Stellar Blade Review

Stellar Blade marvelously glistens when viewed through the lens of a Golden Age PlayStation 2 game.

There is a distinct feeling that specific era evokes. One where a console manufacturer was at the top of its game and publishers and developers were churning out bombastic, diverse, incredible videogames. It was a vibe that fueled the cocky, experimental Wild West of the PlayStation 3 as well.

I look back to a period in college where dorm rooms featured Guitar Hero, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Devil May Cry, Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill 2, Okami, Final Fantasy XII, and God of War II. Some obvious blockbusters. Some absurdly bizarre. Most undeniable classics. One game has players running over pedestrians. Another playing a Sun Goddess turned wolf. Yet another where players flee a manifestation of the protagonist’s guilt.

Stellar Blade‘s lithe, sword-wielding heroine; its grotesque, corrupted monsters; its often straightforward progression; its confidence… they are not alien elements to many of this generation’s games, or to those of the last handful. Though not bountiful with wholly original ideas, Stellar Blade is a kind of microcosm of engaging gameplay and narrative conceits. South Korean developer SHIFT UP has also made a decidedly Asian game, a tone that certainly felt more prominent a few decades ago, making this major console debut all the more impressive.

EVE is a member of the 7th Airborne Squad sent by the omniscient Mother Sphere from space in a full-scale assault to eradicate the Naytibas from a decimated Earth. And for the initial portion of Stellar Blade, those concepts make a surprising amount of sense for how ridiculous they look and sound.

While Stellar Blade plucks from the tree of “Earth has gone to shit” that media has gleefully consumed lately, there is a weirdness here that congeals in entertaining way. The game begins with massive ovular spaceships clustering near Earth’s orbit, their bows adorned with an angelic looking figure. In seconds a number of the ships are ripped asunder by missiles launched from the surface of the planet as escape pods jettison to the ground. And this bizarre, seemingly pointless display of techno-dominance is nearly abandoned for the next several hours of the game.

Our heroine crash lands on Earth amidst the chaos of what feels like a vastly underpowered and poorly-planned war, despite the capabilities of her compatriots. The foes responsible for downing the 7th Airborne fleet are fleshy, eldritch horrors that stand taller than skyscrapers, blasting energy from some internal furnace and discharging out petal-like flaps that are less mouth and more orifice–our first look at Naytibas.

The game’s first minutes are these heightened concepts of realism, one that also only shows EVE’s first-person viewpoint inside the claustrophobic, malfunctioning escape pod. It is the trailer bait of Stellar Blade that alludes to a grand scale and sets dramatic stakes. The first moment players lay eyes on EVE, it is as she is pulled from the pod, back arched perfectly in tune to be framed with a background explosion.

“Ah yes,” I thought. “This is ridiculous. And I love it.”

The “reveal” of EVE honestly made me chuckle. My laughter was not derisive because I cannot help but imagine SHIFT UP is moderately self-aware at what its doing. Referring to EVE as sexy, beautiful, exaggerated, unrealistic, or anything in between isn’t ripping off any kind of band-aid. In all my years of gaming, I’ve played as men and women who were equally if not more conceptually absurd than EVE. Nier: Automata is an obvious inspiration thematically to Stellar Blade—Nier‘s composer Keiichi Okabe even does music for this game–and 2B raised enough eyebrows on her own.

But as I’ve emphasized, Stellar Blade is rooted in a style of game that is less focused on a grounded ideation of its world. PlayStation pillars The Last of Us, Horizon, and God of War all have fantastical elements but retain an undeniable realism to them. Kratos may be a god but he still looks like a buff, muscular dad. Aloy hunts down mechanical dinosaurs in what is unmistakably a version of America that could be possible.

Stellar Blade simply cares more about the world being stylized, where Earth has deserts and buildings and people. But everyone is dressed in bizarre outfits or are cobbled together with mechanical pieces. Monsters have fingers for faces or look like demonic wheels with legs. An impractical civilization sits in a crater surrounded by mile-high rocks.

