayo is over the top sexuality. Most of what she says is an innuendo, and its amazing. It knows what it is and embraces the batshit craziness in strides. Also helps that it really is a great game mechanically. As a big fan of the combo based character action genre, which is certainly a pretty starved genre for new titles, bayo is a great game even removing all personality from it. It plays incredibly clean, combos are branching and flow together, there is a good pool of enemies and weapon types to make it diverse enough without being a game focused on builds. Bayo wouldnt be what it is without its characters, bayo enzo and rodin have such a fun dynamic, but i still think itd be regarded as a great game in the genre on its mechanical merits.
I mean tbf. If everyone else is fucking hot, it would kinda be 'business as usual' after awhile. Kind of a 'If everyone is Super, no one is' situation.
@@RaxusXeronos But then why would you choose that form if you didn't register internally the reasons why such a form is subjectively preferable. The excuse Yahtzee accepted was that everyone looks the way they want to. Why did she want to look like that if she doesn't know it's attractive.
these days whenever there's some silly internet boxing match over a product, i assume it's a guerilla marketing campaign and spend my energy on something else. even when it's not a guerilla marketing campaign, with this strategy you win
@@danielgrezda3339Honestly, the gameplay really is the only non-sexy thing it has going for it. In all other regards, it feels like "Nier at home," largely because Sony is as sick of waiting for Automata 2 as we all are at this point.
Yeah at this point I see the internet as the containment protocol for whatever SCP phenomenon modern political discourse has become. I watch butterflies outside now. Its pretty rad. Everyone should do it.
Honestly, I think that 2:47 perhaps describes the problem with the sexual content really well. If you have a character whose sex appeal is looped into the character in some fashion like Bayonetta and her over-the-top Devil-May-Care Dominatrix attitude and Infernal Origins in the way that she wears a skintight bodysuit made from her own hair and uses Vogue Dancing to summon Demons, or something like Nier Automata where the sexual aspects don't do that much for the character specifically, but the whole world is so deep and weird that it just becomes another piece of the world: You can get away with a lot more than you can if your protagonist is a generic stoic practical badass.
@@thecraftsman24816 In a way. Yea. I think it's a bit more complicated than just "Write a good character", but at the same time, if it actually makes some amount of sense for the character (or like Nier, the whole story has the right kind of je ne sais quoi) then the criticism has less power on deeper inspection.
@@falgalhutkinsmarzcal3962 Admittedly without playing Nier myself, I can't talk too much about how deep it is... but the difference is that it managed to actually *work* well enough to make it seem profound, whether it truly is or is not.
@@falgalhutkinsmarzcal3962 Presumably a good portion of the game's players, seeing as yahtzee's description of stellar blade's narrative as "If Nier Automota had a traumatic brain injury that reduced its IQ by an entire digit, killed every thought in its head, and made it pathologically fixated on big bums. Moreso I mean." is a critique that can genuinely make sense as a shorthand for how ineffective Stellar Blade's narrative is.
At least it finally has a resolution of: A) being generic hack n slash B) Copycatted Nier: Automata's homework, barely scraping by with a passing grade C) We have Nier: Tis say of thee at home A game based on another concept can only get by for so long. Even with plenty of reviews. If it lacks identity, or even comes up in recommended games years later. It's pretty much a fart in the wind. Majority of the time, it's usually Nier: Tomato that is usually the recommended nutritional supplement. Because it has that bizarre idea, and its audience even though divided on wtf it was about (myself included) Also if it's not your cup of tea, or interest, that's fine. Even though I played through Automata, I had mixed feelings after seeing the actual ending. I did not enjoy the ride or journey. I felt numb, bitter. Felt like I wasted my time.
@@kadosho02 Funny thing about NierA is that it copied it's own homework. Every theme explored in NierA was already done better in Gestalt/Replicant previously. Stellar Blade is a copy of a copy but I still enjoyed it. With a Steam library full of cerebral "existential" games, it's nice to play a game sometimes that's just trying to be a fun way to waste a few hours. Instead of redefining the genre or whatever.
The discourse now is just the people who were frothing at the mouths on this game's behalf are currently screaming CENSORSHIP over a bra on one of the costumes. I don't even think there was any real "feminist blowback" in the first place.
i can respect yahtzee's honest review of stellar blade, it's so refreshing over the faux-criticisms floating all around about this game so thank you, truly
There's plenty of original anime out there, it's just not what gets popularized with That Kind Of Weeb. Actually there seems to be something of a trend lately towards much more energetic, fleshed-out, non-doormat female characters even in male-oriented anime lately, which is nice to see.
even though you've clearly spelled out that last one, I cant spell it neither pronounce it.......lets see what google says it means.....Copy paste FTW !
You know you can do "To Catch a Predator" stuff without involving real children right? You can use adult pretending to be children, if anything is kinda fuck up to use real children as bait
I find the plot funny because shift up also make the mobile game "Nikke: Goddess of victory" and the plot for that is pretty much identical when you describe it
I feel like that's overstating it. "The newest thing that media hypes up as having a controversy that people are actually concerned about" seems more akin this time. Cause the there seems to be a lot of people mad that other people are mad at stellar blade for being sexy, but the examples they're pointing to of media demonizing it amount to "media saying there's a controversy, using citing a single tweet or something" and "media saying that they tried to cover boring character design with sexiness, it didn't work".
I didn't know it was possible to love and admire Yahtzee more than I already did! But now I love him even more for the reference to the Labyrinth of Pan!
not everything has to be a masterpiece, sometimes just being enjoyable is enough. like fast food. and stellar blade, much like burger king, promises a good time and big buns.
I don't know, for me a video game almost does have to be a masterpiece for me to play it. I don't have all that much time for video games anymore, and there are quite a lot of truly incredible games out there. Why would I play a moderately enjoyable 6/10 game when I could be playing one of the dozen masterpieces that have come out in the last 2 years that I still haven't gotten around to?
You’re not wrong, but still what flaws make a game mediocre can still bring it down and at the end of the day Yahtz is a critic so he criticizes these flaws, If you Enjoy Stellar Blade than by all means do! And this applies generally to almost all kinds of stuff, People these days just assume they either have to be extremely on either one end or the other of a thing or stay on the center and preach bullshit to both sides (like what I’m doing now lol) when there exists points on both sides rather than Extreme 1 or 2.
@@piperwalton I dunno, why would you? Nobody's forcing you, I certainly wasn't, so what's the issue? Edit: besides, who said objective quality is directly proportional to subjective enjoyment? I sure as hell had more fun with Arcanum than Bg3 when it comes to fantasy Crpg's even if the latter is objectively better hands down. Just because stellar blade is objectively a nier knockoff doesn't stop it from entertaining me in ways nier didn't.
