Sword Star is an action role-playing game developed by SHIFT UP, which is also a studio founded by famous illustrator Kim Hyung-tae. In this game, the story of a war between humans and the vicious creature "Evil Quibal", the player takes on the role of the protagonist "Eve", an "angel" who falls from the sky and will end the war on behalf of humanity. This time, we have obtained the full version of "Sword Star" in advance, and we will evaluate this work.
Video Review:
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剑星 | Stellar Blade 开发商:Shift Up 发行商:Sony Interactive Entertainment 发售日:2024年4月26日 所属平台:PS5 属性:动作、科幻、美少女、末世
For domestic players, Kim Hyung-tae's more famous work is the MMORPG "Sword Spirit" launched by NCsoft in 2014, with exaggerated and provocative body proportions and oily clothing texture, so that words like "greasy sister" once became synonymous with Kim Hyung-tae. Ten years have passed, and with the advancement of development technology and the improvement of hardware performance, the latest work has also made significant progress in terms of picture performance. In "Sword Star", while the visual accuracy of the characters and environments has been greatly improved, the art style still retains Kim Hyung-tae's personal characteristics of using highlight rendering to highlight the clothing materials and skin textures. The light and shadow, materials, physical shaking, and character expressions can all be seen in carefully adjusted details, and they are very careful. At present, the official trial version has been launched on the PlayStation Store, and if you are interested, you can download and experience it yourself.
The heroine Eve, as the selling point of the game, can be seen through the game that the development team has put a lot of effort into carving the figure, expression, clothing and accessories of this character. There are more than 30 pieces of clothing, although some of the clothing is color change, but most of them are still independent designs. And in this positioning game, to show the beauty of the heroine's body is not just about exposure. The character itself is a piece of carefully carved jade, and how to make the clothes combine with her figure to show her charm and push the sexual tension to the top of the curve requires excellent design taste.
Contest! God Sandstorm!
In addition, the main character Eve's action performance is very strong, such as slipping off a ladder and raising a gun. While technology is bringing characters closer and closer to visual reality, details such as these give a sense of the next-gen visual experience and satisfy your inner fantasies. The performance part of the cutscene is also very refreshing, Eve's smooth and powerful movements, combined with the well-designed camera movement, to pull the tension of the performance, this advantage can even overshadow the mediocrity of the plot part. But the fly in the ointment is Eve's hairstyle, although Shift Up's long ponytail craftsman seems to have spent nearly a year polishing his obsession with a long ponytail, but the look and feel of the long ponytail in the official version is not very ideal. It is possible to switch to a short ponytail in the settings, but I personally disagree that this is a short ponytail. In addition, after completing the side quests, you can change your hairstyle in the human stronghold of Xion, but Eve can't change the high ponytail, so she can only make a fuss about the hair in front of her, which is a bit unbrittle.
Despite the care of the character design, the level design is not flattering. In terms of art style, the visual effects of the scene are quite good, but the actual experience when playing is not very good. The scenes in the game are divided into stage-based levels and sandbox-based large maps, both of which have some problems to a greater or lesser extent. The level guidance of the stage system is relatively stiff, and the exploration ideas of some scenes are counterintuitive. Many of the elements that need to be interacted with in the process are not obtrusive, and need to be frequently scanned with radar (and even some interactive elements remain inconspicuous after being scanned). In addition, these stage levels can still be returned to explore later, with new changes in some areas. However, due to the fact that you can't view the map in the stage level, you will always encounter the dilemma of not being able to find the way when you explore again.
