Stellar Blade / Project Eve Thread - aka Stellar Ass

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Hemorrhoy Rogers said:
I've never played Nikke before. What's wrong with the minigames?

The devs just dropped another free update. Added some new quests. The biggest of which is apparently unlocking a dilapidated version of Shift Up's office with notes from the devs and a new outfit. Hasn't dropped for the PC version yet but I'm currently working on getting all the third run outfits for PS5 anyway.

They needed to play up Eve's fish out of water demeaner more. Her most amusing moments are when she's baffled by basic technology like bookshelves, guitars and soda cans. They don't really explain the andro eidos creation much either. Only really implying that they're birthed as adults. Lily's arc is basically her going into denial over the plot twist and looking down on humans. Still, a way less retarded story about synths than that Alien Earth crap that just finished.

The sequel definitely needs a deeper combat system. Even with the expanded skill trees in NG+, skill points quickly become meaningless. And the game's equivalent to devil trigger is too weak.
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A lot of it comes down to the mechanics and physics as well as the design differences with Nikke itself.

I'm gonna take on the design differences first. Nikke is essentially designed as an idle game. There is some strategy, however the game basically wants you yo log in every day and level up your characters slowly, incremently so that you can pass the challenges. So while it innovated on old flash cover shooters the game itself is designed around your bog standard rpg elements. Skill doesn't matter much, its more party build and level.

Other games, also Gacha games like Girls Frontline 2 and Snowbreak also will rip off the core Nikke gameplay. But they do not have leveling mechanics or party mechanics either. However where they succeed over Stellar Blade which also doesn't have either of those things is better physics than Stellar Blade. And of course, Stellar Blade wasnt designed around that. But neither were those games.

Instead to me it just feels shoehorned in. Oh Shift Up they did Nikke of course they are gonna throw that in. But a lot of its design is copied from Nikke without the rpg stuff so it ends up being more of a pain. So the shooting isn't very satisfying and it ends up feeling oddly manic. Sure it is more skill based now but to me it just doesn't feel right, and given how similar it is to Nikke it ends up feeling weird that you cant control multiple characters or change Eve's load out.
 
Green Kitbash said:
I'm gonna take on the design differences first. Nikke is essentially designed as an idle game. There is some strategy, however the game basically wants you yo log in every day and level up your characters slowly, incremently so that you can pass the challenges. So while it innovated on old flash cover shooters the game itself is designed around your bog standard rpg elements. Skill doesn't matter much, its more party build and level.
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>however the game basically wants you yo log in every day and level up your characters slowly
Understatement of the year. If you're a new player, they basically give you tons of shit as of you were a kid in a candy store. That also means eventuaslly the sugar rush comes to an end and you wind up crashing HARD... in this case, level and story progression can take weeks, if not MONTHS, because there are multiple factors that prevent you from doing literally ANYTHING in single player outside of the routine grinding for resources.
  • Level 160 wall where you NEED 5 SSR ranks at 3 or more stars to surpass said wall... the same SSR ranks that have really low rates unless you somehow get lucky with the RNG gods.
  • Syncro mechanic after level 200 where you're basically just farming for cores at this point so you can increase the level limit of all your Nikkes.
  • Hard-as-fuck boss battles like Mother Whale (which recently ShiftUp even had to admit themselves they fucked up and made easier).
>Skill doesn't matter much, its more party build and level.
Debateable. There is SOME skill involved, and it usually involves raising your burst bar to max as fast as possible by spamming the shit out of Snipers/Rockets. Again, it all relies on luck. If you have "the best" Nikkes (which sites like nikke.gg go into autistic detail regarding who and who you should use and why) then you can pretty much set the battles to auto while you sip tea in the corner and do nothing. Otherwise you kind of have to work for your wins, especially once you start to face more annoying enemies like the suicide bombers because even with the correct elemental match, you will die in one hit sometimes.

At the end of the day it's a gacha game catered to whales. Free players CAN squeeze SOME fun out of it, but it's pretty limited to where you're relying on the monthly events to give you free shit all the time. If there's one aspect this game shines in, it's with the story and characterization of the Nikkes themselves. Like it gives you a reason to give a shit about them and want to be around them all the time.
 
Interesting. I figured the Nikke stuff would be dumbed down since they're just a mini-game within the game.

Another free update! Apparently there are now 3 new epilogues added to the game. I dunno if you get them all from one specific ending or you have to beat the game three different times. Still completing my collection of the third run outfits on PS5.
 
Celebrate Nite said:
At the end of the day it's a gacha game catered to whales. Free players CAN squeeze SOME fun out of it, but it's pretty limited to where you're relying on the monthly events to give you free shit all the time. If there's one aspect this game shines in, it's with the story and characterization of the Nikkes themselves. Like it gives you a reason to give a shit about them and want to be around them all the time.
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God damn that sounds awful. The better gacha will at least not lock story missions behind whaling. While there will be scoreboards for whales to feel good about themselves, even f2p players will be able to access 99% of the content (and in some cases have the fun of partial progression for the next milestone as they get to the lategame).
 
Hey look guys it's the self proclaimed asexual male feminist furry here to tell you how you're weird and how "normal" people act.
 
Jace on ice said:
Hey look guys it's the self proclaimed asexual male feminist furry here to tell you how you're weird and how "normal" people act.
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Implying anyone respect gooners and doesn't mock 'em constantly. But hey, I guess living in denial is best option for sex brained freaks.
Mister Fister said:
Protip:next time you like a woman take a risk and ask her out.
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Clearly you didn't follow that tip, since you need Korean gooner trash.
 
