Last year, our own Ben Sheene reviewed Stellar Blade on the PlayStation 5. He adored it, enjoyed the game’s complexity underneath, and acknowledged its flaws. He pointed out all the appropriate and correct ins and outs of the title in its initial launch. The man knows how to write.
Now, Ben Sheene’s shining diamond has arrived on PC, courtesy of developer SHIFT UP Corporation. With its leap to a more hardware-intensive platform, the game comes in hot with better visuals and a new lease of life with a brand-new frothing-at-the-mouth audience. Is this still the smash hit that Ben fell in love with? Well, I think it’s certainly a good game, but it doesn’t do a crazy amount to separate itself from other games in this genre, sans its backend.
So, sit back, fit into that pleather, and let’s talk shop about one Stellar Blade.
Pure action
I want to start this review with a disclaimer – I enjoy third-person action-adventure games. I was raised on the likes of Devil May Cry and haven’t looked back since. There’s something so right about sword-swinging with a hack-and-slash ambition. I think playing any game in this genre is akin to watching an 80s action flick, as you don’t have to put a terrible amount of thought into enjoying the process. That type of formula is exactly what Stellar Blade runs on, but it all starts with a purpose.
Story
The story of Stellar Blade revolves around a warrior named EVE, who has been sent to a decimated Earth to help reclaim it. While the story throws her right into tragedy, which you can see for yourself, she comes out of it ready to finish the mission she began. With her robot friend (and in-person friend(s)), she soon finds out that what should have been an easy action feat turns out to be something a hell of a lot more complicated. And there is more to the story than she originally anticipated.
While the story of Stellar Blade doesn’t fall too deep on the drama scale, the fact that the devs designed it to have depth deserves some solid kudos. I honestly didn’t expect this game to contain some thick lore and to turn, at times, as hard as it did. What I expected was an action-driven adventure that created ridiculous situations that bred more humor than heart. Within the first 15 minutes of the game, it tells you exactly what type of rollercoaster ride you’re in for – one with regret, mystery, and horrible violence. When combined, it creates some solid entertainment.
Now, having said that, you’re not going to get a The Last of Us or God of War-type of complexity in the story. It does enough to be better than a typical action-adventure, but doesn’t go beyond its genre’s limitations or the game’s intentions. There is a perfect balance of fun, seriousness, and outrageousness that combines, making Stellar Blade one of the more entertaining stories to spring from the Sony game publishing family. In other words, the story is good, and it helps push the action along nicely.
Good gameplay with hiccups
The gameplay for Stellar Blade is put together with a variety of concepts. The first big concept is that it wants to activate that muscle memory you might have stored away with action-adventure titles from your past. The action in Stellar Blade seemed incredibly familiar, as it runs on a linear path, with some straying side paths, throws enemies at you to quickly take out, and all while hurdling toward an insanely powerful, yet incredibly creative boss waiting for EVE to come and play. All of it is familiar.
On a base level, this game is every bit of what you might expect from an action-adventure title. You will hack and slash a lot while feeling confined to a limited path with small, yet unique obstacles to traverse. Again, it’s everything you would expect from an action-adventure gaming experience, which bodes well for it.
Starting with the action, the best part of this game is just that – the action. The controls in Stellar Blade are remarkably intuitive, as you can flip EVE back and forth, have her dodge and parry attacks, and get into a rhythmic groove with her reaction to her attacker. Getting into that seamless action groove and going back and forth between common foes to clear out an area is breathtaking and majestic. It’s right up the Devil May Cry and Bayonetta alley, where enemies are coming from all sides, and your goal is to wipe them out as quickly as possible to clear areas.
The quickness of the action is driven by a variety of action moves, timing, and button combinations that deliver multi-hit power-driven nastiness that is gorgeous when done correctly. The responsiveness between user and EVE is nearly flawless, thanks in part to the devs making the controls easy to work with and, more importantly, easily accessible when the fighting gets intense. For example, early in the game, I would be surrounded by enemies, and I would start with light hits to powerful ones. Pulling off easy sword swings, while gingerly dodging enemy attacks, was a cinch. It was a cool primer for what was coming next.
As other enemies drew closer to the 1v1 fight, I shifted my moves from easy and direct to more surrounding power pulls that affected everything around me. Instead of mashing one button, I held down L1 while pushing triangle or square. By doing this, EVE would launch into an all-encompassing attack that would cause major damage to all enemies in my close vicinity. These power moves came in a variety of flavors and would need time to charge, but they were worth the wait and complemented the basic action well.
The difference in how EVE could approach action scenarios supported the variety of quick moves that pushed the action steadily along. These paths alone helped keep the game interesting, even when repetitive enemies were constantly coming in and out of levels. And there are a lot of repetitive enemies.
