Stellar Blade Review - IGN

Great in all of the most important ways for an action game, but lackluster elsewhere.

[FPSRUSSIA]

7.0/10 why does IGN always rated Games Lower then Everyone else I cant wait to play it though.

[Tacoboto]

This guy is the same reviewer at IGN who rated FFXVI a 9 and Elden Ring a 10, among other titles like Armored Core VI and Returnal 8s, Street Fighter 6 a 9.

He doesn't review Xbox games either. So I guess you could try reading the review to answer your question.

After seeing the reviews be in line with what I expected I'm still excited with for my preorder to arrive tomorrow. Don't let a not-low score like a 7 influence you.

[Cacabunga]

A SONY exclusive scoring bad on ign.. really?

[Tacoboto]

... a 9 for XVI and 8 from Returnal just from this one reviewer. Rebirth a 9. Ghost of Tsushima another 9. TLOU Part 1 PS5 a 9, TLOU Part 2 another 10. Spider-Man 2 an 8. Ratchet & Clank a 9. Demons Souls a 9.

What of these scores from IGN are bad?

[darthv72]

@Caca... since when is a 7 bad?

[shinoff2183]

Ff16 a 9. Jeesh I can't trust him.

Darth you know damn well all these kids and you people think 7 is a horrible game. Still doesn't make sense to me how this started. A 7 back in the day was a pretty damn good game.

[darthv72]

@shin... it's still a good game. 6 is okay and 8 is great. 9 is excellent and 10 is perfect. That's the scale that has been used since forever.

Bad is usually anything lower than 5, with 5 being the mid point of neither good nor bad but just... fair.

[Lightning77]

Exactly I'll be buying it regardless. 7 is a solid score.

[Chard]

The IGN I know has a history of doling out 9/10 scores when they're not deserved.
Regardless, it seems you're still excited for the game, which is a good indication that numerical scores are pretty meaningless

[DOMination-]

"why does IGN always rated Games Lower then Everyone else I cant wait to play it though."

Honestly I don't have/can't be bothered to look at the data but my perception is completely the opposite to this statement.

The IGN review, whether people like them or not, is usually the one that matters most to publishers, developers and gamers and as a result, they usually tend to play it quite safe with big releases. When they came out and trashed SS:KTJL in a preview, people really took notice because they don't normally do that.

[TwoPicklesGood]

To be fair there are quite a few reviews of 6-7/10 as well as there are 8-9/10. Review scores are an outdated concept and shouldn’t be considered gospel.

[itsmebryan]

@FPS
The score seems in line with other reviews.. I have seen lower scores and it's at 82 right now on metacritic. 7 is not a bad , it's just ok.

[thesoftware730]

I knew it; from the demo, I felt it was a 7-ish type of game(which is not bad) so be prepared for mostly mixed reviews.

[Eonjay]

IGN gave it the lowest score (bottom 10%) as anyone how hasn't been living under a rock expected. Perhaps you should check out the other 90% of scores too. A wave of ALT accounts isn't gonna change this.

[Sonic1881]

What I find hilarious is that eurogamer gave it a 10 and think it's a game of the year contender

https://www.metacritic.com/...

[Tacoboto]

The worst scoring review now are two 60s.

Including from Videogamer.com, which is suspiciously not uploaded here yet...

[thesoftware730]

Why? I did not say anything bad about this game; why the hell is everyone in defense mode? I did see some other reviews, but I played the demo, and the impression I got was a 7-ish like I said.

Even tho I looked at other scores, why are you prompting me to go read other reviews? Is the 7 bad for you? That is a good score, and I often agree with IGN reviews.

ALT accounts? are you ok? the game gets a good 7, and you are so tight about it, wtf.

[ChasterMies]

Why should I assume the other scores are right? Review inflation has gotten insane, and not all games are going to fit in the 8-10 out 10 zones.

[shinoff2183]

I felt about the same playing the demo. It didn't feel day one to me but I only buy rpgs day one mostly.

For what I think I read was their first single player game it looks pretty solid though.

[S2Killinit]

Well, it is sitting at 82 metacritic, so your expectation of 7-ish was not really correct.
Its 8-ish.