@@SimuLord then probably don't look for beef at Wendy's. The marketing and demo was clear on what audience it's trying to cater to. The only question is whether or not you're a part of that audience, then spend/save your money accordingly.
@@thatmonkemanzelinki2185 it also doesn’t help that it’s being sold for a full premium price. If the expectation is simply adequate then there are plenty of games right now you can buy for less than $5 that offer a similar experience. Or you can just buy Nier Automata: a game with a sexy protagonist that actually has an engaging story. There’s just too many games right now that I find it kind of baffling that anyone is giving this attention. And I get the feeling that if it wasn’t for this “controversy” than no one really would.
0:24 it was actually the reverse this time. The biggest moral panic is that one of the costumes put on some clothing. Keep in mind she still has costumes that amount to Pasties, but her wearing a lace bra in that one costume was just so oppressive.
For a first major outing from shift up I think they nailed a lot. As a fan of the ridiculous, I had a good time with this game. Good combat, TONS of outfits and the silly can collecting was actually pretty enjoyable being tied to their own little puzzles more often than not. I like my Clouds and my Squalls...so Eve's personality didn't bug me, but the writing definitely needs a lil work. 7-8/10 the music, outfits, and combat do a lotta heavy lifting for me. Excited to see what they do in the future!
If people keep praising them for the wrong reason they can't rise to improve all that is average about the game. And that's the real damage the fanbase is doing by swooning over the character model and flooding the reddit and forums with talks of how sexy their doll is.
@@arenkai While I agree that they should take the fans complimenting them with a grain of salt, the people swooning over Eve are the fanbase they wanted. Again, look at Nikke. Shift Up isn't trying to reinvent the wheel, they just want to make games with good action and attractive women. For a first outing into the console game space, from a Korean studio no less, I think all of the praise is well-deserved. While I do agree with nearly every criticism levied at this game, bigger studios have done far worse and got criticized a lot less. People honestly don't realize how alien the concept of a non-mobile game is in South Korea and I am glad to see that changing. I'm sick of mobile games.
A fan of the ridiculous, you say? May i recommend Cookie Cutter from 2023 to you? And mayhaps the likes of My Familiar, Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip and, to an extend, the Zeno Clash series as well? That one had a recent prequel in 2023 in Clash: Artifacts of Chaos.
The thing thats refreshing here is that it's exactly what you expect. It's literally what people imagine the average ps2 game in 2024 would look and play like.
I don't have the patience for a full-on Souls-like experience, so I'm enjoying Stellar Blade as an unambitious dress-up-with-a-plasma-gun game. I play other things when I want an in-depth experience, but Stellar Blade has been good for some shiny soothing ultraviolence to unwind after work. Explore, eviscerate, explore, eviscerate, strike a pose, etc.
I don't think it was half of the Internet vs half the other Internet. Im pretty sure it was a very small number of people saying she was over sexualized, a larger number of people overblowing how many people said anything about Stella Blade at all, follow by a majority of the Internet making fun of the second group when they lost their shit because one of the costumes made small changes even though other costumes in the game were still more revealing.
Yeah. I hate when people go like this was an equal in the levels of outrage on both sides. It was literally just few articles and some random people’s comments about it. Heck the IGN France article that people went crazy on said that Eve seemed like bland, doll like in both design and character. WHICH ENDED UP BEING TRUE. Ahhhh 😂. This culture war stuff is getting exhausting.
Social media works by presenting you a view of reality where you only see the biggest morons out of the people who disagree with you. The point is to polarise every debate because then you have more Engagement and more ad money.
I'm gonna disagree with that ending sentiment, Yahtz. I feel we should keep anyone with an Anya bodypillow as far away from children as humanly possible.
I love it when Yahtzee actually makes a profound observation about “games these days”, like how most are just some kind of excuse for playing dress up.
To be honest, the game looks fun as hell. like a middle ground between Sekiro and Devil May Cry. I'm looking forward to playing the inevitable PC port. The mods alone would make this a wild time. And yes, eve is hawt AF. For DLC characters the makers should reach out to other Korean Models. Imagine characters based off Sunbiki's or Babbyang's body scans?
I like melancholic athmosphere od Stellar Blade. Is it great? No. Is it fun for the time it requires me to fininsh it? Yes. Gameplay is good, IU is good, quality of life things are good (way better than AAA games of AAA developers supported by AAA publishers). No microtransactions, no bs, just how I like it.
Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is a solid one too. Not as strong on the UI part but gameplay is a good, almost God Hand-like 3D fighter/beat-em-up in a colorful prehistoric monster world full of weird freaks and nary a human.
Kinda disagree with him on the combat and guns being useless. I was actually surprised at how useful they are, since normally they're tacked on and barely do damage that make them worth it. I thought the section early on that forced you to use them for a while was a smart way to make players aware of them. Combat also successfully meshes Sekiro and DMC in some halfway point which feels good to play, so it just sounds like he's kind of bored of character action games in general at this point, since this one does it really well. Otherwise, I agree about the plot being not great, the sidequests feeling tacked on besides a handful that flesh characters out, and the English dub being awful. All in all, a great first console debut for Shift-up, certainly better than I think a lot were expecting.
yahtzee really needs to put his name up on these more prominently or something...I had to do some digging after realising the ZP series stopped. So happy to be here back watching the only reason i was ever subscribed to The Escapist. Keep up the amazing work that's been such a staple in my life for so long 🥰
@@daishoryujin95 I dislike the eggshell meme, feels oddly pressuring. There's loads of media regarding changing into the opposite sex, or people making female characters, sometimes it's indicative of a personality that feels more comfortable into another kind of body but other times it's just curiosity. Wank-bait. Whatever.
my primary criticism of those universes is that they're not absolutely lousy with furries. You CANNOT tell me that we wouldn't be seeing robo-werewolves carpeting the landscape, given how densely tech fields irl are packed with furries
I think the plot would be drastically different if there were robofurries. It would just shift the themes to what it meant to be human in a furry v robo chick war.
Finally! Someone actually talked about whether the game was any good. All I've seen for months is people discussing TnA like that makes a good video game and is just an easy way to make sales and free advertising
Maybe because we have been starved of appealing games that having an attractive game in the first place is enough to be a "good" game. It's only after that point that we need to start talking about writing which frankly Stellar Blade is pretty solid again compared to the bulk of the garbage the market has been flooded with.
@@Hybris51129omg just shut up already. Your character model doesn't need to be hot and there's literally hundreds of games with hot player characters already
I was never that interested because all the talk about the game was about the sexual shit but conspicuous by its absence from the praise people gave was anyone saying it was a good game. Seems like my instinct was right, and that pretty much is the only thing it has going for it
Tends to be the case with games that get caught up in culture war junk. It's more about the "symbol" of it to them, then it actually is about the game itself. I'm enjoying the gameplay for what it is, but yea, as Yahtzee said, I agree it's extremely bland... to the point I'm planning an Unpacked video just to complain about games using deserts and sci-fi labs at some point lol.