Staying with enemies, even though you would find them repeating from place to place in the game, and it is noticeable, they were creative and intriguing. Their designs were grotesque, as they looked like Silent Hill rejects – terrifying but not enough for Konami’s taste, and their AI was impressive. The latter of the two had enemies relentlessly coming after you if you triggered their action zones in the game, and they would do their best to take you out. When I say, ‘their best’, I mean they brought the brutality of their intentions with every swing or ground-pound and actively tried to trick you into not discovering their attack patterns. Enemies became so brutal and relentless at one point that I had to shift the difficulty of the game from normal to story mode, as I was getting more and more frustrated with their relentless attacks. I’m not as cool or as good as Ben Sheene at these types of games, as he would have cranked the difficulty so that it would give him a challenge. Not me. I am a squeamish baby when it gets too difficult with action games. Ultimately, the enemies were repetitive but fun to go up against (even if they were difficult). They fit the bill for an action-adventure. Of course, in an action-adventure, you have to break away from enemies for a breather and go through obstacles instead.
The obstacles in Stellar Blade came in the form of searching and acquiring intel so that EVE could progress to the next part of whatever level she is on, or playing a keyboard arrow game to unlock cases. I never felt like the game’s obstacles were too obstacle-y, as they were easy enough to circumvent. None of the obstacles in the game were too complicated, as you never want your action-adventure game to suddenly become The Witness. Not that anything is wrong with a good puzzle-driven obstacle strategy fest like The Witness, but you never want to hinder your action from leading the way. In short, the obstacles in the game were not that difficult, but they were good rest stops.
On the front end of Stellar Blade, at its core, this is how the action worked. The controls flowed with the action, which translated to quick action-adventure throughout the experience. The repetitive enemies helped give good practice, even though they were noticeably repetitive, and also brought some cleverness, which made the adventure challenging at times. Finally, the obstacles didn’t get in the way of progression, which is what it should be like when playing games in this genre. My only complaint with the core gameplay is the repetitiveness of enemies. The creative bosses helped to keep moments fresh, but common enemies were quite abundant from place to place. Smaller spaces or smaller missions would have helped to stymie that repetitiveness a bit.
Complicated backend
The backend of Stellar Blade is a different world from where the action resides. As you progress through the game, you will happen upon XP (in a variety of manners), objects that you can add to EVE, a skills tree that comes in a large branching array, and ‘customization’. There is a lot here to ingest, so I’ll try to keep it as short and concise as possible.
As you progress through Stellar Blade, you will happen upon XP. This could be fragments, standard XP, and/or other types of objects that you can collect and use to improve EVE. The XP helps with leveling up EVE, which equals skill points. With SP, you can upgrade the large skills tree in the backend of the game. By taking down enemies, gathering objects, and seeing what they bring you concerning EVE improvement, you will be motivated to take out/collect such things and get as many skills unlocked for EVE as humanly possible. The more you have, the easier and wonderfully complicated EVE’s power becomes. Each skill unlocked means that you learn a new move. And there are a lot of things to learn.
Other backend upgrades include upgrading EVE’s suit. It is broken into pieces that include a category called Exospine and Gear. The former is an overall component for EVE that helps improve in several areas, such as damage, crit, and any power component that shapes her. There are multiple versions of the Exospine, each carrying its own set of attributes. It certainly changes how you can approach battles, which means you have a large variety of strategies to choose from when building up EVE.
Gear includes basic boosts with specific purposes. Those purposes could be defensive or offensive in nature. You can initially carry up to four gear boosts at a time, which must be unlocked as you adventure your way through EVE’s action. This adds to the backend complication of the game, as well as creates more motivation to get in more scrums.
The last backend discussion is customizing EVE and her fellow travelers. While I have no interest in playing dress up with EVE, the game gives you a variety of costumes and customizable items, such as glasses, that she can wear to make her the perfect warrior. You’ll laugh a little at that last bit. Some of those outfits made me blush.
In addition to all these backend goodies, the game also features rest stops, akin to the campfires in the Dark Souls series, even down to the enemy reset when you rest. At these rest stops, you can replenish EVE’s supplies and upgrade her weapons. You can also fast travel and/or enjoy music. Much like a Souls game, you will breathe a sigh of relief when you reach one of these stops. The journey between them can be quite intense and burdensome at times.
Overall, the backend system is complicated. There are a lot of moving parts, and they all create a decent amount of motivation to keep exploring nooks/crannies, while seeking fights rather than running away from them. The backend seems a lot more precise in its construction and more complicated than a typical action-adventure title generally contains.
Presentation on PC
It’s gorgeous. It’s demanding. It’s still a top-tier way to go when gaming. I reviewed this on a gaming laptop featuring a 7000 series AMD processor and a 4070 card (and 64 GB of RAM). The game’s textures and loveliness shone through for the most part. There were some texture rendering hiccups along the way, but nothing that would visually cripple the game by any means. Again, this is a top-tier way to play Stellar Blade.
You won’t be disappointed by this latest Sony release.
On that sweet note, let’s wrap up this review.
Conclusion
If you enjoyed Stellar Blade on the PlayStation 5, then you’re going to enjoy it on the PC. At its core, it’s a fun action-adventure game with a complicated backend system. There are some minor hiccups, but it still delivers a solid action-adventure that should keep you occupied for some time.
