It’s hard to stand out in the world of single player character driven action games. There are lots of them out there that have become so iconic in the video game landscape that it’s hard to make your own identity. I think this is Stellar Blade‘s biggest issue and I feel it’s a good place to start.
When you look at characters like Bayonetta or Dante from Devil May Cry, those characters tend to stand on their own merit – separate from the game surrounding them. Their designs are striking and filled to the brim with personality – Bayonetta has her suit made of hair and gun shoes, Dante has his big ass sword and duel pistols. Eve, the main protagonist of Stellar Blade, the fallen angel soldier who has to defend earth from an alien invasion… she’s just kind of blank. Her default design doesn’t do much do evoke any sort of major aesthetic decisions other than her ridiculously well sculpted ass and curves.
I want to make it extremely clear that I have zero issue with Eve’s body like a lot of angry people on Twitter do. My issue with Eve’s design is that it doesn’t tell the player much about her at all. Dante and Bayonetta have their personalities shine through their outfit and their demeanor. Eve is a robot with changeable hair, earrings, and an obscene amount of outfits to find and unlock. I love how many different outfits there are hidden away in the game and I think they’re so much better than the OG design. I think that’s my biggest issue with Stellar Blade. Its identity isn’t much more than a Nier Automata nod and I find the protagonist a little bit boring in terms of how she looks and how she’s portrayed in the story. Obviously this seeps through the entire experience which is a shame. However, even though I couldn’t get myself excited about the lead character – I couldn’t put Stellar Blade down.
In Stellar Blade you play as Eve! An all out interplanetary war breaks out on earth instigated by an alien race known as the Naytibas. In an attempt at saving what’s left of humanity, the entire human race flees the planet to seek shelter – essentially surrendering earth. Eve is sent to earth alongside a fleet of other super-soldiers. Unfortunately in their descent – every other soldier is killed, with Eve being the only survivor. Soon enough you meet a human survivor named Adam (obviously) and a young engineer named Lily, and they take you to Xion, the only surviving city known on earth. Xion is filled with a lot of interesting people who refer to you as an Angel. You have to win over the citizens of Xion by completing side missions for them and shopping in their stores. Once you’ve purchased a good amount of stuff from them your affinity will increase and you will be able to purchase new outfits, glasses, earrings, etc.
Some of the missions are very basic fetch quests, while others have seriously interesting outcomes and stories that I found myself invested in; a cyborg singer whose body has been destroyed, a man who has been on the search for his family member’s teddy bear, finding an iconoclast who’s gone missing. This is all surrounding the main plot, which is finding and bringing an end to the Elder Naytiba. It’s up to you to defeat the first of their kind in order to save humanity. I genuinely really enjoyed the way the story played out and found that its conclusion (there are several endings) was really rewarding and felt super impactful. The last 30 minutes of the game had my jaw on the floor.
Stellar Blade is broken up into several large open areas that are dense with enemy life, hidden secrets, and missions to complete. I didn’t play the demo, but I did see a lot of people play it on YouTube. Based off of what had been shown, I expected linear levels with some hidden pathways and nothing that wouldn’t reward revisiting. I was wrong! These sections definitely exist, but most of Stellar Blade is exploring these large open areas that are shockingly packed with content. I am the type of person who enjoys going out of his way to see what’s behind every door or in every chest. You will often find corpses of humans and soldiers who died in the events of the beginning of the game. These corpses will have journal entries, sometimes their last thoughts before they died, and sometimes they’ll have codes that’ll help you unlock gates or chests. If I ever run into a door that is locked with a code and I don’t have it, I immediately go on the hunt to find it. Sometimes you’ll find them later on and you have to backtrack, but often times they aren’t too far from the lock. There are also lots of hidden collectible pop cans around the world. There are 49 cans in total for you to find, and every few cans you get you unlock quality of life upgrades for equipment capacity. Once you get all of them, there’s an unlockable outfit for you to get. You are constantly being rewarded for going out of your way to explore the world and I think that is such a fantastic design choice to keep a game fun and interesting.
The combat is where Stellar Blade really shines. The game has a much slower and more methodical combat system than I thought it would have. It reminded me a lot of Sekiro – but a little more subdued. Eve fights with a purpose. Each swing of the sword feels like it has some pretty major weight to it. The hits feel impactful and the enemies hit just as hard. It’s your run of the mill square for light attack, triangle for heavy attack, circle for dodge sorta thing. Admittedly, I wasn’t sold at first. It takes a while for the combat to evolve and feel very satisfying, but once you get some upgrades and find some upgradeable exo-spines you can equip, the combat really lights up. At one point I thought to myself, “I wish I could attack a little bit faster.” Almost immediately I found an equippable spine that gave me extra attack speed, and I rocked with that for the rest of the game. I wound up having like 15 or so spines and I only really used 4 across my playthrough. It’s cool that Stellar Blade encourages trying out different builds and playstyles! As you go through the game you’ll find weapon parts to upgrade how strong your sword is. The scaling feels really nice throughout the story, and I never felt like I was too strong or too weak. Due to the more intentional and slower nature of the combat, you can’t just go swinging on enemies until they die. It’s a modern action game – parrying and dodging attacks are paramount for in order to succeed.