[thesoftware730]

S2,

Huh? We are in an IGN review thread, and the topic of discussion is...they reviewed it a 7. How could I possibly be wrong when it is a fact that they gave it a 7, and I said that my assumption from the demo put it at a 7-ish, my comment was is direct relation to this review and article.

You can attempt to mingle and mangle all you want; this reviewer thinks it's a 7.

Why the hell are you guys so defensive about this game? This is so strange; it's a new developer with a new IP, and it's reviewed mostly positively; be happy and realize for their first outing, it's all good that it isn't rated 10s everywhere.

[DOMination-]

I don't know what's worse.

People giving a game they haven't played a score based on a feeling. Or lambasting a user for giving a score in that way because their view is (less than) 1 point apart from the average.

[DarXyde]

It's right around Metal Gear Rising, which is pretty much what I was expecting.

Sounds like I'm gonna love the game.

[Crows90]

It's actually very positive reviews pretty much everywhere.

This was also targeted by certain sites as "controversial" some can't get over the fact that eve looks a certain way.

[Zenzuu]

It's not mixed reviews though. The game received mainly high from everywhere else. The reception and general consensus, is the game is decent. People are not attacking you. The issue is the way you word it, like IGN is the only reliable reviewer and everything else doesn't matter.

Even though it's not your intention, but it comes across that way.

[Goodguy01]

Oh boy. I think the $70 pricetag is also asking for too much as well, I liked the demo but I'll have to wait for a price drop or PC release.

[Aphrodia]

More like $75-80 with tax. That's way too much money to spend on a game if you aren't 90-100 % sure you're going to enjoy it.

[Crows90]

That's the biggest downside to most games right now. The price is ridiculous.

[Blaze929]

Wait a month, will be $49.99. Publishers getting carried away tagging $69.99 on every game this gen

[TiredGamer]

Pick your poison…. $70 in 2024 or half the time, money, effort, and risk put into game development.

Economics needs to become a core class for everyone.

[Blaze929]

"half the time, money, effort, and risk put into game development." that's literally still happening with the $69.99 lol

[TiredGamer]

So you think that Stellar Blade would have been developed, as-is, if it were priced at $39.99 in 2024? It’s not 1998 anymore. If it was okay for a game to be priced at $50 in 1998 (equivalent to over $90 in 2024), why isn’t it for a game that cost magnitudes more to produce to be priced at $70?

It’s all psychological. People can’t break through this psychological dollar threshold despite the fact that inflation has reduced a dollar’s buying power by half in two decades.

[TiredGamer]

In the future, when a burger will cost $30 and minimum wage will be $40 an hour, people will still feel like videogames aren’t allowed to cost more than $60. Silly.

[Crows90]

Like with helldiver's 2 right? No wait ..that was $40

I'll pick $40

Overspending and mis managing money is that cause for the ballooning developer costs ...nothing to do with the year we're in.

[TiredGamer]

Your are cherry picking and oversimplifying the issues. Helldivers 2 is a great game and a solid single-A or maybe even a AA experience. But it is a GAAS type game that is subsidized by micro transactions. It was a relatively low budget effort and the underneath the veneer, it is a fun game that is built on fairly simple development assets.

I’m a guy that is more interested in retro games now than I am in any of the big budget stuff coming out. I don’t have the time nor desire to care about the most intricate micro-texture maps or the most amazing sock cloth physics. It’s a world of diminishing returns and I don’t personally find value in it. But others do, and that’s precisely why development dollars keep growing.

The detail and depth to AAA game experiences requires a ludicrous amount of resource investment. The sheer number of staff involved dwarfs what was seen only a decade ago. And the problem is that we are trying to cap what publishers can recoup despite the fact that inflation is ever marching and the value of the dollar is ever dropping. This will eventually, and probably sooner rather than later, lead to a mini crash of game development. And the sad thing about that is that it will lead to only the safest and trendiest genres getting any investment. And we’ll all pay for that in shallow game experiences.