So when EVE blasts onto the scene like it’s a music video, I didn’t bat an eye. The character has her beauty and SHIFT UP goes through the effort to emphasize this aspect of her. Dozens of optional outfits can be discovered and crafted, from barely-there dresses, to sleek business attire, to silly flair. Players even unlock the option to further play dress up by giving EVE different hairstyles with various colors. Understandably, I can see where a subset of players may not be comfortable with the design or merely think its ridiculous. I’ve seen the conversation surrounding Stellar Blade‘s male gaze on EVE. Personally, it isn’t a factor. And after spending 40 hours with the game, I often found myself acknowledging that EVE’s physical appearance was not a detriment to the game but merely another reason why it had its own personality.

What came as a surprise to me was that Stellar Blade‘s narrative is not as “active” as I would have expected. For about two-thirds of the game, major beats and revelations don’t come at a snail’s pace but are spread out in a way that may make a completionist’s run feel longer. After a brief introduction that incorporates environmental destruction, tutorials, a boss fight, and a death of a comrade, Stellar Blade is set for heightened stakes but opts for a slow burn.

EVE is rescued by Adam, a man who is one of many survivors left on Earth that never escaped to The Colony in space under the safety of Mother Sphere. And for the first few hours EVE chops away at Naytibas in the ruined remains of a broken Metropolis hunting for an energy source while Adam provides support through a drone that hovers around EVE.

Throughout the runtime of Stellar Blade, breadcrumbs are sprinkled around the world and narrative in the form of text logs and side comments during dialog. Hints at a “Final War” that caused all the destruction on Earth. Sprinkles on the origins of the Naytiba. Questions about Mother Earth and why not everyone was chosen to go to her embrace. There’s an invigorating sense of discovery to games where the bigger picture is always looming and just out of grasp until the next out-of-the-way corpse reveals a Memorystick with a strange note.

Momentum is gained when players hit Xion, seemingly the last major installation of human civilization. Here, EVE is tasked with retrieving four massive power sources that will aid Xion’s survival and lead to the Elder Naytiba. It all feels very direct, because it is. EVE and the player’s journey is more about unfolding the state of Earth and its past than any kind of personal quest. This isn’t to say that the characters featured in Stellar Blade are flimsy, there’s just a revolving door outside of a few core members.

EVE only starts out her journey a touch naive, remarking on a few foreign concepts like rain and music. She regards humanity as something worth saving and laments the devastation of her squad. As the game progresses, so does her depth because the story necessitates that she learns from betrayals and investigates her confusion. Adam is a voice of calm and a kind of tour guide that isn’t pigeonholed into a mentor or romantic lead. Both he and Lily, an engineer, are the chatter players hear when progressing through quests and serve their supplemental roles well, never taking the focus away from EVE.

Most characters that aren’t EVE mainly act as one- or two-off roles that establish a purpose to give a quest and little else until it’s resolved. And when players first go to Xion, they are going to wonder why this random guy has a mechanical head on his flesh and blood body or who this singing woman is in a bar that seems to be mostly a head kept alive by a floating thing with tentacles. This box of curiosities gives players quests that grant rewards usually in the form of gold or materials, but sometimes in earned knowledge.

A literal mission board can be found in Xion where EVE picks up tasks from clients she will never interact with. Shop owners have relationship levels that grow when players purchase enough goods but merely reveal a handful of tidbits about themselves and continue being permanent fixtures at one place on the map. It can all feel lonely and quite hollow beneath the surface and much of that feels intentional. Early on, EVE remarks that despite her main goal, helping people with their problems is in its own way helping out humanity. Besides, a number of Xion’s citizens simply do not trust EVE and her fellow “Angels” that have descended from the sky in the past.

Building out the world through these quests makes Stellar Blade a more interesting game and not tedious like I initially believed it would be. Thorough players will even benefit from an entirely optional section of the game should they discover enough, though the game does obfuscate certain elements of what is being worked toward. It’s a tantalizing question mark that permeates, watching a percentage increase when specific things are done.

However, as an action game, Stellar Blade does surprisingly lack a healthy amount of big setpieces that set the screen on fire. A handful of times a boss makes a showy entrance or EVE must briefly run from a collapsing environment. SHIFT UP utilizes QTEs occasionally but not in ways that left me breathless. Cutscenes exist that pack a punch but I’m disappointed that nothing exists bordering on the sheer spectacle of a Naughty Dog moment.