@@SecondWindGroup I'll be looking forward to that, you can make those interesting but the vast majority of the time they do the bare minimum. Gimme some juicy story telling about what happened in that lab, rather than just sci-fi monsters and random test tubes. Sure deserts are mostly empty irl but that's no excuse to make your desert level empty too.
Okay New Rule: If Discussions surrounding a game are all about the games nature or some small aspect of it, and virtually no one is talking about the game itself or how it plays...... That's probably a red flag
Yeah the only thing I'd heard about this game was how a certain section of the internet took it as proof that they were right about every other game with a female protagonist being bad because this one does have her ass out. The only thing I'd seen about it made me think I'd seen that exact outfit before in something like Blade & Soul or so.
I played the demo. It's a little Nier, a little Ninja Gaiden, and a smidge of Sekiro. If you like its combat and gameplay style, you'll enjoy it. If not, it'll be a boring slog. It's a fine, serviceable game, which is not a bad thing. But it's easily lost when there's vitriol in the discourse.
Somewhere on the internet floats a quote by yoko taro where he says stellar blade is better than his nier automata and we all know its because he thinks eve is slightly hotter than 2b
@@bcd32dok36 And he also likes to troll people. So you should just not get to worked up about anything he says. In a way, it's brilliant, he gets to advertise himself as a creator while keeping his true thoughts basically private by obfuscation.
Yeah it seems to me to be far less Nier Automata or Bayonetta and much more P.N.03, one that will be swiftly forgotten but for the small crowd of die-hard fans.
Even though I’m one of those “chimps” Yahtzee used as a metaphor, I do appreciate his viewpoint to basically sidestep that argument and talk about the game itself.
Stellar Blade pitch meeting: "I was thinking we could combine Nier and the Matrix" "Sounds like a good starting point, can't wait to see where it goes from there" "Riiiiiight.... Yeah.... Good talk..."
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You're telling me that it's not okay to be pathologically fixated on big bums?!?!? I'm calling my lawyer, Run DMC
@@My_Naginta Oh yeah? Well I'm calling MY lawyer, Sir Mix-a-Lot! (Haven't talked to him for a while.)
@@tubensalat1453 I can't believe how badly I dropped the ball there. Smh.
@@potterinhe11 Lol, come on mate, kids don't have big bums, I think she's safe.
I do appreciate Yahtzee acknowledging how the big divide in post-singularity society will be anime girls vs. heavy military hardware.
The Gundam Chads vs the anime cyborg virgins
I thought it was "Anime girls operating heavy military hardware vs. Giant monsters that are a byproduct and/or representation of the darkest excesses of the human intellect"
I mean, why bother with beauty when you could be Adam Smasher?
@@SidheKnightWe are NOT doing Darling in the Franxx again, I will not suffer another plot-swerve into a wall 😂
*coughs girls frontline/bakery girl*
🎶Light Attack, Heavy Attack, Parry Dodge Block! That's how we sing the melee combat rock!🎶
If you wanna test me, I'm sure you'll find
The things I teach ya, are sure to beat ya.
Nevertheless, you'll get a lesson from teacher
Someone needs to make this a full song.
Parappa: Kick, punch, turn around
0:45 vrchat proves yathtzee is right
come to think of it, there should be more furries, then.
Exactly what I was thinking. 80% of the population would be attractive women
and furries
@@alistokes2308 he already said attractive women
I thought the vast majority of vr chat was furries, with the second largest being anime girls
"Then yeah, most of us probably would be hot girls with big bums!"
What a hero. He says what we're all thinking.
You do know it's an option. HRT is a thing.
@@kerryannboyko4175 yeah but it's not a convenient thing and then you face all the discrimination, better wait for the dystopian technofuture
@@ScoffMathews Girls will wait out the dystopian technofuture before transitioning
Speak for yourself buddy. I am not making myself hot, I am turning myself into a fucking tank.
Just so you know, most men wouldn't prefer being a hot woman.
I mean, maybe as a joke for 5 minutes, but their ideal body would still be male.
If you have thought like this as a man, chances are you aren't a man at all, but a trans woman. I'd advise you to check it out, you'll be surprised by how good modern medicine is at making you into a hot girl with a big bum.
Yahtz I don't know if those two people should be left in a room together. Just a thought.
Yeah the aircon punchline was like the polar opposite of where I thought that setup was going
@@OccasionalGoof lmfao
@@OccasionalGoofwhat's the difference 😂
@@OccasionalGoof Just because those are different people doesn't mean they don't have things in common. Like republicans not talking about what their pastors are up to and anime nerds insisting that the fact she's 1000 years old in the lore is really significant and absolutely doesn't cover any moral issues whatsoever.
@@gwen9939 Well, the character on the body pillow definitely isn't 1000 years old, even if you're counting in binary
"It's not like the Bayonetta thing where the flamboyant personality of the protagonist is expressed through the medium of large bottom gyrations." Okay, that is sheer genius.
I mean, to be honest, as far as the shit-flinging about this game, this is what people kept bringing up about Bayo and Hades. I don't know if it justified any humongous moral high-ground, but there really is a difference at least.
I wish more games would approach sex appeal in regards to character design in the same way Bayonetta did instead of doing the anime thing of sticking a 12 y/o in a metal bikini
I dunno if there really needs to be a moral high ground even, if we assume sexy bodies depicted in games are morally neutral. It boils down to the difference between "fun and funny, tells me something about them" and "that sure is a body you have there". Which is more a judgement of storytelling quality.
@@torreykat I think that that was pretty much the point Yahtzee was making. Both Bayonetta and Stellar Blade have protagonists that are eye candy, its just that in one case (Bayonetta) the creators put in the effort to also make their character original and stand out, both visually and in terms of personality. Even people who have never played Bayonetta (like myself) instantly recognize her. Stellar Blade's heroine is just Anime Cut-Out Girl Serial No. 37609.
@@FredCDobbs-rd5wi One thing a friend of me recently reminded me of though is that Bayo absolutely got a TON of pushback at the time of its release about her seuxalization. And I almost kind of forgot about that give how people kind of embrace her nowadays.
"Nier Automata suffering from severe brain injuries" is perhaps the most fitting description I've ever heard for this game.
I mean Yahtzee did really make the game sound like Great Value Nier Automata
@@dubstepbee6892 Since no one else wants to talk about the actually gameplay, that's likely why.
@@dubstepbee6892 honestly just from looking at a few clips you can tell it is Temu Nier. Everything from the music to the flashy action to the character design screams Nier, just with maybe half the depth, if we're being generous.
@@link670 Shein Nier because the appeal is the dressing in trashy outfits.
