Stray Blade

Combat:
-The game has a parry, a dodge and with certain weapons a block. Perfect parries stagger an enemy for a second, deal poise damage and give back stamina. Parrying at just the wrong time blocks the damage, but doesnt stagger the enemy and leaves you open to a second attack. Just like parrying, perfect dodging recovers you some stamina but doesnt stagger enemies. And blocking is well… blocking.
-The combat can feel clunky at times due to its unforgiving damage and stagger when you dont perfect dodge or parry and the stamina economy also requires you to do perfect parries and dodges. Some weapons have slow attack combos and dont have enough hyper armor, nor can you increase your poise like in a Fromsoft game. It takes some getting used to but eventually the flow of combat will become more of a dance then a battle. If you can find the patience for it that is.
-The abilities you unlock troughout the game (Intium, Manninite and Xhinnon) have their own uses in combat, Intium is fun, Manninite seems fun but doesnt do enough to make it worth it and Xhinnon turns on easy-mode.

Story:
-The story is pretty good if you read all the extra lorestones you can find around the game and talk to Boji whenever you can. Without the lorestones and Boji the story does become confusing, and the ending becomes very confusing and a bit weird.
-The valley of Acrea is very rich in its culture and history, and you can find out quite a bit about how the society was before their fall. Many areas have interesting tid bits of lore regarding them. The valley also looks very pretty.

Exploration:
-The exploration is this game is quite fun and reminds me of metroidvanias. You go trough an area, see some stuff you dont have the ability to get and come back later to find some nice customizations or other secrets.
-The world as noted before looks great and each new area is great to look at and run around in.

Performance:
-I ran the game on high settings on a 3070, Intel I-7 10700k with 16GB ram. I only noticed minor performance issues in certain areas. (Have to go back and check the areas again to give acurate and recent statistics on this since my info on this is outdated)

Final Thoughts:
Stray Blade is a good game that I am going to be replaying a handful of times with some fun challenges for myself. There are aspects that could be better or design choices that couldve been made differently but looking at the game as a whole its 100% been a blast and I cant wait to see what the future brings to this game.