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Forbes
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started ‘Stellar Blade,' 2025 PC Edition
Stellar Blade Stellar Blade has stormed onto Steam with a record number of concurrent players for a previously PlayStation-exclusive release. It's more than doubled the previous high, and many players are getting to experience the game for the first time. Back at launch, I beat Stellar Blade twice and did a full NG+ run, and I came away with a lot of lessons I think I can impart to new players. I already wrote this once, but I will do an abridged version of it here. You can go read the old one, but here are the highlights and ten things I wish I knew when I started Stellar Blade. 1) Beta Attacks – I would heavily invest in these, and when I could, I made my build around boosting them specifically. Combos and burst attacks are one thing, but beta builds will be the thing that wipes bosses in particular. 2) Parry and Dodging Help – Obviously, these are two keys to any combat-based game, but if that's not your thing but you still want to play, you can instead turn on a quicktime event setting that replaces those moments with a telegraphed button press. I did not use this at all, but it's an accessibility option if you need it. 3) Boss Shields – Boss battles are going to be extra tough until you know just how much you need to focus on their shield bar. If you break that, it's big damage time, and I would recommend spec-ing into moves and upgrades that will help with that damage. A beta R1+X backflip is a shield-killer I never took off, for instance. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder Stellar Blade 4) Side Quests – Stellar Blade can be tough if you try to just do a straight story run, ignoring the litany of side quests you get along the way. In addition to bonuses like gear and outfits, they award large chunks of NPC that will help boost your level more than almost anything else and dump skill points on you. 5) Spam Scan – I suppose this is not an uncommon practice in games that have wall scans, but I would do it almost everywhere you go to the point where it might be annoying. If you don't, you will miss out on tons of upgrades, health and materials, and they are hidden everywhere. 6) Corpse Hunting – These will not give you normal loot like other games, but if you see a corpse, scan and attempt to farm it, as this is how you get things like extra XP and door/chest codes constantly. Stellar Blade 7) Eve Outfit Hunting – This one is a little outdated, given that there have been dozens and dozens of outfits added to the game since I played it, but one key to this is maxing out your reputation with vendors in town to unlock a whole bunch of them for purchase. Maybe you now unlock more than you used to. To craft them, you can flat-out buy materials from Sisters' Junk if you need to. Otherwise, sidequests, hidden chests and boss challenges can get you a lot of outfits. 8) Vendor Rep – Again, vendor rep. It's not just the outfits; it's also materials and gear you cannot find easily otherwise. Increase them enough, and you will get some of the most interesting side quests in the game. All you have to do is spend money there, so it's not that hard once you build up a stash. 9) Point of No Return – It does exist. The game will tell you when you are launching the 'final mission,' and there is no finale that lets you keep playing. If it tells you to finish everything up on the map, do it. But of course, you can start NG+ after and keep all your stuff as you play the story again. Stellar Blade 10) New Game Plus – It's great! SHIFTUP really did this well, which gives you new skill nodes, new moves, better gear upgrades, drone additions and a zillion new outfits, naturally. Some games don't do this well, but Stellar Blade does. Enjoy, it's a great time. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Forbes
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Elden Ring: Nightreign's First Patch Doesn't Address The Game's Biggest Problems
Nightreign FromSoftware has released the first major update for its new multiplayer Elden Ring spinoff Nightreign. The update makes some important fixes and includes crucial balancing changes, but leaves the game's most pressing issues for a later patch – assuming the developer chooses to listen to player complaints. The biggest change in Update 1.0.1.1 is to solo play. The new 'Automatic Revival Upon Defeat' mechanic allows solo players to revive one time per boss fight. This isn't much, but it gives solo players a fighting chance in what can only be described as a truly brutal single-player experience that makes many of the original game's boss fights look like a cakewalk. Solo players will now also gain more runes for their troubles. Other changes include increases to the number of rare Relics players can obtain as a reward for completing Day 3 Expeditions. The probability of obtaining high-rarity Relics from Scenic Flat Stone purchases at the Small Jar Bazaar has also been increased. Beyond that, the patch is mostly bug fixes to various ailments, skills and spells that weren't working properly at launch. Some of the bigger issues – from the lack of a Duos option to missing voice chat and crossplay – remain a problem. I'll have further thoughts on the game later. As it stands, there's a good gameplay loop here, but I have quite a few issues with how each Expedition plays out and I worry that without a steady stream of live-service updates, the game will get repetitive quickly. Here are the full patch notes: FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder What do you think of Nightreign so far? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook. Also be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me here on this blog. Sign up for my newsletter for more reviews and commentary on entertainment and culture.