And I think it’s here that expectations with Stellar Blade should be set. I imagine that a number of players look at the game’s hard-hitting combat and certain death as an indication SHIFT UP is working to imitate FromSoftware’s catalog. And yes, Stellar Blade does mimic certain aspects of those games which have become lexicon in the last decade. Rest stops are littered throughout the world giving players the chance to refill health potions that also reset downed Naytibas. Most rest stops feature item shops or kiosks to spend skill points, fewer offer fast travel points or consoles allowing suit crafting and other upgrades. Stellar Blade also has doors and gates that unlock shortcuts or require thicker exploration to come out the other side.

Yet Stellar Blade is inherently tamer than those games and a number of titles that have made rabid difficulty a selling point. Initially possessing an Easy and Normal difficulty, Stellar Blade can feel punishing until you master its rhythm. This is a game that emphasizes blocking, parrying, and combination attacks. EVE has a remarkable toolset at the beginning that could potentially get players through most of the game but is gracefully expanded upon in key moments during the story to tackle greater threats.

Most Naytibas have a kind of stagger meter indicated by yellow diamonds below their health bars. Time a block right before the attack hits to initiate a Perfect Parry and shave off one of those stagger bars. Deplete them all and EVE can perform a devastating Retribution attack. The logic works on bosses as well, many of who, like EVE, possess shields that when depleted, cause damage when not blocking perfectly.

This cadence forces players almost immediately to approach enemies cautiously, trying to learn their patterns. Nearly every enemy in Stellar Blade has specific tells that usually follow through with a number of attack patterns and combos. The trick is to analyze these movements and nail down when to press the L1 button at the right moment. During a number of grueling boss fights, I would perish primarily because I whiffed a Perfect Parry, usually block too early and trying to recover with the follow-up. Some enemies punish these failings cruelly, engaging in unavoidable follow-up attacks. I can see experts deconstructing Stellar Blade in a matter of weeks and making every combat encounter feel trivial, much like when the demo arrived and players were doing no-hit runs.

EVE is not capable of blasting through most enemies in one combo string and few can be briefly stunned out of an initial attack. Instead, players are meant to initiate a handful of complex combination strings that mix up button presses of the light and heavy attacks. The game often rewards more complex attacks by having them deal more damage. Further supplementing EVE’s capabilities are unlockable moves that can be triggered after a Perfect Parry, a Blink ability that teleports EVE behind an opponent, Perfect Dodges that negate unblockable attacks, and a number of other specialized moves that satiate the thirst of skilled players yearning for dizzying combat.

Stellar Blade seems simple at first because that is what it presents to players. For a decent portion of the opening area, enemies and bosses have large tells that can be learned relatively fast. Perfect Parries are key but EVE can survive by merely blocking and getting in a few hits to recover her shield. But the number of systems resting on the sidelines or added in later, introduce a complexity that puts Stellar Blade more in line with a Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, sprinkled with Sekiro. Beta Skills are hard-hitting moves that consume Beta energy but can be upgraded to shave off stagger or stun. Burst skills show up about halfway through the game serving as another source of damage on its own meter. Both Burst and Beta meters can also be consumed when performing special finishers at the ends of attacks.

The rising complexity of combat was fairly daunting and I saw myself trying not to rely on a handful of memorized combinations. Attempting to remember to hold triangle after a Perfect Parry and then press square to execute a special move in the heat of a boss fight is not an easy task unless those skills are intrinsically dialed into your gamer DNA with enough time or dedication. Because it doesn’t have a style or score meter, Stellar Blade doesn’t make players feel lesser for scraping through encounters performing rudimentary attacks. Thankfully, a handy training system allows for practice on any unlocked skill.

