Stellar Blade - PlayStation 5

I'm giving this review two separate scores.A 5 out of 5 for the actual game (I don't want to punish the developer of the game, Shift Up, for Sony's intense incompetence)... but I'm giving Sony a ZERO out of 5 because of what they did to the physical disc.Before I review this game, the following is a COMPLAINT and a very serious WARNING to Sony (since I know they pay attention to verified purchase reviews on Amazon since they are written by actual customers that pay $70 for their games) and will explain why I am giving them a ZERO out of five and I am highly displeased with them right now to the point of giving them a warning of me possibly boycotting their future game releases if they ever do what they did to the Stellar Blade disc again to any other of their games.Dear Sony:I own Playstations 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 and also have a PSP, PS Vita, PSVR and PSVR 2 (yes, I'm actually own the PSVR 2 and buy physical games for my PSVR2. It takes a highly dedicated hardcore Playstation fan to support the PSVR2 for several reasons at this current moment in time. I will supply a pic attached to this review of my copy of Stellar Blade which I bought from Amazon next to my copy of the PSVR2 game Townsmen VR which I also bought on Amazon next to a bunch of other Amazon bought games for other Playstation systems I own to show just how much of a Playstation fan I am, which makes me sad that I now have to write up a highly negative complaint to Sony because of what they did to the physical disc of Stellar Blade).I play video games. I enjoy video games. I also like physical copies which I can put into my console and choose whether or not to update them with the latest patch when or if I feel like it. I own 100 Playstation 5 physical games (yes, seriously) and 99% of them don't force updates / patches.Want to know which game forces updates / patches upon me (even if I have updates / patches OFF in my console settings) to the point where I can't start the game unless I update / patch the game?That one game is Stellar Blade. Unless I install the game with my internet options in my Playstation 5 OFF (and I've included a pic of this with this review) and keep my console OFFline during the entire time I am playing, the game will force updates / patches on me and I can't start the game till I download them.Why?Censorship.To provide an example:One of the forms of censorship was them censoring a term (seen as graffiti on a wall in the uncensored version of the game Stellar Blade) that they think has a negative definition attached to it. I was greatly confused by this since I have never heard that term with that type of negative definition. Instead, for the last several decades, I have heard that term associated with rated R movies (specifically for rated R movies that contain very explicit content to the point where they are very close to getting a NC-17 rating). That's the REAL definition of the term that was seen as graffiti in one scene in the uncensored version of Stellar Blade. That term is associated with rated R movies. However, some people decided to make a false report about the definition of the term and used a fake negative definition from a very bias unofficial source that inaccurately reports the definitions of various terms.For some reason, Sony believed them (which I find insane. Dear Sony, WHY WOULD YOU BLINDLY BELIEVE THEM?!?!? You have a MOVIE division, Sony pictures. You mean to tell me that no one at the Playstation division knew that the term has been associated with explicit rated R movies for several decades since the early 1970's?!? And that the other definition is a made up, fake definition created by people who want to change definitions of terms to create artificial outrage and cause unnecessary censorship?!?).Then the censorship got worse since the same people that reported on the fake negative definition have now pushed Sony to start censoring outfits the main character wears in the game. This is a rated M game (rated M is similar to rated R for movies). Why are they censoring outfits in a rated M game? And now I'm reading from another review that even some of the gore in the game is also partly censored because of that patch / update?!? This is absurd and all of this is part of the update / patch that everyone is forced to download if you have your console online.This entire fiasco has resulted in a mandatory day one patch for the game's disc that cannot be skipped or saved for later if your Playstation 5 is online.In case you are wondering, even if you have your automatic updates option off in your console settings, the disc will ignore that and it will force the update / patch upon you and you can't start playing the game till the everything is fully downloaded.HOWEVER... if you own the physical copy and you are willing to keep your console offline...THERE IS A WAY AROUND THE CENSORSHIP....Step 1:Make sure your console is offline in your Playstation 5 settings.Step 2:While OFFline, Insert the disc and the FULL main game is on the disc (which is awesome. It's about 30 GBs that will go from your disc to the SSD in your console for