Although there are two large maps that can be freely explored, the story takes place on post-apocalyptic Earth, and the two maps are one desert and the other is a wasteland. Although it is impossible to say that they are indistinguishable, from the personal experience of the experience, they are all similar to the ruins, the ruins, and the depression and dilapidation, and when collecting props, it often makes people wonder if this place has ever been there. Although these two areas can open the map, the map has very limited functions, no location names, no symbol markers, and no free destination settings. For example, during the game, you can often find a treasure chest in a corner, and when you try to open it, you find that you need a password. In the event that the experience has already brought negative feedback, players will have to find the location of the crate again when they finally find the password. Although the password will mark the location of the treasure chest, since the location name is not marked on the map, it is difficult to link it to the location on the map with words alone. If the level design of the scene is good enough, the need to use maps to assist will be relatively reduced, but both parts of Sword Star are not good enough.
How can there be no fishing in the adventure to save the world
The negative experience in exploration is not only caused by the imperfection of the map's functions, such as the teleportation function, only phone booths and camps with phone booths can be teleported to other phone booths, and they still have to run away when exploring later. The steps to explore in different areas are also more cumbersome, either transiting through Xion once, or going to the quadruped pod to talk to NPCs. Many side quests require running back and forth between different areas, and frequent zone changes are really cumbersome. However, after meeting the mission conditions, you can choose to teleport to the client immediately, which is very convenient.
Cans that are a hassle to find
The music part was produced by Monaca's Inoue Shinta and Oliver Good, and the heavy vocal part was reminiscent of "Neil Automata", which was also directed by Monaca's Kaiichi Okabe. This part of the whole play is very stable, even if it is not to the extent of "Neil Automata" to buy music and give away games, the performance is relatively good.
As an action game, you can see elements from many famous games in Sword Star, such as perfect block/dodge followed by counterattacks, exhaustive executions, and long press on the red knife. With the history of the game so far, it's hard for developers not to work without referring to other great titles. Whether the work is a collection of the strengths of each family or a pure stitching product depends on how well these elements fit into the game itself. From this point of view, although you can see the shadows of other works on the body of "Sword Star", the feeling when experiencing it is relatively smooth. In the demo that has been announced, combat is centered around the cycle of Beda Energy: Beta Energy is consumed when using Beta Abilities, Defense/Dodge Counterattacks, and Red Knife Amplification, while Offense and Perfect Defense accumulate Beta Energy. In a stable and effective cycle of attack and defense, the combat will be very comfortable and rhythmic.
However, I personally think that the most important element of "Sword Star" is similar to the offset in "Bayonetta". Although there are not many combos in "Sword Star", there are many gameplay related to dodging and combos, such as the fourth-level combo to restore explosive energy, the second-level combo to increase damage, and so on. However, in "Sword Star", when you have to finish a long combo, either the enemy doesn't attack all the time, or you stun the mending knife around your back, and the positioning of normal attacks and combos is just an auxiliary means to charge skills, which also makes the combat part of the game become monotonous from the middle stage.
Compared with the demo version, the official version has added two types of skill trees: Burst Skill and Swift Mode. Burst skills are another series of skills parallel to beta skills, press the R1 + function key to activate, and the explosive skills need to consume another type of burst energy, which can be accumulated by dodging, flashing, etc. Although there are differences in skills, they are the same as Beta skills, through reasonable resource management and attack and defense cycles, interrupt the enemy and control the enemy's actions. The boss in "Sword Star" is unexpectedly easy to be hit, and the aforementioned beta skills and the explosive skills here, the red knife amplification of the final blow of the combo, and the shock grenade can all interrupt the boss's action. Even powerful bosses can easily suppress enemies after mastering a good sense of rhythm.
After unlocking Swift Mode, you can accumulate energy gauges when you kill or deal certain damage to enemies. When the Centrino energy is full, press L3+R3 to switch to the Centrino mode in a short time. Similar to most gas blast systems, you can use skills to attack at will in Swift Mode. In addition to being handsome, the Centrino mode is of little practical significance, and it can play the role of icing on the cake, but cannot bring the miracle of resurrection. Because the transformation time of Swift mode is not long, but the damage is still very scratched. In addition to Swift's skills, the skill tree is also filled with various defensive dodge and counterattack skills. But in itself, every second counts, and it is not efficient to choose this passive play.
