Stellar Blade is a mind blowing adventure that does almost everything right, exceedingly well.
When Stellar Blade was first revealed during a showcase, I wasn’t too impressed. But then the game got a demo. It’s one of the few times a demo has totally sold me on a game. The combat, visuals, and the impact of the very short snippet of the story were amazing. Once I jumped into the full game, everything got way better and it offered more depth than I expected.
Stellar Blade
Developer: Shift Up
Platform: PS5
Release Date: April 26, 2024
After spending countless hours exploring the world and fighting enemies, I wholeheartedly believe Stellar Blade is a must play title. The game perfects even the most basic mechanics in action games, without spreading itself too thin with unneeded mechanics or unnecessary RPG elements.
Starting off, I’ll talk about what I think is the weakest aspect of the game: the story and characters. EVE, your main character, crashes down into the planet; lost and confused on the history or what had happened. Throughout the game, she slowly learns of the history and secrets around her.
She has a deep connection with fellow Angels (which are basically her squad of super soldiers, and they fell from the sky off ships, so the name checks out), but overall she’s an excuse to tell a story we’ve heard dozens of times before: Earth went to war, got wiped out, and some super-corporate America-inspired bad guy is to blame for it.
It’s a pretty straight forward story at its core…and I didn’t really care. What I did care about, however, were the secondary missions. While not as intricate as the core story, seeing the impacts of the war and the dark secrets you uncovered (along with more interesting characters), was a lot more fun. I put the core story missions on the backburners so I could make sure I cleared all the available secondary missions first.
The game also does a good job of not entirely making you retread entire areas over-and-over. If you complete a mission it will ask you if you want to teleport back to the area to finish it, or you can stay and complete a few more missions first. The quick travel options also allow you to quickly skip to areas when needed, and are all placed really well.
Secondary to EVE are two other characters, Adam and Lily, who offer a bit more variation in character enrichment and make the overall story a bit more enjoyable. Even with them being apparently nice to you, you knew something was hidden under their layers, which you slowly discover as you play. And their contrasting character types with the world made them fun to be around, and learn about the history of the world itself.
While the story itself didn’t “wow” me, the visual storytelling and background elements kept me invested. This game could have very easily been a bland, end of the world snorefest. The character designs and world-building, combined with its visual flairs, are absolutely stunning in every way. Literally every time I entered a new area, I marveled at how amazing it looked, and how organic things came together.
Everything is expertly crafted, right down to unique characters you come across. The world is fun to explore, and the game never really tries to hold you back for tedious info dumps. Instead, it does a good job of highlighting key details to keep you updated. If you want the lore, it’s there, but for me I just kept exploring and taking in the highlights; getting enough of what I wanted.
While the game is telling a very blunt good-vs-evil story, if you pay attention to the details all throughout the world you actually open up more.
Now let’s dive into Stellar Blade’s strengths.
One thing I truly wanted to highlight was the game’s HUD, because I need more games to follow the lead here. There aren’t a ton of things on the screen at once. You have your health bar, your secondary items, and your available attacks. That’s it. Everything else will pop in and out as needed, but your screen isn’t constantly cluttered with useless information all the time. It makes exploring the world easier because everything is readily visible, but it also enhances combat because there is nothing really distracting. It allows you to have your focus with enemies. When certain things are ready to be used, it will start glowing, otherwise they will fade away and won’t be noticeable.
And this is totally what you need with Stellar Blade’s beautifully crafted combat. The game takes obvious inspiration from other games, such as Sekiro and Elden Ring, with a very defensive heavy combat system, gearing your attacks in a timely manner while you parry and dodge elsewhere. Enemies have uninterruptible combos, which typically make me angry and frustrated in other games. But the combo mechanics and animations in this game are so satisfying, I didn’t really care. I never really ran into an enemy who made me want to throw my controller and give up. With the world design, I never felt trapped either because I felt I could just go do something else when I wanted.
Instead I felt like I was learning every time I died and used that knowledge to best my opponent next time we battled. The nice thing about the bigger enemies I faced, was they didn’t have some obnoxious transformation mid battle. They have their set of moves and you can predict their eventual attacks easily by simply taking battles slower and being strategic. Even when they change up slightly, you almost always have the opportunity to strategize.