Story-wise, Stellar Blade has brain damage. Gameplay-wise, Nier Automata was straight-up lobotomised.
Nier has some of my least favourite hack n' slash gameplay. It's so basic and undercooked.
Yahtzee makes a good point about “wearing” an improbably sexy body. Reminds me of that one post about cyberpunk creating killer hips and pouty lips, where the two cyberpunk genders are “sex: yes” and “tank.”
You either make yourself impossibly sexy, perhaps even to a genuinely surreal degree, or you bolt Dr. Octopus tentacles to yer back and go full adeptus mechanicus.
why not both? we can have cyborg catboys
@@aegisxor I think Raiden form MG: Rising fits the bill, he's a pretty, boy but also a scary looking killing machine at the same time
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me.
@@WarriorCicada To quote Manly Guys - Genji - "When you rebuild me as a cyborg, I want to have a really great butt!"
After cyberization - Genji - "It looks pretty good. But it's no Jet Stream Sam Butt."
Mercy - "That's because his butt isn't the cyborg part. Sam earned that butt."
Wow, that was 25% chill and 75% brutality. Missed this kind of review
It was kind of expected given the company behind the game is also in hot water for advertising borderline pornographic content to children on youtube, frequently, so they dont exactly have the best track record.
@@altoclefsukulele4325 Can confirm; Nikke's social media ads are exceptionally sexual for a game rated safe for under 16y/os.
@@altoclefsukulele4325 Its over for children... their lives ruined because they saw anime ass!!!!
@@altoclefsukulele4325 uh, what? Please explain, I've never heard about this before
@@altoclefsukulele4325 hold up big yikes, sony missed what now???
As an arachnophobic drummer who used to flail around in his garden shed and is bad at SL boss battles, thank you
so quirky!
Light attack, heavy attack, parry, dodge, block, *My Sharona!*
A classic line!
You know what one of my favorite games of the 7th generation was...Lollipop Chainsaw. Not because it's some grand world changing masterpiece or anything but because it is to me the quintisential example of how to properly do theming and stylization of your videogame. Not one...not even for a second...there's not even an attempt for Lollipop Chainsaw to take itself even remotely seriously. In the slightest and why is that? Because the protagonist is a chainsaw weilding blonde bimbo cheerleader with the literral head of her former boyfriend hanging from a holster close to her ass. And it works. It works flawlessly. The protagonist looks ridiculous because the entire game is fucking ridiculous.
In contrast, while Eve is very much attractive and some of her outfits are downright sublime, i just couldn't help but be utterly distracted by just how fundamentally different she looked in comparisson to literally everyone else in Stellar Blade, even the other sexualized female characters. It would be the equivalent of the Doom Marine being the protagonist in Pikmin. What's more, the tone of Stellar Blade is actually rather somber and serious, meanwhile you have eve strutting around like an Amsterdam stripper while all this suffering is around her...like the two styles just don't connect to each other
TLDR: Stellar Blade doesn't have the balls to be actually sexy
Thanks for putting those thoughts to words, good commenter! ^^
Well said they could take a page from Nier Automata in making a sexualized main character and actually make her look and fit right in with the game's serious tone. This one just looks like one of those fake korean mobile games that rips off from established titles
@@shawklan27 Nier is really clever in this regard, weaving sex and violence together. The game almost equates them; not to spoil anything, but it very cleverly censors a key phrase so that you think it's sexual, but it is very violent.
I mean, she looks different because she’s an assault android and most of the other npcs are just regular people.
It fits just fine. By your logic 2B doesnt fit because she’s a human looking android but is surrounded by a bunch of old basic looking robots.
Also, how does Eve dressing sexy in a somber world not fit but 2B doing the exact same thing does? Lol. If anything Eve’s base outfit looks more fitting as a futuristic body suit for a combat android compared to 2B’s base outfit being a frilly dress.
Based take. I think this is what Yahtzee was talking about with the Bayonetta thing too
Love the Bishop Desmond Tutu images thrown in.
That's Archbishop Tutu to you.
I think the devs appropriately made the game not require too much brain power, as many players will likely be experiencing reduced blood flow to their brain
Is there a one handed mode
@pooun435 No, but then again all my blood isn't in my brain right now.
@pooun435 But pornographer isn't interactive.
try playing the game with "no damage & no heal" challenge, then you'll apreciate it
But yeah, design, theme & art direction is kinda messy, some good or bad
Eve could have better face for example
@@MyNameIsBucket How long before "one handed mode" becomes an actual feature, I feel like it's disturbingly close to becoming reality
Almost spat my water when I saw the Anya body pillow
Finally, I can learn what this game’s actual genre and mechanics are
Hack and slash, almost no story, cute anime robots, still a fun way to waste time.
I know, right? I've been trying to figure this out the whole time. Specifically, I just wanted to know the game structure: Is it standard hack and slash game linear hallways only, or open exploration, or what? That's a more subtle aspect of the game that brief combat clips simply don't answer, and nobody seems to discuss stuff like that in the coverage at all.
I ask because I like hack and slash combat, but HATE the linear, forward only hallways world design that style of combat is always, always paired with. So if we finally got a hack and slash game with a more open and exploration-friendly world design, I'm far more interested. If this is another Metal Gear Rising Revengeance situation, for example, where really good combat is ruined by being set in a short and linear roller coaster ride game structure, then I'm in no hurry at all. It's impossible for Eve to be sexy enough to make up for how done I am with ghost train ride, practically on rails game structure.
@@Alloveck It’s both linear and open.
@@Seoul_Soldier I’m a girl and I enjoyed the story quite a lot. Tbh.
@@Alloveck it has a generous open world environment with some linear segments where the plot progresses. Very similar to Nier Automata if you played that
I am very disappointing that the main character name isn't Stella
The game was called 'Project Eve' while in development
Someone please tell me someone, at some point, says, "That's some stellar bladework!"
And then they stellar'd all over the place.
You truely are the stellar blade
@@AlmightyPolarBear "Stand back! I am beginning to stell!"
I’m honored to make a guest appearance in this episode
Best closing theme on on youtube. I listen to it all the way through EVERY time.
"Like me... Whacking a spider... On the block button." - you worked hard on that one
Look, I loved Lies of P as much as the next fella, so I think we can all agree that game would've been drastically less fun if it hadn't let us dress up our pretty anime boy in the silliest little outfits possible.
I like dudes
I can't disagree with you in the slightest
I think it'd be *slightly* less enjoyable without the costumes. Rest of the game pretty much holds up, so long as you don't look too hard at the details of the storyline and setting.
@@xiopia3940We can tell by your pfp
I don't recall ever messing with any costume options, but the look of the thing certainly mattered. It would have been much poorer with the same mechanics but without the grotesque contrast of your porcelain twink squaring up against a finger puppet of a bishop growing like a scorpion tail from sort of a bipedal frog monster.