Enemies will briefly glow red before they send out a flurry of parry-able attacks your way. They will glow yellow if you need to dodge. If they glow blue it means you can dodge forward and hit them from behind, thus opening them up to a full combo. As you play the game you can upgrade things to make dodging and parrying slightly easier, which is nice, because the initial window to do these things successfully can feel a little unforgiving. The ultimate satisfaction of the Stellar Blade gameplay loop is getting these memorized, and ingrained in your brain so they become second nature. You can also use special abilities in combat that have a cooldown to keep fights from being a cakewalk. The longer you fight and parry without using these abilities, the more you can build up and use in a row. Without going into much detail, there is a sort of “devil-trigger” mode where you become a super powerful indestructible force in combat. I bring this up because its damage feels shockingly low, and it’s not very interesting to use outside of making yourself unkillable for a minute or so. It doesn’t provide the power fantasy that I feel it should. I found that to be a little underwhelming once I had unlocked it. The outfits I had previously mentioned actually have zero impact on your damage or defence. If you choose to go with the aptly titled “skin suit” which is just unequipping the suit you’re currently wearing, you’ll lose a ton of your armour. If you want to play a challenge run, you can do that, but otherwise there’s no change to how the game plays. Lastly, because of how great the one on one duels are here, it can feel a little ridiculous when you are swarmed by a lot of enemies earlier on in the game. It can become chaotic in a way that feels a little bit unfair, and it can be tough to fight these groups without the right abilities unlocked. Eventually it’s not a problem, but right out the gate, it’s very frustrating.
It’s time to address the big fat elephant in the room, and that elephant’s name is Nier Automata. Stellar Blade feels like a spiritual successor to Nier in a ton of ways. I’ve never seen a game wear its references so boldly on its sleeves. Both games feature a female lead in high heels with a great ass that’s there for the whole world to see, weapon based combat, a drone that follows you and turns into a gun, massive deserts to run through, overly religious robots, and an almost entirely wiped out human race. Almost every major decision made in Stellar Blade is one that was made in Nier Automata. This is obviously an issue when it comes to standing out as an individual IP with its own ideas. I would argue that even though Stellar Blade fails to look and feel like its own thing, it doesn’t have to. I really do think it stands on its own. The way the game plays and its overall delivery of the story and the total package completely lives on its own planet. Personally, I found myself feeling a lot more impacted by Stellar Blade and enjoying it more than Nier Automata. I know people will think I’m crazy for this, but it’s just how I feel.
What shocked me the most is how vocal heavy the soundtrack in this game is. At almost every moment in the game you’ll hear a voice singing in the background as you are chatting with citizens, or killing aliens, or running around in a skimpy bunny suit. I expected it to eventually fizzle out, but they really went all out on keeping vocals in the forefront. I think that’s a very interesting choice and helps give Stellar Blade some identity and originality. I’ve been humming a lot of the soundtrack around my house and I can’t get it out of my head. There were some truly insane musical moments throughout the game that really had me wow’d. As a certified music freak, I appreciate when music is used as an enhancer to a scene and not a decider. I don’t want music to tell me how to feel, I want music to amplify my feelings. There is one end game encounter in particular that had me losing my fucking mind. It is some truly magical stuff, let me tell you. Not only is the music great, but the Naytibas and the sounds of steel clanging when you parry, oh man. It is really top tier audio presentation on all fronts. The developers at Shift Up really impressed me here and I am very excited to see what they cook up next. The game is also a graphical stunner with a ton of visual noise that I loved. Every area you visit is booming with personality even though they’ve all been ripped apart. Everything is just so lush and gorgeous and massive in size. It really truly is a feast for the ears as well as the eyes.
I’m seriously blown away at how much I enjoyed Stellar Blade from the moment it started to the moment it was finished. The instant I had finished the credits I instantly wanted to start a new game+. I had to wait a few days for that update to hit, but once it did, I immediately went to hard mode and put it in another 7 hours. Sure, Eve might not be the most interesting protagonist on the planet, but you can inject your own personality into her appearance. My Eve at the end of the game had short blonde hair and she wore round glasses. She was essentially unrecognizable from who’s on the key art and game trailers, and that was what I was hoping I’d be able to do in order to get interested in her. I seriously believe that Stellar Blade is a fantastic game, with a slight identity crisis. Hopefully they can iron this out in future instalments, and hopefully this IP can live and thrive. I loved every minute I had with Stellar Blade. I think it’s one of the best games of 2024 and I think it’ll be in my top three at the end of the year. A lot of reviews I’ve been seeing have called the game mediocre, and I could not disagree any harder. I sincerely hope that as time goes on Stellar Blade will be looked back on as a classic, because as far I’m concerned, that’s exactly what it is. Stellar Blade is special and I think if you’ve got a PS5, you owe it to yourself to play this wonderful game.
