Stellar Blade | NG+ Patch Details

[Moonface]

Stellar Blade | Extended Look
As promised we got a new extended look at Stellar Blade during today's State of Play presentation, which includes the plot premise, world, characters and gameplay mechanics.



Furthermore, Stellar Blade will release on April 26, 2024 for PlayStation 5.

[Dragon Lord]

Super happy to have a release date finally. The only good thing about that SoP. Game looks great, action looks great, Eve looks great. Can't wait.

[Moonface]

I think the one criticism I immediately had from the extended look is the voice acting. I don't know what but it felt off for me (Eve in particular) and makes me hope the game has a Japanese VA option.

I was trying to figure out how the boss health bars work while watching but didn't manage to. I need to watch those parts again to see if I can determine anything with a closer eye on it.

[Dragon Lord]

Oh, it will 100% have Japanese voice acting, don't you worry about that. People would riot if this game didn't have it. But I agree, they took the Nintendo approach for some reason and every character had to have heavy Bri'ish accent. It definitely makes the voice acting feel very out of place when Eve very clearly looks Asian.

There will definitely be Japanese and Korean voices though. This is 1000000000% a game you go into and immediately switch to Japanese voices in, haha.

[Moonface]

I forgot the developer of this game is Korean and not Japanese, so I'd actually swap to the Korean VA over the English one. It'll be interesting since I've never really consumed much stuff with Korean VA before.

There was a Famitsu interview done recently with the CEO and Game Director Kim Hyung-tae and Technical Director Lee Dong-gi, which can be read here: https://www.famitsu.com/news/202402/05333518.html

Here are some highlights from the interview, which I hope are correct but if not that's because I had to rely on Google to translate the interview for me:

• The game was influenced by Nier: Automata, God of War, Bayonetta, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
  
• Gameplay alternates between linear and semi-open world areas. It looks like most of the semi-open world content will be present when coming across an area containing NPC's that will provide side quests.
  
• There are 20-30 different costumes, some of which are found in the world and others that are purchased from vendors.
  
• Adam and Lily (Eve's companions) also have alternate costumes.
  

The end of the article featured images for the different versions of the game, which I wasn't aware existed until now. So for anyone else who didn't know the game has various editions, here they are:

Stellar Blade - Standard Edition ($69.99 / £69.99 / €79.99 / ¥8,980)

• Physical copy of the game (PS5)
  
• Planet Diving Suit for Eve (Early Unlock Pre-Order Bonus)
  
• Classic Round Glasses for Eve (Early Unlock Pre-Order Bonus)
  
• Ear Armor Earrings for Eve (Early Unlock Pre-Order Bonus)
  

Stellar Blade - Digital Deluxe Edition ($79.99 / £79.99 / €89.99 / ¥9,980)

• Digital copy of the game (PS5)
  
• All pre-order bonuses of the Standard Edition
  
• Stargazer Suit for Eve
  
• Stargazer Wear for Adam
  
• Stargazer Coat for Lily
  
• Half-Rim Glasses for Eve
  
• Quadruple Rectangle Earrings for Eve
  
• Stargazer Pack for the Drone
  
• 2,000 SP EXP
  
• 5,000 Gold in-game currency
  

[Dragon Lord]

Well, the game just took a huge blow for me. It was announced that Japanese voice option will only be available to Japanese copies, no other region will get them. Korean will be available in every region.

No Japanese voice option may make me skip the game now, because the English dub has already proven itself atrocious and I don't really like the way Korean sounds. Either that or it will cause me to play the game muted the entire time.

[Moonface]

I'd say that's weird to do, but I guess most games only offer a dub other than English that is relative to the country the game was made in so it isn't that odd when looked at through a larger lens. Maybe there'll be enough criticism of not including the Japanese VA outside of Japan for it to get patched in, but maybe having VA work get distributed to more countries means paying more money to the actors so it might not be as simple as just patching it in if that's how it works.

Also another interview had the developers sharing that this game will be about 25 hours long for the main content, and 30-50 hours if you decide to do everything the game has to offer in a single playthrough.

[Dragon Lord]

Maybe there'll be enough criticism of not including the Japanese VA outside of Japan for it to get patched in, but maybe having VA work get distributed to more countries means paying more money to the actors so it might not be as simple as just patching it in if that's how it works.

Unfortunately that won't happen. The reason why it's not being included isn't because of how much it would cost to include it, but because there's at least one voice actor that has it in their contract that their voice cannot be used outside of Japan. It's not as common as it used to be, but there are still some voice actors in Japan that will not allow their voice to be used outside of the Japanese version of a game.

Unfortunate that they decided to hire one that still has terms like that in their contracts instead of finding voice actors who don't limit use of their voice like that.