I'm just happy to see more Korean studios developing something that isn't a mobile game. Lies of P started the trend, Stellar Blade is continuing it, and I can't wait to see more.
Can't wait for them to make FNaF mascot horror games but with anime girls.
At least then the creepy R34 will make marginally more sense.
Between grindfest MMOs, Bayonetta with brain damage and "Bloodborne with Timothee Chalamet", the Korean game industry really isn't making me yearn for more, lol.
Lobotomy corporation...
@@tmdiz4579they made a gacha mobile game afterwords.
@@_furydance8890 Eventually. They made Library of Ruina after Lobotomy, and it was just re-released on Switch. But, more to the point, Limbus is barely a gacha in that you can (and should) just grind for everything like in conventional free-to-play games. It'd be fairer to ding them for perpetuating the Korean grind-a-thon game design philosophy
I wasn’t disappointed. This game was being made by the Nikke guys so I knew exactly what the focus was going to be. Hell I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets retconned into the Nikke universe.
Nikke has an actually good plot though...
@@uberculexthe doujins have some good plot
@@uberculex you mean end of Za Warudo plot number 374,629?
Ohhh that explains a lot, it hadn't ocurred to me to check the dev studio.
@@zigslotheon yes but with south Korean gender politics where young men are constantly shit on by the older people incharge and women arnt treated like humans
Something I realized playing the Demo for Stellar Blade is that 10 years ago it would be a comfy cult classic type of game. Not regarded as outstanding but charming in its combination of earnestness, goofy fan service, and some unique design choices.
I also realized that 10 years ago Eve's commander would have been the main character, the elite soldier who survived when all the standard soldiers died.
I think I would have liked that better, Eve is written as the naive/pure rookie of her squad, but is also basically a robot who doesn't understand why people would want things like books.
With the commander it feels like her character would be intentionally juxtaposing how serious-minded/no-nonsense she is with the inherit goofiness of having her fight flying squids while dressed as a bunnygirl.
I haven't played Bullet Witch which may be loosely comparable for that time period but I think we'd still have her as the lead and that this game has missteps which make it difficult to place in an decade as a AAA game. Devil May Cry and Bayonetta in the 00s. Most of PlatinumGames catalogue in the 2010s...
I won't cut it slack but it feels like a first AAA console game as it effectively is. Loosely grabbing from a lot of influences with only so much cohesion.
I've just realized something: your description of what could have been sounds like what would happen if they went and turned NIKKE into a hack and slash, and somehow, what Yahtzee describes sounds also like NIKKE turned into a hack and slash, but without the player as the commander in game.
She doesn’t understand why people would want books because this is her first time being on earth and where she comes from books don’t exist because technology has advanced to everything just being data. Its not because she’s “a robot”.
if it was made 10 years ago it would have been forgotten besides maybe for a couple dozen people that would remember it fondly. and Josh Strife probably would make a video about it in the "was it good?" series, getting to a conclusion that it had really good gameplay for the time but overal didn't have much to offer. ok... maybe 15 years ago, 10 years ago is too early.
Bloodborne released almost 10 years ago and feels more complete, Stellar Blade reminds me a lot of the PS3/360 era hack n 'slashes like Darksiders, Ninja Gaiden's, DmC and such, missed potentials and all
Anya doesn't deserve that
That made me legit uncomfortable.
Yahtz brings the detail. For better and worse.
That was the most disturbing thing I ever saw on a Yahtzee video. I congratulate him, to be honest.
The internet spares no one as it turns out
Man, sounds like someone hasn't been on Pixiv lately. Hate to tell you bros, but she is FEATURED.
RANDOM DOCUMENTS AND PARRY DODGE BLOCK
WE FIND 'EM STUCK TO NOTICE BOARDS, WE SING THE MELEE ROCK
The Pan's Labyrinth joke had me howling. Somehow Yahtzee keeps getting funnier and funnier
This is definitely why Bayonetta succeeded where others didn’t, she knew she was hot and played off of that, having the character be hot without them knowing makes it out of place.
It also helps the fact that the entirety of Bayonetta, even in its most serious moments, is campy as shit. It rarely if ever takes itself seriously so Bayonetta's over the top sexualised presentation fits in the world. Meanwhile Stellar Blade is a really serious game about an apocalyptic scenario and Eve is walking around like she's on Dragrace. The styles clash significantly
Bayo's personality is a huge selling point, it is over the top. Where god of war(og) is over the top mad, DMC is over the top edge, bayo is over the top sexuality. Most of what she says is an innuendo, and its amazing. It knows what it is and embraces the batshit craziness in strides.
Also helps that it really is a great game mechanically. As a big fan of the combo based character action genre, which is certainly a pretty starved genre for new titles, bayo is a great game even removing all personality from it. It plays incredibly clean, combos are branching and flow together, there is a good pool of enemies and weapon types to make it diverse enough without being a game focused on builds.
Bayo wouldnt be what it is without its characters, bayo enzo and rodin have such a fun dynamic, but i still think itd be regarded as a great game in the genre on its mechanical merits.
I mean tbf. If everyone else is fucking hot, it would kinda be 'business as usual' after awhile. Kind of a 'If everyone is Super, no one is' situation.
Bayonetta is basically just Dante but with boobs. She was made to be fun and enjoy the action as much as the players.
@@RaxusXeronos But then why would you choose that form if you didn't register internally the reasons why such a form is subjectively preferable. The excuse Yahtzee accepted was that everyone looks the way they want to. Why did she want to look like that if she doesn't know it's attractive.
these days whenever there's some silly internet boxing match over a product, i assume it's a guerilla marketing campaign and spend my energy on something else. even when it's not a guerilla marketing campaign, with this strategy you win
People should learn to ignore the biweekly fad arguments on Twitter in general
Me: *sees title*
*sips coffee*
"Oh yeah, this should be good."
Edit: Could not have been more accurate.
The green background is waaay better than the red one.
Especially during summer!
Stellar Blade: you play it for the gameplay. Honest.
🤨
I ain't paying 70 bucks for that when I can have it better for free. I assume most people bought it for the gameplay .
@@danielgrezda3339Honestly, the gameplay really is the only non-sexy thing it has going for it. In all other regards, it feels like "Nier at home," largely because Sony is as sick of waiting for Automata 2 as we all are at this point.
Is it at least one handed gameplay?
@@danielgrezda3339 SFM Porn animators: Damn we're lowballing ourselves
That melee combat rock was genius and quite catchy yahtzee you artist you
0:57 I'm going to rewatch Pan's Labyrinth now. Thanks, Yahtzee.
Yeah at this point I see the internet as the containment protocol for whatever SCP phenomenon modern political discourse has become. I watch butterflies outside now. Its pretty rad. Everyone should do it.