Ignoring the slap fight because this WAS once a game discussion thread, I would like to mention I do like the fact the epilogue scenes aren't hardcore sequel baiting and just short slice of life vignettes. The sequel should have more cooldown moments like that
 
I wonder if the sequel would allow us to play the same character or start with another android joining the conflict and needing to speedrun the original plot. Both have their merits and issues.
Jace on ice said:
The combat is really really fun. If they can flesh out the writing, world, maybe have some proper side quests a sequel has huge potential.
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The gunplay could be improved, probably the main issue is that there isn't much incentive to use guns until the true final boss and there it's hard to get used to it.
 
Yeah the sequel is gonna have issues storywise it is going to have to overcome, the mission accomplished ending leaves the most open hook for a possible sequel but I've seen people consider that the "bad ending" (i disagree personally but that's neither here nor there for this topic).

Shift Up does have talent when it comes to writing engaging stories, at least with Nikke. But will they have learned from the experience with the first one, or will they swerve? It's also a tough spot because Eve is a fairly iconic character now, but they have a waifu factory they can likely pull it off again. It just comes down to what is Stellar Blade, is it the gameplay purely or are they married to the setting?
 
Fatsuit Shinji said:
One problem not yet mentioned is outside of doing the dailies, players cannot grind for any of the materials to level up anything. So players have to be very selective of which nikke they're leveling up at a time.
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Yea I forgot to mention that.

You have the Outpost, which is basically your main hub where you interact with Nikkes to raise their love meter, read event stories to get gifts you give to Nikkes (which are just high-tier vouchers), go to school to research more things to increase stuff like syncro slots and material increase, etc... The outpost is also the ONLY way you can get resources, not just through dispatches, but through the outpost itself. It's on a 24h timer where it'll reach 100% and you'll get the maximum resources depending on your outpost level... which you can only raise through story battles... which you can only do ONCE. That means once you clear a chapter, you can't go back and redo battles because there are no battles to redo... the entire chapter map will be empty. Only time new battles appear during chapters is when you reach certain points to where someone will message you on the phone to ask for a favor, or "EX" missions appear, which are harder battles. There is also a "hard" mode that you unlock a few chapters in that also have their own "EX" missions, but just like normal mode, once you clear a chapter, that's it.

This is one of the reasons why going through the story mode is VERY important, and why it's VERY frustrating when you get to a point where you hit a wall.
 
Back to talking about the game, I’m still expecting nier automata route A influence, I’m not sure Shift up wants to go extenstentist depression, or route C-E here.
 
Didn't know there was a thread for Gooner Blade.

This game, it is peak. Beyond the obvious goonericious reasons, I really fell for the soundtrack. I already made an autistic post about it in the soundtrack thread. Simply put, the soundtrack is Stellar and I love it.

I think the environments are also great, especially the later stuff... Only thing I didn't quite like so much is that there are basically two desert areas. Especially the 2nd desert area, that was kind of lame.

I think what I loved the most visually was the space stuff starting with heading for the space elevator. Loved the parts when you're midway up the elevator and see the earth below, and then when you're even higher up and the Earth gets smaller... The space station itself was also cool. And the space boss fight...
screenshot.png

I also liked how there's a lot of variety in terms of levels and stuff to do in the game. You have some souls like interconnected levels, some more linear levels, some open world type levels, some levels where it becomes a third person shooter. You even have a couple of moments when you have some ubisoft-radio-tower-climbing stuff.
...that whole side-quest with the hypertube. It's also used once in the main story and there's something similar with a rollercoaster in a side area at some point. It was a fun mechanic and I'm surprised they only use it like 2 or 3 times!
It feels like they just threw everything and the kitchen sink into the game, but somehow it works and it's fun. Perhaps it's because they don't overdo it repeating the same thing over and over. Hell, they have some hacking-minigames that look really fancy and are literally used once then never again. Or those two side quests that are literally just some fun little math puzzle. I swear I would not have expected a math puzzle in a goonericious game. Oh yeah, the boss challenge mode is also pretty fun.

Ah, there are a lot of things I could sperg about but I should probably stfu now.
 
long waters said:
This game, it is peak
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It really is. Again, disregarding all the T and A which is great obviously. The game itself is very fun, it could be improved for sure, but the combat isn't bad for Shift Up's first time doing something like this. There is a lot to do, Side Quests, Collectables, Fishing, on top of the main story. I really like the smaller linear missions though, i feel the open worlds are kind of lacking, and the second desert area is not good.
long waters said:
I really fell for the soundtrack.
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The soundtrack fucks.
White Night, Take Me Away, Tachy and Don't Forget Me are some of my favorites.
 
Without any major spoilers how do you get into the dev room the devs added in the recent update? Is it a new mission or do you just have to feel your way around or what?


Also the faggy mod feels the need to be a snarky cunt when xhe can't even do their fucking job and get rid of an annoying spergy furfag without being told to do so. Fuck off prick.

Jace on ice said:
The combat is really really fun. If they can flesh out the writing, world, maybe have some proper side quests a sequel has huge potential.
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Yeah, the writing and story were good enough to where playing it a second time, you could see many of the themes and set ups a second time around. My biggest gripe is the lack of variety in the open world areas. The sequel could use a couple more of them with different environments. You spend too much time looking at desert in this game.
 
Stellar Blade 2 Will Be A Multiplatform Release Launching on Various Consoles, Developer Confirms

New job listings suggest console and PC multiplatform development using Unreal Engine 5!

“The next installment of ‘Stellar Blade’, currently under development at Shift Up, is a AAA multiplatform action game that expands the world of global hit ‘Stellar Blade’. Aiming for release on various platforms, including consoles and PC, the game will inherit the stylish action and narrative-driven world of its predecessor, while delivering an evolved action gameplay experience.”
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I don't know where UE5 is mentioned, might be in the job listings and not this press release:

https://shiftup.co.kr/news/news.php?ptype=view&idx=318 (archive)
 
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