Talented Soulslike content creator ONGBAL has completely obliterated a boss speedrun record set by a Stellar Blade developer at Shift Up, and even the studio is impressed.
Last week, Stellar Blade got a new patch which notably added some fresh outfits and the Boss Challenge mode, allowing us to take on the action game's many bosses over and over again. For the true video game masochists, this comes with the option to make every fight extra hard with the "extremely understated" 'minimum' preset (unlike the 'maximum' preset which buffs all your skills and stats). At the end of each fight, you get to pore over your damage, parry, and dodge statistics, as well as the all-important time it took you to take down your foe, and developer Shift Up has been challenging the community to beat its own in-house records over on Twitter.
Before we get into it, it's worth noting that the particularly impressive record in question was set on one of the game's later bosses, so consider this your final spoiler warning if you don't want to see who that enemy is.
Drum roll please - it's Raven. When the Boss Challenge mode was first rolled out, Shift Up challenged players to beat the developer record of two minutes and 52.68 seconds on Hard Mode with the 'minimum' preset. A couple of days later, ONGBAL shared this clip, demonstrating a lightning-fast no-damage run which was completed in just two minutes and 28.11 seconds, shaving an enormous 24 seconds from Shift Up's time.
"ONGBAL recorded a time of 02:28.11 on the Raven Hard, minimum preset, AMAZING!!" the studio writes on Twitter.
Others, like this determined player on Reddit, have also managed to beat the dev record, so ONGBAL isn't alone, even though the initial time itself was already seriously impressive. Let's face it though, even when only the demo was out, the Stellar Blade community has always been up for a challenge – even if those who spent upwards of 50 hours in the demo grinding away at its own bosses did scare Shift Up a little.
For more games like Stellar Blade, be sure to check out our list of the top 25 best action games you can play right now.