Death merely costs time here, which is a vastly appreciated notion. If trying to do everything, the skill tree is not hard to fill out. Exploration will also reward modifiers for EVE such as increased attack speed, health granted after a kill, better critical chances, and a few dozen other modifications. Exospines can also be equipped that unlock further capabilities and act as specialized paths a player may wish to take or supplement. At first I leaned towards an exospine that decreased damage EVE took but eventually moved to ones that did more damage based on higher level combos. Give it a few hours and Stellar Blade becomes shockingly customizable both aesthetically and mechanically.

Though not extensively vast or complicated, SHIFT UP offers just enough tools to create a satisfying narrative and gameplay experience for a first effort. Players are always going to wish for more boss fights and enemy encounters. That applies with Stellar Blade, especially because some of these boss encounters are extremely memorable from both a visual and technical standpoint–one especially intoxicating one has tufts of sand and dust flit around and part as EVE and her opponent duel. But over the course of the game, enemy groupings don’t change much to really challenge players who have learned the ropes. Sure it’s fun sneaking up on enemies for an instant kill but had SHIFT UP created maybe 15 more basic enemies and 5 more boss fights to the base game, I would have been much more pleased.

What truly wore thin on me about 20 hours in were the lack of truly visually distinct environments. Eidos 7, the ruined city that makes up the first section of the game, is a flooded place full of sunken buildings and overgrown streets. It features awe-inspiring monolithic statues up close and in the distance but its greens and greys beg for diversity after a few hours. Stellar Blade features two “open” zones that implement mini-maps, secret areas, and places where side quests occur. But both are desert-like environments. One is mainly a mountainous canyon packed with red rocks while the other is an actual desert, covered in sand and old technology.

Only a couple places players visit are wholly unique and even they are extensions of the “real world” which, unfortunately, is a trapping of this kind of narrative. Stellar Blade‘s universe feels bigger than what is presented here and especially what is dictated by the dark corners of its narrative. Surprisingly, in the game’s latter fourth, SHIFT UP attempts to change up the pacing of gameplay and encounters by offering a few dense puzzles and non-combat-centric moments in vastly different areas. Unsurprisingly, the overarching story manifests in interesting enough ways that make some of the stilted dialog and simple character development worth it.

These detriments to Stellar Blade‘s luster may paint it as a lesser game in many eyes. Elden Ring this is not. Nier: Automata it is not. And, like many games, Stellar Blade must live in the shadow of what has come before it. But Stellar Blade is not attempting to eclipse any particular moment or replicate a well-tread path. I think back on many moments I had with the game where I wasn’t doing exceptionally well in combat or struggling with a jump I should have made. But then I would equip EVE with another weird outfit. Or my ears would prick up hearing the soundtrack that often elevates every moment. Or I would decide to use the gun to pick off enemies from a distance and funnel them up a path so I could pierce through multiple with a Beta skill.

Polished moments and janky frustrations exist in Stellar Blade, as they do in so many games and will continue to be present. But it continued to remind me that this familiar feeling was actually not simple pantomime, rather an experience fostered through risks taken and a drive to be fun and weird rather than steering towards an obvious course. I wonder what corners were cut or what risks were abandoned in SHIFT UP’s development process and, if a sequel happens, how it can further lean into this crafted style in a medium where being safe means being bland. But what exists here reminds me so much of those simple good times where you played a game to merely do that.

I merely cannot remove myself from adoring the game’s ability to both idolize and construct a period of time where games began to really shape and mold the medium in ways that simply couldn’t be done before. On a technical level, Stellar Blade is worthy of praise for its sharp visuals and smooth framerate. But I could picture this game in muddy, smeared visuals on a CRT television just as easily, where I would lean in closer as both EVE’s health and a boss’ were in the red. Atop some challenging character designs for some, Stellar Blade has a kind of elegance and beauty to it that don’t merely apply–or not apply–to its main character. Surprising depth appears in spades, it just might be buried under a hazy surface.

Stellar Blade is a welcome experiment to the PlayStation brand. Developer SHIFT UP has created an action game that should catch eyes for more than just its female protagonist. Though not a risky game in its own right, a complex web of combat skills and harrowing enemies breathe life into a mysterious world that provides just enough intrigue. Nostalgic in all the right ways and evocative of an era where the bizarre and bombastic thrived, Stellar Blade is a satisfying distraction.