The boss battle part is designed, as long as you have enough observation of the boss's moves, defensive counterattacks and dodges can bring you a certain amount of pleasure. You can also unlock Hardmode after beating the level, and if you are confident in your reflexes, you will be able to enjoy this high-speed attack and defense. However, there is a more obvious phase switch in the boss battle.,Blood-locked before the action of the cut phase occurs.,If you happen to encounter an execution or turn on the Swift Mode, it will be a loss.,It's also a big hit on the interest of studying the boss.。
There is a custom section for the character, which consists of three parts: the secondary spine, the components, and the appearance. The support spine will greatly change the player's fighting style. Stable players can choose the Protective Spine, which not only reduces damage taken but also restores HP when the damage taken is less than 20%; Players who pursue efficiency can choose to improve the auxiliary spine of the burst/beta skill, and after unlocking the second spine slot in the middle and late stages, they can also use the auxiliary spine to improve the judgment time of perfect dodge/parry, which can be more efficient in the output cycle; Components, on the other hand, numerically increase Eve's abilities and increase slots after obtaining the Universal Bolt. However, four slots are obviously not enough, and many powerful and effective components need to be obtained in the late game, and obtaining these mass killers when Sins is no longer available in the promotion also indirectly limits the fun of the game.
The aforementioned design mistakes are at best pouting, while the most puzzling design of Sword Star is the post-clearance element. Many games turn back the story progress to a certain period of time after the player has cleared the level, allowing the player to explore freely and continue to collect the elements that they did not obtain. However, after clearing the game in Sword Star, the ending save will always be stuck in the small scene where the final boss is located, and all this save can do is fight the final boss. After clearing the level, you will unlock Hardmode and a set of costumes, and all the files, soda bottles, growth status, and other data collected by the previous save will not be inherited. I don't really understand what the intention of this design is.,If you do half of the collection and want to finish the plot.,Then you can't finish the collection in this archive.,You can only open a new file.。 After you finish collecting and then push the plot, the repeated combat experience and the collection elements with scarce positive feedback will gradually dissipate the goodwill accumulated in the early stage. If you're going to have a relatively perfect game completion, it's recommended to start collecting again in the second week.
Finally, let's talk about the synopsis of the plot part.,It's a beautiful girl with very strong combat power who has landed on Earth from space and fights for the freedom and victory of mankind and hostile lifeforms.。 As the mission progresses, she realizes that the truth of this world is not what she knows, and embarks on a journey to find the truth. Just looking at this, I can't help but correspond to "Nier Automata" supervised by Yokoo Taro, and Kim Hyung-tae also frankly admits that he has been influenced by many influences from "Neil Automata". However, in fact, the plot narratives of the two are very different, and they also use different narrative styles. "Sword Star" uses a relatively simple and pure single-line narrative, with questions raised, reversed, and the truth revealed as the plot progresses, and many documents can be collected in the process to assist in the understanding of the plot and enrich the world view.
I appreciate the sincerity of the developers in making a lot of efforts to please players, and I don't doubt that there will be many players who will enjoy the story of Sword Star. It's just that according to my personal taste, the story of "Sword Star" is a little immature, the character motivations and contradictions are too flat, and the story reversal is relatively easy to guess. Although the characters are all performed hard, the shaping of the characters is relatively mediocre.
Summary of the A9VG experience
The gameplay experience of Sword Star is like boiling a pot of lemonade, and if you hurry up and drink this pot of lemonade, it tastes good; But if you do side quests while collecting, and finally pack up almost to push the final main quest, this pot of lemonade soaked in lemon will only leave bitter memories. But overall, "Sword Star" is indeed a very sincere work, and its highly anticipated parts respond well to players' expectations for it, even beyond the original expectations of this work. However, the lack of experience of the developers is also evident, with design mistakes in some areas that shouldn't have gone wrong, negatively impacting the game experience. Still, these flaws aren't unforgivable when faced with a game that is trying so hard to please players.
A9VG rating: 8 out of 10