I’m all for paying lower prices. But you have to have a reasonable sense of the economics at play here. Just as it is reasonable that the minimum wage/salaries increase with inflation, it is equally reasonable that prices increase as well. All else being equal, unless something is able to be made more cheaply, things eventually HAVE to increase in price to keep up with the behavior of the time value of money. Otherwise there is no incentive to make anything.

[Elda]

Gamespot gave SB an 8 which sounds about right. I really enjoyed the demo. I'll be picking up my pre-ordered copy this Friday.

[Redemption-64]

Reviews are currently in the low 80s, which is good.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

Yeah, Nah, I'm not trusting IGN to review this fairly.

[jwillj2k4]

Seven out of 10 exactly like I said. Just purely based on the demo It’s a good game, but it’s not great (in terms of gameplay and level design)

[LabRat]

Yes. Ignore all of the 9s. Let's just pick the review that aligns with our motives and pretend we called it months ago.

[thesoftware730]

Why Motives? He said he played the demo and thought it was a 7-ish type game; I feel the exact same way.

Why is there a motive? I don't understand why you are heavily defending this game from anything lower than an 8.

7 IS A GOOD SCORE PEOPLE.

[jwillj2k4]

Well, first of all it’s IGN So the review holds weight, whether you want to live in denial or not. Secondl I’ll still buy the game eventually.

[Sonic1881]

This game is actually doing pretty well especially since this is shift-up first console game.
https://opencritic.com/game...

[Hereandthere]

That PlayStation exclusive tax! IGN and Microsoft are buddies now a days, just like ms is with gaming bolt. In reality the game is 8.5/10

[Tacoboto]

This has the same review score as Starfield yet MS and IGN are in bed? Get a grip of reality, this reviewer doesn't review Xbox games.

[Hereandthere]

Starfield is a heaping pile of dog crap compared to
Stellar Blade, Starfield is one of the worst games in history, awful game.

[shinoff2183]

I mean they literally are. Is ign not hosting ms next showcase

[Tacoboto]

It's an indie showcase for titles that won't be exclusive or even published by MS.

For indies that need coverage more than AAA titles do.

To iterate again: Indies. Not XGS titles.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

Y'all make shit up on the spot anytime you don't like the number.

[S2Killinit]

IGN is a MS mouthpiece. They are on MS payroll. Only reason this is not even more evident is that majority of gamers are playing on PlayStation so IGN has to thread carefully.

[Tacoboto]

IGN has had several documented cases now of specifically leaving Xbox out of headlines and articles where Xbox is a known platform for release.

They've even been hit by Community Notes on Twitter for routinely excluding Xbox...

[S2Killinit]

That may have more to do with knowing their audience than anything else. If you go to their site for each platform and view some of their videos, it quickly becomes abundantly clear that they have a critical bias for MS platforms and products (ESPECIALLY where it counts). I was a huge consumer of IGN for a long time and finally got tired of how they think people are stupid. Their bias finally got on my nerves and I stopped using their site.

[Tacoboto]

So IGN is an MS mouthpiece and to hide being a mouthpiece, they pretend the platform doesn't exist and they rate MS titles the same way they rate others.

Um. Wow. You're really something.

[Lightning77]

You act like this a low Score. News flash it's not. Since this is you I guess IGN RIGHT NOW are some unrelated bizarre pay roll by MS. If they give a Xbox exclusive, or and Xbox associated game a 7 THEN it's a bad score and it makes total sense. Only shows how vastly immature you are.

Even though a 7 is not bad score at all.

[S2Killinit]

@Tocobto
What? What are you on about? You dont have to take my word, go check their site for each platform and you will see a very stark difference in the mode of reporting on each console. But I now have a feeling you would be unable to do that because you have your own bias.

@Lightning
Im havent said anything about this review so that might make you immature? IGN is bias through and through. They are a MS mouthpiece. They advertise MS products as if MS was speaking. This game is currently at 8.2 on metacritic just for the record.

[Tacoboto]

@S2 My bias? Yeah I do have a bias for PlayStation. For every game I choose to buy on Xbox there's at least 5 -10 more I get on PS. Can't wait for Stellar Blade tomorrow and my DualSense Edge will be charged up.