@@doibantikov2486 I would too... If there were any of them left here.
Honestly, I think that 2:47 perhaps describes the problem with the sexual content really well. If you have a character whose sex appeal is looped into the character in some fashion like Bayonetta and her over-the-top Devil-May-Care Dominatrix attitude and Infernal Origins in the way that she wears a skintight bodysuit made from her own hair and uses Vogue Dancing to summon Demons, or something like Nier Automata where the sexual aspects don't do that much for the character specifically, but the whole world is so deep and weird that it just becomes another piece of the world: You can get away with a lot more than you can if your protagonist is a generic stoic practical badass.
Tldr: If you write a good character, you can do whatever you want.
@@thecraftsman24816 In a way. Yea. I think it's a bit more complicated than just "Write a good character", but at the same time, if it actually makes some amount of sense for the character (or like Nier, the whole story has the right kind of je ne sais quoi) then the criticism has less power on deeper inspection.
@@falgalhutkinsmarzcal3962 Tell me you didn't understand NieR:Automata without telling me you didn't understand NieR:Automata.
Try harder
@@falgalhutkinsmarzcal3962 Admittedly without playing Nier myself, I can't talk too much about how deep it is... but the difference is that it managed to actually *work* well enough to make it seem profound, whether it truly is or is not.
@@falgalhutkinsmarzcal3962 Presumably a good portion of the game's players, seeing as yahtzee's description of stellar blade's narrative as "If Nier Automota had a traumatic brain injury that reduced its IQ by an entire digit, killed every thought in its head, and made it pathologically fixated on big bums. Moreso I mean." is a critique that can genuinely make sense as a shorthand for how ineffective Stellar Blade's narrative is.
Ah, The game I only know the existence of because it’s discourse wouldn’t stop clogging up my Twitter timeline for weeks, we meet again.
At least it finally has a resolution of:
A) being generic hack n slash
B) Copycatted Nier: Automata's homework, barely scraping by with a passing grade
C) We have Nier: Tis say of thee at home
A game based on another concept can only get by for so long. Even with plenty of reviews. If it lacks identity, or even comes up in recommended games years later. It's pretty much a fart in the wind.
Majority of the time, it's usually Nier: Tomato that is usually the recommended nutritional supplement. Because it has that bizarre idea, and its audience even though divided on wtf it was about (myself included)
Also if it's not your cup of tea, or interest, that's fine. Even though I played through Automata, I had mixed feelings after seeing the actual ending.
I did not enjoy the ride or journey. I felt numb, bitter. Felt like I wasted my time.
@@kadosho02 Funny thing about NierA is that it copied it's own homework. Every theme explored in NierA was already done better in Gestalt/Replicant previously. Stellar Blade is a copy of a copy but I still enjoyed it. With a Steam library full of cerebral "existential" games, it's nice to play a game sometimes that's just trying to be a fun way to waste a few hours. Instead of redefining the genre or whatever.
@@Seoul_Soldier I have played the previous game as well. I wasn't that jazzed about them either
But yeah, rinse and repeat
I was moderately excited for this game.
Then the discourse started.
I am no longer interested.
The discourse now is just the people who were frothing at the mouths on this game's behalf are currently screaming CENSORSHIP over a bra on one of the costumes.
I don't even think there was any real "feminist blowback" in the first place.
Dinosaurs with road-signs for heads need to be more common in games.
This Way
i can respect yahtzee's honest review of stellar blade, it's so refreshing over the faux-criticisms floating all around about this game
so thank you, truly
huh considering some of Yahtz past rants on certain games this was surprisingly nice of him.
Really says something about anime that a plot and premise that cuckoo was considered cliché
It's funny, I played another Japanese action jrpg recently (Crimson Nexus) and the plot was pretty much that to a T.
When the goal is to aim for a certain demographic and you're too scared/greedy to try something truly different, all the weirdness starts being bland.
There's plenty of original anime out there, it's just not what gets popularized with That Kind Of Weeb.
Actually there seems to be something of a trend lately towards much more energetic, fleshed-out, non-doormat female characters even in male-oriented anime lately, which is nice to see.
I don't think 'post-apocalyptic world where the remnants of humanity are plagued by monsters' is in any way a 'cuckoo' premise.
@@cranapple3367what are you talking about, tsundere and genki types have been popular for decades
Just remember, "plot" is both a noun and an onomotopeia.
This is… wow. I applaud you
even though you've clearly spelled out that last one, I cant spell it neither pronounce it.......lets see what google says it means.....Copy paste FTW !
@@mozxz "on oh mott (rhymes with "caught") oh pea ah". Essentially, a sound effect word. "Zap" or "crunch" or "boing" would be some examples.
@@mozxz it’s actually spelt the wrong way. It’s onomatopoeia
@@mozxz "ftw!" is the sound this man made spitting out his drink when his AI girlfriend told him the definition.
Oh god, DO NOT bring those people together, unless in a To Catch a Predator type deal
Okay clearly, we all need to just take a seat
Okay clearly, we all need to just take a seat
You know you can do "To Catch a Predator" stuff without involving real children right? You can use adult pretending to be children, if anything is kinda fuck up to use real children as bait
0:32 - that's a weridly accurate metaphor🤣
fully ramblomatic in a nutshell
0:37 And there you have it! The PERFECT quote for how I feel about how people treat modern gaming.
agreed.
How rare, a shout-out to the occupational therapy profession!
I find the plot funny because shift up also make the mobile game "Nikke: Goddess of victory" and the plot for that is pretty much identical when you describe it
The fact that body pillow at the end was Anya is 💀
The neckbeard with the Anya pillow at the end 💀💀💀
It *really* didn't have to by Anya...
@@uberculex Yeah, it should've been Becky
@@NeoSaturos123 perish
@@NeoSaturos123 cease
@@NeoSaturos123I kinda had to be Anya for the joke to work.
The image of monkeys having a s**t fight on a merry-go-round sill makes me laugh 🤣
Ah the newest Maypole of Controversy
anyone remember Hatred? Me neither.
Pfft, that was two weeks ago. Now it is Helldivers PSN accounts.
@@USMC49er That was a week ago. Now it's weapon balancing.
I feel like that's overstating it. "The newest thing that media hypes up as having a controversy that people are actually concerned about" seems more akin this time.
Cause the there seems to be a lot of people mad that other people are mad at stellar blade for being sexy, but the examples they're pointing to of media demonizing it amount to "media saying there's a controversy, using citing a single tweet or something" and "media saying that they tried to cover boring character design with sexiness, it didn't work".
@AdumbroDeus as I said, Maypole of Controversy. Its not actually Controversy, its Ritual Controversy.
And this right here is why we love you (Yahtzee), you jolly good bastard.
