izigame.me

I very rarely make reviews but this game i felt deserved some positive ones considering the amount of complaints it had. I think there's a problem with how players treat souls-like games and that is because a lot of them expect those games to be well... Souls games and so they create for themselves those high expectations like every above-average quality souls-like game should be as good as it was made by Fromsoft themselves.
While personally I appreciate any and all different approaches to this kind of games that makes them both similar to Dark Souls and also different from Dark Souls and let me tell you Stray Blade does a lot of things right but most importantly it really is fun to play. So now that i know the gameplay is fun lets get into more detail.
World/level design - Aside from your classic exploring - which the areas are beautiful and they also can change drastically with your progression through the world and it's interesting and cool to see how the things you do influence the world. Tells you a lot how powerful the original dwellers of the valley were.
But aside from that It feels like Stray Blade took a page from DS1 and made the world map a fun convoluted mess of interlocked areas - where you explore an area and move on and further on you discover a shortcut/gate/vine/bridge which leads back to the previous area except where in DS you would meet there the same enemies and environment you did on your first go through the area in Stray Blade the areas change, sometimes you will se Golden Order move in on a turf you yourself cleared, sometimes you will see wild animals nest up in the Order's former camps - you may also find some loot that previously wasn't there. I really enjoy that because unlike Souls' world this one isn't dead or dying and thus it's subject to change and in story it's cool and makes sense that when Farren blazes a trail and clears out an area - some faction follows his in footsteps finds decent ground for camp or stronghold and sets up.
Tl;dr - Backtracking can be fun and good if done right which Stray Blade does.
Story/lore/characters - It's likely that the story is not the main focus of the game and yet it's not lying forgotten in the dust. I enjoy the fact that Farren despite his general skepticism and loner mentality expresses genuine curiosity about the area and the history - as a proper adventurer should. It's a very natural way for the player to learn the lore and the history of Acrea - Farren being an adventurer and Boji being a local and it's also natural way to break the ice between Farren and Boji. Which i do also enjoy the dynamic between the two, i enjoy how much personality they both display in anything from Farren being revived to them smithing a weapon/armor together. Even though i saw the forging cutscene tens of times at this point it's still fun to watch.
I will not talk about lore too much, because naturally better to find out by yourself but i will say that Acrea isn't huge, decorated with weird visuals, metals and ornaments purely for the aesthetic. A lot of what you see while exploring has to do with the original residents and the elements and metals that they used, the more you learn the more things start to make sense.
Combat - I heard all the complaints about Stray Blade's combat and apparently soon it's getting a bit of a rework so i don't know how relevant my opinion here is going to be but here it is anyway.
First off I am a Gothic 1 and 2 veteran so your combat would have to be really really bad for me to have problems with it. As it happens personally i really do enjoy Stray Blade's combat, i like the amount of weapons i can get, i like that mastering each can boost my character - i think it has something to do with the fact that Farren is a melee weapon nut as much as i am - i also like that i'm better with some weapons and i suck with some other ones. I do actually find it a little weird that some red attacks that don't look to heavy(animation-wise) can't be parried, i think most enemy attacks should be able to be parried, maybe some elite enemies and bosses should have red attacks and that's that.
I would also enjoy more killmove animations with different weapons as some of the different weapons share the killmoves - but that's a minor thing that's purely aesthetic, doesn't lessen the combat fun.
Which as a final note on combat/killing end of the game - the killmoves are cool, extremely fun and make winning that much more satisfying.
To sum it up i believe Stray Blade is a great game as a whole, one of my favourite souls-likes in fact and i'm gonna support and shill it every chance i get and with upcoming updates and fixes it will potentially become even better as even i have to admit that few things like camera work could use improvement.
My two biggest complaints would be clunky feeling camera
And lack of photo-mode.
I highly recommend this game if you're looking for fun.