But the game does a great job of speeding this pace up a little bit to give it a bit more action oriented gameplay. Enemy moves are quick and swift, for the most part. As you power up, you’ll unlock new abilities to blast enemies in multiple ways, so you need to discover what works best in your situation. Every enemy has a balance stat, and the more you deflect or land blows, the more balance they lose until they become unstable, which allows you to deal massive amounts of damage. Getting to that point is tricky. Weak spots may open very quickly, and enemies can very easily combo you to death if you slip up. Enemies will flash certain signs before they attack to assist in your defensive moves, but a lot of them just took practice to learn their animations.
Additionally, EVE unlocks Beta attacks the more she blocks or lands attacks. These special moves are unlocked after charging up, and deal massive damage to enemies based on what you picked. You have a shield breaker move, which can disable shields quickly; a sweeping attack that can take out a whole group of enemies; and two other attacks that offer powerful finishers when timed correctly.
This makes combat all the more hectic. The more you are involved in battle the faster these moves will power up. The problem with using them is enemies can’t be disrupted for the most part. So if you start a Beta attack while an enemy is attacking, you could very easily take a massive blow, while doing nothing to them. Timing is critical in all aspects of battle.
Stellar Blade does all this well and the visuals kick it up another notch. The game offers, I believe, over 40 different character designs for enemies. All of them are unique in their own way. Some are slight variations of each other, but they all have unique attacks and power moves to be aware of. They’re insanely creative in terms of animations, how they attack, with beautifully crafted designs. The bosses, and more powerful enemies, feature insane designs that are incredible to look at. So much so, I literally got hit a few times just because I was admiring how incredible they look.
Boss battles are something I feared would make me hate the game, but it honestly made me love it even more. The bosses aren’t insanely difficult. Instead, they offer a strategy to be found every time. I’d learn their patterns, their weak spots, and holes in their armor very quickly. It became a simple concept of skillfully navigating the battle, versus hoping the next part of battle didn’t do something stupid and change things up.
Instead the game changes how you can battle by steadily introducing new concepts as you progress. It honestly makes the overall campaign all the more interesting. As you progress through each major section, new “perks” are introduced. Early on you get ranged attacks via the drone shooting, and later in the game you get burst skills which allow you to blend Beta skills with a new, more powerful attack. This is all swiftly used and interchangeable mid combat, and makes the intense, free flow combat all the more hectic…and rewarding.
Exploration done right.
Outside of combat, you spend much of your time simply exploring the world. Here is yet another concept I need other games to follow. The game has an open world approach to it, but instead of one big massive bland world, it’s broken down into areas. Not only that, it still has focused story areas that are more linear in design and carry you forward in the story, without impacting the open world itself.
This is incredible game design to me because I love linear storytelling, but the open world areas lend a hand in giving you alternate things to do. This helps with exploring to find chests, items, and secondary missions to do instead of running straight through the story. I also absolutely love the condensed open world segments. Nothing ever feels bland or empty, it allows the game to fill areas with enemies and things to do at every turn.
What’s really incredible is how varied the game is design wise with the world you explore. Some areas are horror-inspired, with dark decrepit hallways and spooky enemies; while other areas are sci-fi enriched with lots of light and moving parts. The gameplay also leans into this by offering various puzzles, water segments, and action sequences that flow perfectly with the world.
Cosmetics are done right too.
The game obviously relies heavily on looking pretty, and this lends hand in the cosmetics you unlock throughout the game too. You can unlock blueprints in the world, and then you need to collect in-game items to craft the cosmetics. This leads to some incredible designs for EVE; all unique and some that even make her look bad ass vs skimpy drab that I wasn’t too fond of. All the characters can have a unique look, and even some of her gear looks great too. And not once during my playthrough was I asked to open my real world wallet again to unlock any of it. How incredible is that?!
To be honest the only real complaint about the game I have is the subtle music that plays constantly as you explore. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the music is incredible and adds to battles/action sequences. The subtle exploration music, however, is very repetitive. It honestly sounds like you’re in a loading screen for Gran Turismo. I had to turn it almost all the way off mid game.
But this is such a minor complaint and all the positives far outweigh it entirely. Enemies are beautifully crafted, combat animations and mechanics are perfect, and the game is enriched by visually stunning set pieces that are nearly unmatchable by anything I’ve ever played. It’s a game that lets you play the story, rather than telling it to you. With that in mind they made a game that is damn near perfect.