I do read IGN's site and I listen to their weekly shows. Outside of their Xbox Podcast, IGN has an outward dislike for Xbox from each of their shows and their anti-Xbox bias is so evident even Twitter calls them out on it. Their news director has openly trolled Xbox on their PS podcast and on socials.

[Lightning77]

Saying IGN is on MS pay roll because you don't like the score makes you immature not me kiddo. Bringing up MS for no reason makes you immature. Your fanboyism is immature.

[S2Killinit]

“Kiddo” then goes on to talk about who is mature. Maybe dont make assumptions big guy? My impression of IGN, as I even explained above, has nothing to do with this review.

[Tacoboto]

Your impression of IGN isn't even based on reality.

[Lightning77]

Only reason why you're so sensitive is because it's exclusive now. Despite it not being exclusive before. So you're trying to "damage control" when it's not necessary at all making stuff up in your head. If it was still Multiplat you wouldn't bat an eye even the the attention and anticipation wouldn't be where it's at now. Hardly anyone was talking about the game when it fist got announced, only when it went exclusive is when the hype started to go up. That's what it means to be exclusive in general, the bar raised and the expectations are higher I suppose.

Regardless, Breathe its 7 is a good score.

[S2Killinit]

7 is a good score, 8.2 metacritic is even better score.

[Puty]

Oof

[Barlos]

Oof? When did 7 become a bad score?

[S2Killinit]

Sitting at 8.2 meta. (:

[Lexreborn2]

What I find interesting is the perspective people are having with the likes of it reviewing similar to rise of ronin. Remember RoR hit with these same scores and ppl were actually saying “bad game” etc (to me nothing a 5 and over is a “bad game it’s just might not be what some people are looking for at that time.)

Now SB is getting similar scores and people are questioning the reviewers because it doesn’t align with the forumites hype. Let’s all say this together “A review is JUST an opinion from a stranger! You can make YOUR own decision on things that interest you. And it’s OK to disagree with a strangers opinion without feeling attacked!”

Always prioritize what you like over what others like/dislike you don’t need co-signers to justify your interest.

[Inverno]

Expect 7s and 6s from the usual sites. This game will get hated on for its protag, and not much else. They've already tagged it as racist over a grafiti saying "Hard" next to an R sign. They'll scan every inch of this game to stir up any pointless controversy. I just hope it sells well enough to piss off all these oversensitive individuals.

[ravens52]

Ye. That HARD R shit is a reach lol. I'm black and I wouldn't have blinked an eye at that. Now if you go there and they sell like watermelon and fried chicken or some racist shit like that then I'd feel some type of way lol.

[Inverno]

Yea and guess who pointed it out first…if you guessed IGN then you're correct lol

[Abnor_Mal]

https://kotaku.com/stellar-...

Seems Sony is aware and a day one patch will change the graffiti.

[purple101]

its quite simple, give an 8, get no clicks, give a low 6/ 7, get many clicks. Everyone else gave it an 8,
I suppose everyone's in touch with their opinion, but you can kind'a see through it like glass with IGN, as others pointed pout though, this same journey gave all other ps5 games high scores.

[DarkHeroZX]

Lol so if yall read the review is basically good on all fronts. But the knock stems from one thing.

"Its characters lack any kind of personality, charm, or charisma."

Lmao its code for Eve is too sexy lol.

[thesoftware730]

He also knocks it for a super amount of backtracking through the same levels, just to pick up 1 item.

And he said ALL the characters are boring, along with the story, and no replay value.

[ravens52]

The games doin great score wise, it's fine.

[ironmonkey]

With an 8 and 7 that's a buy. Can't wait.

[tombfan]

Always surprised that the most clicked or searched review is IGN's... people on this page hate their website, yet, they give them clicks like if that affirmation was wrong.

[Fonsecap]

84 on open critic. I think that everyone was expecting this to score 9s and 10s but I don't think the game deserves those rates, 7 or 8 are pretty good

[InUrFoxHole]

7/10? Noice.