I did have to google this game after the video, and I'm surprised you didn't mention how much Eve looks like Nicolas Cage.
I didn't know it was possible to love and admire Yahtzee more than I already did! But now I love him even more for the reference to the Labyrinth of Pan!
Lol this video is classic Yahtzee, him dumping all over something that I'll probably no doubt enjoy, and love every second of it.
not everything has to be a masterpiece, sometimes just being enjoyable is enough. like fast food. and stellar blade, much like burger king, promises a good time and big buns.
I don't know, for me a video game almost does have to be a masterpiece for me to play it. I don't have all that much time for video games anymore, and there are quite a lot of truly incredible games out there. Why would I play a moderately enjoyable 6/10 game when I could be playing one of the dozen masterpieces that have come out in the last 2 years that I still haven't gotten around to?
You’re not wrong, but still what flaws make a game mediocre can still bring it down and at the end of the day Yahtz is a critic so he criticizes these flaws, If you Enjoy Stellar Blade than by all means do! And this applies generally to almost all kinds of stuff, People these days just assume they either have to be extremely on either one end or the other of a thing or stay on the center and preach bullshit to both sides (like what I’m doing now lol) when there exists points on both sides rather than Extreme 1 or 2.
@@piperwalton I dunno, why would you? Nobody's forcing you, I certainly wasn't, so what's the issue?
Edit: besides, who said objective quality is directly proportional to subjective enjoyment? I sure as hell had more fun with Arcanum than Bg3 when it comes to fantasy Crpg's even if the latter is objectively better hands down. Just because stellar blade is objectively a nier knockoff doesn't stop it from entertaining me in ways nier didn't.
@@SimuLord then probably don't look for beef at Wendy's. The marketing and demo was clear on what audience it's trying to cater to. The only question is whether or not you're a part of that audience, then spend/save your money accordingly.
@@thatmonkemanzelinki2185 it also doesn’t help that it’s being sold for a full premium price. If the expectation is simply adequate then there are plenty of games right now you can buy for less than $5 that offer a similar experience.
Or you can just buy Nier Automata: a game with a sexy protagonist that actually has an engaging story.
There’s just too many games right now that I find it kind of baffling that anyone is giving this attention. And I get the feeling that if it wasn’t for this “controversy” than no one really would.
0:24 it was actually the reverse this time. The biggest moral panic is that one of the costumes put on some clothing. Keep in mind she still has costumes that amount to Pasties, but her wearing a lace bra in that one costume was just so oppressive.
3:14 The Melee Combat Rock
For a first major outing from shift up I think they nailed a lot. As a fan of the ridiculous, I had a good time with this game. Good combat, TONS of outfits and the silly can collecting was actually pretty enjoyable being tied to their own little puzzles more often than not. I like my Clouds and my Squalls...so Eve's personality didn't bug me, but the writing definitely needs a lil work. 7-8/10 the music, outfits, and combat do a lotta heavy lifting for me. Excited to see what they do in the future!
If people keep praising them for the wrong reason they can't rise to improve all that is average about the game. And that's the real damage the fanbase is doing by swooning over the character model and flooding the reddit and forums with talks of how sexy their doll is.
Glad you're excited. I had a blast too. I think people are being too harsh on what is a solid game. Not great, but good. Just pure fun
@@arenkai While I agree that they should take the fans complimenting them with a grain of salt, the people swooning over Eve are the fanbase they wanted. Again, look at Nikke. Shift Up isn't trying to reinvent the wheel, they just want to make games with good action and attractive women. For a first outing into the console game space, from a Korean studio no less, I think all of the praise is well-deserved.
While I do agree with nearly every criticism levied at this game, bigger studios have done far worse and got criticized a lot less. People honestly don't realize how alien the concept of a non-mobile game is in South Korea and I am glad to see that changing. I'm sick of mobile games.
Yeah, it's a wonder they managed to release a AAA game on time and works properly.
A fan of the ridiculous, you say? May i recommend Cookie Cutter from 2023 to you?
And mayhaps the likes of My Familiar, Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip and, to an extend, the Zeno Clash series as well? That one had a recent prequel in 2023 in Clash: Artifacts of Chaos.
The thing thats refreshing here is that it's exactly what you expect. It's literally what people imagine the average ps2 game in 2024 would look and play like.
0:50 do you want to tell us something Yatz?
1:32 The expressionless face gag lives on in Fully Ramblomatic, rejoice!
I don't have the patience for a full-on Souls-like experience, so I'm enjoying Stellar Blade as an unambitious dress-up-with-a-plasma-gun game. I play other things when I want an in-depth experience, but Stellar Blade has been good for some shiny soothing ultraviolence to unwind after work.
Explore, eviscerate, explore, eviscerate, strike a pose, etc.
Good to know the game is at least fun
3:49 - Nice way to cram in a Dirty Harry reference.
I don't think it was half of the Internet vs half the other Internet. Im pretty sure it was a very small number of people saying she was over sexualized, a larger number of people overblowing how many people said anything about Stella Blade at all, follow by a majority of the Internet making fun of the second group when they lost their shit because one of the costumes made small changes even though other costumes in the game were still more revealing.
Yeah. I hate when people go like this was an equal in the levels of outrage on both sides. It was literally just few articles and some random people’s comments about it. Heck the IGN France article that people went crazy on said that Eve seemed like bland, doll like in both design and character. WHICH ENDED UP BEING TRUE. Ahhhh 😂. This culture war stuff is getting exhausting.
Social media works by presenting you a view of reality where you only see the biggest morons out of the people who disagree with you. The point is to polarise every debate because then you have more Engagement and more ad money.
@@paulgibbon5991 Yep. There are certainly battles worth fighting . . . But they're not on twitter or facebook feeds.
5:29 That was 6 times more disturbing that I expected. Classic Yahtzee
I was expecting the ending gag to be a FBI agent bursting in.
i was pleasantly surprised by how fair this review was! it's a breath of fresh air amidst a discussion rife with bad faith and pettiness.
I'm gonna disagree with that ending sentiment, Yahtz. I feel we should keep anyone with an Anya bodypillow as far away from children as humanly possible.
I love it when Yahtzee actually makes a profound observation about “games these days”, like how most are just some kind of excuse for playing dress up.
To be honest, the game looks fun as hell. like a middle ground between Sekiro and Devil May Cry. I'm looking forward to playing the inevitable PC port. The mods alone would make this a wild time.
And yes, eve is hawt AF. For DLC characters the makers should reach out to other Korean Models. Imagine characters based off Sunbiki's or Babbyang's body scans?
Imagine this being on PC. There would a thousand mods for that already.
