head to head
vs
Ninja Gaiden SigmavsStellar Blade
Ninja Gaiden Sigma leans Execution (Pure Mechanics); Stellar Blade leans Execution (Practiced Mastery).
Ninja Gaiden SigmaStellar Blade
Axis by axis
Execution9 vs 8
Ninja Gaiden Sigma leans harder on execution: Aggressive enemies punish any input slack; blocking and i-frames gate everything
Reads0 vs 1
Stellar Blade leans harder on reads: Bosses run fixed movesets, learnable not adaptive
Variance1 vs 1
Even - both lean on variance about the same.
Optimization6 vs 6
Even - both lean on optimization about the same.
Two games can score the same on an axis and still test it in very different ways - read each rationale, not just the number.