[derek]

I'm picking this up, reminds of games like Onimusha

[gold_drake]

ah, doesnt rly matter to me.

i loved the demo and my copy arrives tomorrow:)

and quite honestly, ive seen it get high scores on alot of other sites. so yeh, watevs.

[ChasterMies]

Ah, the very helpful 7/10 from IGN. /s

[jznrpg]

Buy the games that look fun to you. There is even a demo. Personally I don’t read any of the bigger corporate sites for anything.

[TriniOutsider]

IGN had out for this game since the whole thing with IGN France.

Also, Western Reviewers are afraid of good-looking female characters now.

[P_Bomb]

7 is about what I gave the demo iirc. Good but with a couple hiccups.

[RiseNShine]

Well it depends which IGN you want to believe, IGN Spain gave it a 9 and IGN Italy gave it an 8.5, surprisingly the IGN from the country where all the woke nonsense comes from gives the lowest review score to a game with a beautiful female as main protagonist, i'm shocked.

[ocelot07]

Strange,

Don't get me wrong. Going by open opencritic and metacritic. It doesn't look like a $70 game.

That being said. It's sitting at 84 on open and 82 on metacritic. Yet on here only the 6/10 and 7/10 reviews getting posted and not the plenty of 10/10 and 9/10 reviews why is this?

[Hereandthere]

xbox and pc players per usual.

[Christopher]

I mean, you could submit all the missing 9/10 and 10/10 reviews if you wanted.

[ocelot07]

I could but I simply don't have the time or desire to. Just pointing out how toxic n4g can be.

[FernDiggidy]

Nice try N4G. only posting the lower scored reviews. Fknn weirdos!!!!

[nyckrazy]

They wont admit it, but the REAL reason for this score is the Protagonist wearing tight curvy outfit. The feminist hipsters out in SanFrancisco coffee shops despise sexy women in gaming. Ign is full of people like this.

[Zenzuu]

IGN critical it's story and yet gives games like Elden Ring or Breath of the Wild 9 or 10, which themselves barely has a decent story in them...

[CantThinkOfAUsername]

Does Elden Ring waste your time with cutscenes of characters yapping at each other? Didn't think so.

[TrueRican69]

My opinion Ign can shot they reviews of they ass. People need to stop believing those f****** people who review games and just enjoy it they self fuck them.

[vTuro24]

Oof. I was hoping it'd get at least an 8. Metacritic score is 82 at the time of writing so it seems my prediction was correct, so far.

[CrimsonWing69]

It’s weird listening to the podcast they did for this game where you could literally make a drinking game of all the times they say they “loved” this and that about the game. From what I gathered they didn’t like the story, didn’t care for the side quests, characters were “nothing burgers,” and the RPG elements weren’t great.

Now check out the review the same reviewer did for FF16… like weren’t the RPG elements, while present, weak in that game? Side quests sucked? Yet that gets a 9/10?

They keep saying a 7 is good! Guys it totally means good, yet who would feel good about a getting a 7? To me that’s just saying it’s ok. Nobody looks at 6/10 or 5/10 game and says, “Oh that’s just ok.” Those are like bad scores no matter how you try to spin the score system and a 7 feels like you’re saying the game is average.

It just feels disingenuous after listening to them gush about it in the podcast. Like I can see an 8, sure… but the 7 feels like there’s something off especially listening to the reviewer and the whole panel gush about the game.

[SoloGamer1]

does anybody even care about IGN's biased B.S. reviews? I know I dont. lol... ill be glad when they go out of business. the gaming world will be better off.

[Andrew336]

Mid Blade am I right???

[hiawa23]

Everything I have seen on the game looks pretty good and after watching Digital Foundry's coverage, I am sold, and I need something new for the PS5. Bought the digital deluxe version, can't wait.

[DafunkyRebel]

IGNorant as always

[Ironmike]

I thought it was a pretty fair review there was lor of positives and negatives which I agree with the platforming is horrible character movement to twitchy its good game buts not the best either lies of p was a better game up to now from what I played but it might get a lot better the design of 2 of the bosses I seen are fantastic though and it's an 8 for me not a 7 the world is great as well