[Moonface]

That VA is in for a bad time if this game comes to PC then because we all know one of the first mods to get made will be a language patch that enables Japanese VA.

[Moonface]

Not sure if the rating for games in Korea varies for the US (in the sense of how Australia gives games way different ratings compared to other regions) but it got an 18 rating for violence and sexually suggestive content.

I also forgot this game was originally going to be on PC until it got funded by Sony. Hopefully it'll still get a PC port for those who want it given Sony is happy to port their games over to the platform now. I wonder if it was developed with PC in mind still after going exclusive because that would make a port way easier to do.


Also @Dragon Lord do you plan to get any of the special editions of the game for PS5 or are you just gonna get the regular version?

[Moonface]

Welp, Sony messed up and accidentally made the demo for Stellar Blade go live early before promptly taking it back down:

• https://imgur.com/a/NAbkurp
  
• https://imgur.com/a/2DFUmxH
  
• https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/17662...GmZ_A&s=19
  

I'm not sure what account it was but either the official PlayStation account or official Stellar Blade account made a tweet announcing the demo at the same time as it went live on PSN, but that tweet has obviously been deleted now. Hopefully it won't be long before it goes live again at the time it was probably originally intended to. Some people did manage to get it downloaded before it was nuked though so I'm sure impressions will start going around quickly from those who were lucky.

Edit: Just saw that Sony revoked the license to access the demo so unless anyone was playing it with their console offline, anyone who has the demo can no longer access it. That said it was a couple of hours before Sony revoked the license so a good amount of people still managed to finish the demo and/or play it for a good amount of time to get a feel for the gameplay.

[Moonface]

Stellar Blade | Demo Arrives on March 29
After initially making it live earlier in the month by mistake, Sony has announced that the demo for Stellar Blade will officially go live on March 29.

The demo takes place from the very beginning of the game when Eve, a member of the 7th Airborne Squad is sent to Earth on a mission to reclaim the planet from the Naytiba, up to the first boss fight. This first stage will include the tutorial phase to help you familiarize yourself with basic combat features as you explore post-war Eidos 7, a human city now infested by the Naytiba, giving you an early grasp of gameplay mechanics that will serve you throughout the game’s story.

We also have a little surprise included for players who complete the first stage. For those who complete the demo stage, you can carry over your save data when the full game releases on April 26, starting from the last checkpoint. Please note that save data must be stored on your PS5 system.

[Dragon Lord]

Finally, a good fucking game to play.

(The above should be read in Gordon Ramsay's voice for full effect)

[Moonface]

I find it interesting reading about the voice and text language options for the game:

Voice Over: Korean, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Latin Spanish.

Text: Korean, English (US), French, Italian, German, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Arabic, Turkish, Thai, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese.

I understand not every option for text will get voice, but I find it weird that Japanese text is a choice yet the voice over isn't present. I wonder if this is the only game to remove a voice over language but retain the text language unless you buy a copy of the game from the region that speaks the language that got removed?

I wonder if the game has a level up system that can't be grinded out in the demo. I know it's the fault of anyone who does it but it'd be nice if nobody could overpower themselves with the demo and then ruin the game balance for themselves, especially when I'd like to see people putting more focus on how the game plays over how the main character looks.

[Moonface]

I downloaded the demo about an hour ago and played through it for a fair bit, but didn't finish it yet. Here are my experiences and initial thoughts so far:

• I started with English voice like an idiot and immediately hated it.
  
• Visually the game is incredibly good. I'm running it on Balanced and haven't noticed any problems yet with frame rate from it.
  
• Dodging feels a little slow, but I think that's because you're not meant to just spam it or use it like you're playing a Souls-like.
  
• On that note, this game is more like NieR: Automata than anything Souls-like when it comes to gameplay and combat.
  
• And on the mention of NieR, you can tell the music is by the same people who worked on the music for NieR: Automata. Can't fault it so far.
  
• The opening cinematic gives a rough impression of what the storytelling is going to be like when the only reason everything falls apart is because the ships only bothered to have a tiny little shield on the front of them that offers zero protection from anything that hits at anything other than straight on. It's hard to take the antagonistic forces as a credible threat when the protagonist force is wiped out due to sheer incompetence for the most part. I didn't go into this expecting amazing story telling but the way all the ships get taken out at the start is really poor writing.
  
• I like the exploration the game offers that again reminds me a lot of Nier: Automata's area design. The only thing I dislike is the jumping; it feels a bit stiff and slows the pace down, which was very apparent to me on the bridge you have to platform across.
  
• Swimming is a bit rough, particularly with the camera. It often gets stuck on pieces of debris floating on the surface in smaller bodies of water such as the one before the second rest point.