Japan Times
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Times
In Elden Ring Nightreign, the FromSoftware formula goes awry
My first few runs through Elden Ring Nightreign felt familiarly masochistic: FromSoftware's patented against-all-odds boss fights still scratch the same itch that helped turn the Tokyo studio from a niche developer into the progenitor of an entire gaming genre. But where 2022's Elden Ring represented FromSoftware at the peak of its art in the single-player, action roleplaying genre, Nightreign, released on May 31, sees the studio try its hand for the first time at not only a multiplayer experience but a roguelike nonetheless (a genre in which repeated attempts by the player lead to new and varied abilities and, ideally, eventual success). The result is a game that excels when it leans on the core DNA of the FromSoftware formula — but withers when it needs to rely on much else. Your first several hours of Nightreign might feel like stepping into a boss rush mode for Elden Ring. After dropping into a map lifted largely from the 2022 game, teams of three players defeat low-level enemies for stat-boosting equipment and weapons while a damaging storm closes in from all sides. This is all preparation for the more powerful bosses that bookend each evening of Nightreign's three-day cycle (sessions that progress fully take about 40 minutes). After the second night, it's then time for a showdown with a substantially more difficult enemy where the run ends in either victory or death. Barring the exceptionally skilled (or the lethally lucky), your first runs are almost certain to end in repeated defeats — a feature, not a bug, of nearly every game FromSoftware has made going back 30-plus years. However, in games like Elden Ring, Dark Souls, Sekiro and others, these single-player experiences task the player with progressing through a fixed gauntlet. A particularly challenging boss can act as a gatekeeper, stymieing progress for hours; upgraded weapons and armor are helpful in felling powerful foes, but patience, attention to detail and measured aggression are the true determiners of success in FromSoftware's single-player games. After dozens of hours in Nightreign, however, it's hard to shake the feeling that the inverse is true. Runs that progress to the final boss nearly always fail if players don't have equipped weapons that deal damage specific to enemy weak points; getting those weapons means clearing enemy encampments earlier in the session, but what loot you receive is determined by chance. Once you figure this out, two-thirds of each run largely devolve into sprinting from location to location and defeating minor enemies until loot and stat boosts drop. Herein lies Nightreign's greatest missed opportunity: a lack of variety baked into this loop. Other games in the roguelike genre grasp this problem — in order to maintain player interest in repeatedly running a set course, the power-ups they encounter must be meaningful enough to change the way players play. A boon might erase health while making attacks exponentially stronger, so the player must become adept at avoiding attacks and choosing the right time to strike; a rare item might promise a massive upside when paired with another as-yet unobtained ability, requiring players to weigh the risks and rewards of abandoning their current plans in pursuit of an uncertain benefit. Elden Ring Nightreign is still an enjoyable experience, but it has difficulty thriving as a roguelike. | FROMSOFTWARE In Nightreign, these choices are largely nonexistent. Sessions become overly mechanical in nature, checklists of items and equipment rather than on-the-spot wagers bursting with potential. In roguelikes, no two runs are meant to feel the same, but in Nightreign, almost every run does. Can these issues be addressed to some degree in post-release patches? Possibly. Will FromSoftware learn from these mistakes if it returns to the well for a Nightreign 2? Almost assuredly. But the studio's first major foray away from its forte of single-player action roleplaying shows something we've rarely seen: a core gameplay loop lacking the veteran developer's characteristic polish.