As you said it's a perfect mixture of Sekiro and DMC. Yahtzee's critique of it being generic and boring is just strange to me
This should be the best damn game ever, if I have to hear about it every fucking day
I like melancholic athmosphere od Stellar Blade. Is it great? No. Is it fun for the time it requires me to fininsh it? Yes. Gameplay is good, IU is good, quality of life things are good (way better than AAA games of AAA developers supported by AAA publishers). No microtransactions, no bs, just how I like it.
Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is a solid one too. Not as strong on the UI part but gameplay is a good, almost God Hand-like 3D fighter/beat-em-up in a colorful prehistoric monster world full of weird freaks and nary a human.
Ah, yes. Yahtzee must've been in a good mood that day. That was hysterical
Decent game with fairly fun combat, a really meh story, and excellent fanservice. I had a good time. Also., the korean VAs were not terrible.
Using a Knight's & Magic moderoid for the 'girls in mechas' bit made that infinitely funnier for me lmao
Kinda disagree with him on the combat and guns being useless. I was actually surprised at how useful they are, since normally they're tacked on and barely do damage that make them worth it. I thought the section early on that forced you to use them for a while was a smart way to make players aware of them. Combat also successfully meshes Sekiro and DMC in some halfway point which feels good to play, so it just sounds like he's kind of bored of character action games in general at this point, since this one does it really well. Otherwise, I agree about the plot being not great, the sidequests feeling tacked on besides a handful that flesh characters out, and the English dub being awful.
All in all, a great first console debut for Shift-up, certainly better than I think a lot were expecting.
The game is great. Sorry Yahtzee you're wrong about this one. Funny review, though.
yahtzee really needs to put his name up on these more prominently or something...I had to do some digging after realising the ZP series stopped. So happy to be here back watching the only reason i was ever subscribed to The Escapist.
Keep up the amazing work that's been such a staple in my life for so long 🥰
“most of us probably would be hot girls with big bums, i know i would!”
yahtzee…?
Something you want to tell us, Yahtz? Do I hear an eggshell cracking?
Those surely are some extremely cis thoughts... 😳
Do you realize how many guys play as girls online? It wouldn't be surprising.
@_Ve_98 what does the Confederacy of Independant Systems have to do with this?
@@daishoryujin95 I dislike the eggshell meme, feels oddly pressuring. There's loads of media regarding changing into the opposite sex, or people making female characters, sometimes it's indicative of a personality that feels more comfortable into another kind of body but other times it's just curiosity. Wank-bait. Whatever.
Big props for having heard of an occupational therapist before
my primary criticism of those universes is that they're not absolutely lousy with furries. You CANNOT tell me that we wouldn't be seeing robo-werewolves carpeting the landscape, given how densely tech fields irl are packed with furries
I think the plot would be drastically different if there were robofurries. It would just shift the themes to what it meant to be human in a furry v robo chick war.
yes, there are dozens of you, dozens (!), we get it
Stellar Blade sure is a game that exists.
Finally! Someone actually talked about whether the game was any good. All I've seen for months is people discussing TnA like that makes a good video game and is just an easy way to make sales and free advertising
Maybe because we have been starved of appealing games that having an attractive game in the first place is enough to be a "good" game. It's only after that point that we need to start talking about writing which frankly Stellar Blade is pretty solid again compared to the bulk of the garbage the market has been flooded with.
@@Hybris51129omg just shut up already. Your character model doesn't need to be hot and there's literally hundreds of games with hot player characters already
Man that Anna body pillow right at the end, savage lol
I was never that interested because all the talk about the game was about the sexual shit but conspicuous by its absence from the praise people gave was anyone saying it was a good game. Seems like my instinct was right, and that pretty much is the only thing it has going for it
Tends to be the case with games that get caught up in culture war junk. It's more about the "symbol" of it to them, then it actually is about the game itself. I'm enjoying the gameplay for what it is, but yea, as Yahtzee said, I agree it's extremely bland... to the point I'm planning an Unpacked video just to complain about games using deserts and sci-fi labs at some point lol.
@@SecondWindGroup I'll be looking forward to that, you can make those interesting but the vast majority of the time they do the bare minimum. Gimme some juicy story telling about what happened in that lab, rather than just sci-fi monsters and random test tubes. Sure deserts are mostly empty irl but that's no excuse to make your desert level empty too.
Okay New Rule:
If Discussions surrounding a game are all about the games nature or some small aspect of it, and virtually no one is talking about the game itself or how it plays......
That's probably a red flag
Yeah the only thing I'd heard about this game was how a certain section of the internet took it as proof that they were right about every other game with a female protagonist being bad because this one does have her ass out.
The only thing I'd seen about it made me think I'd seen that exact outfit before in something like Blade & Soul or so.
I played the demo. It's a little Nier, a little Ninja Gaiden, and a smidge of Sekiro. If you like its combat and gameplay style, you'll enjoy it. If not, it'll be a boring slog. It's a fine, serviceable game, which is not a bad thing. But it's easily lost when there's vitriol in the discourse.
0:53 We learned something new about Yahtzee today.
Somewhere on the internet floats a quote by yoko taro where he says stellar blade is better than his nier automata and we all know its because he thinks eve is slightly hotter than 2b
What a humble man
I certainly hope not, the worst thing about the game was how generic all the characters looked. A shiny ass does not a hot character make
He is very open pervert. Man just honest about his taste of women and his taste is big cake.
@@nathanl4083no he did say that. But honestly that’s just how he is. He likes hot women with nice butts and is very open about it.
@@bcd32dok36 And he also likes to troll people. So you should just not get to worked up about anything he says. In a way, it's brilliant, he gets to advertise himself as a creator while keeping his true thoughts basically private by obfuscation.
Return to form this one. Even had a new jingle.
light attack, heavy attack, parry, dodge, block
that's how we sing the melee combat rock 💚
My favorite part. And it has 'the pinch" on screen when it finishes just to be extra hilarious.
I like your interpretation of Eve! 🤣
Perfect timing for me to open RUclips lol
“Manifestations of the human fondness for pancakes”. Damn it Akechi I knew that whole thing was your fault.
Well, since I never got to play Nier: Automata, I guess I'll get that instead.
I gotta be honest as time goes I've come to like the new theme a ton more.
Fair enough. First time I heard it, I completely forgot the first one despite hearing it for years.
Yeah it seems to me to be far less Nier Automata or Bayonetta and much more P.N.03, one that will be swiftly forgotten but for the small crowd of die-hard fans.
As a PN03 stan, I attest and agree
Is this Yahtzee? YES! It is Yahtzee and no punctuations.
Even though I’m one of those “chimps” Yahtzee used as a metaphor, I do appreciate his viewpoint to basically sidestep that argument and talk about the game itself.
Stellar Blade pitch meeting:
"I was thinking we could combine Nier and the Matrix"
"Sounds like a good starting point, can't wait to see where it goes from there"
"Riiiiiight.... Yeah.... Good talk..."