installation)Step 3:Make sure you stay offline. In the event you have a relative who puts the console back online in the settings, the update / patch for the game will kick in. If that happens (like it did to me) you must go offline in your Playstation 5 settings, eject the disc, UNINSTALL the game (note: your game save will NOT be erased when uninstalling... provided you did NOT save with the patch / update installed. If you did, you might have a problem with your save. But if you are like me and saved ONLY when the game was NOT patched / NOT updated, your save file will be fine) and then put the disc back in and it will reinstall the game for you.Just make sure to stay offline (go into your console's settings and switch to offline).and I am giving Sony ZERO stars for this because as someone who paid $70 for this game (there should be a Verified Purchase message next to this review to prove this) I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO BE TAKING THESE STEPS TO AVOID A CENSORSHIP PATCH / UPDATE THAT IS UNSKIPPABLE IF MY CONSOLE IS ONLINE!!!All because some people who don't even buy your games and don't even like video games tricked you into censoring the game.And I am very annoyed that I can't be online since I paid money for PS + and I own two other games that have online components in them (one of them being Rise of the Ronin, which is another recent Playstation 5 exclusive, and the other being Dragon's Dogma 2) and I can't use their online components as long as I am playing Stellar Blade OFFline since I have to keep the console offline till I complete Stellar Blade.So, let's get to the point of this rant...Dear Sony...STOP listening to people who don't even like video games and who don't even pay money for your video games and who force you to censor your games by tricking you with fake information. People like me actually spend money on your games and products (I even spent $600 on a PSVR2. If that doesn't tell you how much of a fanatical Playstation fan I am, I don't know what will).People like me who spend money on your games and products DO NOT WANT CENSORSHIP.Especially when it comes to mandatory updates / patches (I wouldn't be typing up this essay if you hadn't made the updates / patches mandatory to the point where I can't even have the option to update / patch later or avoid the update / patch altogether).THIS IS A WARNING:If I find out that a future Playstation 5 game disc that is $70 gets the same treatment as this Stellar Blade disc with updates / patches that can NOT be skipped because of censorship reasons, I will NOT be buying that game. Stellar Blade is now the FINAL Playstation 5 $70 game I will be pre-ordering and I will now be waiting till release day to buy future $70 games since I want to make sure this fiasco doesn't happen again.If you continue to listen to these people who don't even like video games and keep going along with their censorship, I will STOP buying new games ( I already have a backlog of Playstation 5 and PSVR2 games to keep me busy) and I will NOT be renewing my PS + subscription later this year.I refuse to continue to spend $70 on games if I have to keep jumping through hoops to play uncensored versions of a game that I paid money for.Also,I HOPE that the mandatory update / patch situation for Stellar Blade's disc gets fixed so it no longer becomes mandatory. That's something that seriously needs to be done.PLEASE, REVERSE THE MANDATORY PATCH / UPDATE FOR THE DISC THAT I PAID $70 FOR.This has been a very kind WARNING to Sony in regards to this situation. If you continue with this route, I will be keeping my money in my wallet and I will be boycotting future game releases.With that said, I have a short review of the actual game.Dear Shift Up (the developers of the game), you did a great job.I'm sorry your game is getting censored due to Sony's incompetence.I really love the actual game. I don't normally review games till I fully complete them. However, this censorship update / patch problem has caused me to make an exception. But in the mean time I will say this:I'm only six hours into the game (it just came out as I type this) but I really enjoy this game. Great graphics, awesome main character, the story is very intriguing, and I really enjoy the gameplay.To anyone wondering about the game's difficulty, the game can be challenging at times, even on the easy mode (that second boss was pretty challenging) but it's NOT hard. I would say the game can be easy most times with occasional spikes in difficulty where things get challenging and you will probably die a few times, but if you keep trying you will win. So the game is NOT hard, but not really easy (even in it's easy mode) but it's a "medium" difficulty, which feels fine.I'm perfectly happy with a medium difficulty. Not hard, not easy, but just right.Overall, I really love this game and I'm giving it a 5 out of 5.So the game gets a 5 out of 5.But Sony is getting a 0 out of 5.Hopefully the score I am giving to Sony changes. I normally love them (I own all of their consoles, portables and VR headsets), but they seriously need to correct course since they are going down a very bad path right now.

PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THING. IT'S WORTH IT AND IT WILL CLEAR ALL QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS YOU MAY HAVE!!!!!Game is phenomenal 10/10 . Gameplay, Combat, combos, quick-time action moves, finishers, blood, gore, details, enemy variety, boss variety, boss battles, atmosphere, story, charecters, voice acting, spectacle and scale are all top notch/satisfying/epic. Simply put game is simply amazing. I am shocked this is Shift Up's FIRST CONSOLE GAME EVER! They are now in my rader and easily in my favorite game studios moving forward. Will be looking out for many more games from this studios for sure!!!Now moving on to the drama/internet meltdown. What internet claims: Game is falsely advertised, Game is censored, Baited and switched for more sales, boycott game as to not support censorship.In short all these stupid claims can be easily debunked by focusing on what actually happened.First: Game is falsely advertised: This claims comes from one of the tweet that Shift Up posted on X (Formally Twitter) stating: "Game will be uncensored for all countries, including Japan." People believed they ment the outfits while they were actually referring to blood and gore. Litreally everyone who is a veteran video gamer would know that Japan wants their censored or gore/blood toned all the way down. Happened with The last of us, and now recently happened with Dead Space Remake. Happens often with many other games. Hell there is litreally an article about a Motive Studio (Creators of Dead Space Remake) staff member complaining about: "why is Stellar Blade getting a uncensored release, while Dead Space Remake needed to be censored for the release in Japan." Google it. Clearly stating and implying about blood and gore. I just dont know how can people mistake this and make it all about outfits.Second: Game is censored; This is the most laughable actually. Censorship litreally means to cut/remove/delete/hide something entirely. Clearly this is not the case with Stellar Blade. If that were the case; none of the outfits would show any skin whatsoever Eve would be covered completely. Only like 3 outfits were modified/censored from which 1 actually looks better now. This really comes under design choice but, nonetheless this was stupid and was implemented cuz of Sony/Playstation North America breathing down Shift Up's necks. If you wanna blame anyone blame them not the developers who are just following orders. Game as a whole is by no means is censored, calling it that is down right idiotic. There are million more revealing outfits which shows way more skin/TnA than those 2 outfits.Thirdly: Baited and Switch for more sales: This simply means that they showed one thing for people to buy it and when people did bought it they got something entirely different. You can already tell how stupid this sounds. Again this not at the case with Steller Blade. Hell I just got off playing SB like half an hour ago and I was served in a hot platter. God it's everything I wanted and more. Waiting from 2019/when this game was first revealed to now; indeed was worth every moment of waiting. Altering 2 outfits cuz Sony/Playstation breathing down their necks (for god knows what stupid reason) is not bait and switch for more sales. Not sure how the points I am making not already self-explanatory. For god sake if anyone did some research on Shift Up they would know that these are South Korean Developers and in South Korea mobile gaming is what dominants the market. Surprisingly console/and its games holds little to no importance over there. So let me ask you this if they wanted to make a killing out of a game, shouldn't they not just release a half baked mobile game as that is litreally the most logical thing to do if the creators are looking to make tons of money? Stellar blade is litreally a passion project. If you have played it; you can easily tell it's made with utmost love, care, dedication, and most of all their valuable time from 2019 or even before that. Roughly 6 years into making/producing and finally releasing this game. So yea the question/claim about baited and switch should simply not exist.Lastly: Boycott the game/Do not support censorship: People who are claiming this doesn't understand the gravity of it. You can maybe boycott Sony/Playstation and blame them, although I think thats too far of a stretch too as these are litreally slim to minor changes which should not effect anyone's experience whatsoever. The changes are litreally to 2 outfits it dosen't alter the whole game in any way, shape or form. Again if you wanna blame someone blame Sony/Playstation not Shift Up. The developers deserve every ounce of love and support they can get. These guys poured it their all into this game and it SHOWS!!! and for that they righty deserve our utmost respect. So go ahead and buy it asap if you were waiting like me/or just were very eagerly looking forward to playing this. Trust me it delivers BIG TIME!!!Oh also the claim about blood and gore being toned down; I am not even sure if this is ture. I just putted the controller down about 30 mins ago and let me tell you gore, blood, cutting enemies in half, chopping off limbs, boss fights ending in cutting the bosses in the most dope/action/interactive way possible like God of War 2018 and Ragnarök for example, yea litreally chopping up the bosses, and the bosses shaking from agony taking their very last breath as the pool of blood gushes out from them as they fall is such a dark yet beautiful detail. And yea everything is litreally present in vivid detail. This is the lastest version 1.002 I am talking about which is claimed to be "cEnSoReD" lol.There you have it. I coverd everything. So buy this game without any worry and just have the time of your life. You are not doing anything wrong whatsoever. I am surprised that the situation became this big for no reason. Support Shift Up and Stellar Blade we definitely need more of this and more games from Shift Up in the future!!!

What to say about Steller blade… it’s refreshing it’s out of the box unapologetic and a breath of fresh air in this era of rampant censorship, political propaganda and socially acceptable bloot.I play games to escape reality to relax unwind and just have fun with out having to take things seriously. I like attractive good looking likable characters in my games and I enjoy having the freedom to play they way I want instead of having to conform to certain stereotypes and criteria that you find a lot these days.It was the first and only game that prompted me to buy a PS5 system… after experiencing Stellar Blade I have zero regrets.The amount of disrespect,criticism and Loathing this game and people who like it is and was disheartening to see. It’s a game IE not real …Highly recommend by this goddess of discord

This is such a fun game to play! I'm not use to games of this style/genre and it was a real challenge beating some of the many bosses. The variety and abundance of Skins is what I wish more games offered and the Photo Mode is the best and most versatile I've ever seen. The only thing the game lacks is better dialogue. The combination of (some of) the voice acting with the writing leaves much to be desired. That one flaw is outweighed by all the great aspects I stated first. I'm sure with the success of this game, Shift Up will deliver an even better sequel. I can't wait.