Stellar Blade reminds me of Sony in the “good old days” when the company took risks and made games that were a little crazy, a little crazy and very surprising. Nowadays, Sony has mainly developed Spider-Man, Horizon and The Last of Us, which are huge single-player AAA games worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and even if they are of high quality, they are neither extravagant nor extravagantly crazy not surprising either. Maybe the company has become a little…boring.
But then comes Stellar Blade. Okay, so it may not have been developed by Sony or one of its usual third-party studios, but Sony has picked up the game and is handling the publishing. The game is being developed by South Korean company Shift Up and is their first major project, but it certainly doesn’t show that their nerves are letting them down. The game has been in development for some time, as it was announced back in 2019 under the name Project EVE and was then announced for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, but is now exclusive to PlayStation 5.
Advertising:
First, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: the protagonist, Eve. Some say it must have been designed by a man who has never seen a real woman, and we’ll leave that question aside for a while. But yes, there is an unnecessary sexualization of the female body. Yes, you can dress up Eve and accessorize her with earrings, various more or less daring outfits and give her hairstyles. Yes, you can collect beer and soda cans, which, when all found, reward the player with a fairly revealing costume for Eve. And yes, I wonder why they decided to have Eve walk through an underground sewer in a thigh-high skirt, stilettos and stockings with sewage reaching up to her shin. It’s nothing that hinders the game, but it makes no sense and the creative line of its appearance is so out of place that it almost breaks with the environment.
Anyway, let’s get back to what’s on our minds: what Stellar Blade looks like as a video game. The Earth is being ravaged by horrific, aggressive creatures called Naytiba. As a result, our ancient planet has been abandoned and the last surviving humans have fled to a colony in space. You take on the role of Eve, a member of the 7th Airborne Squadron who returns to Earth with a clear mission: to destroy the monsters and reclaim Earth for humanity. With most of Eve’s squadron missing after a failed landing on Earth, they embark on a dangerous mission with the few remaining survivors, including Earthling Adam and mechanic Lily, for which the Naytiba are practically ready to take Eve in to kick ass.
It’s clear that Stellar Blade is inspired by games like Nier: Automata and probably Bayonetta and Devil May Cry too. And they’re certainly not bad examples to follow, and by now you probably know what kind of games we’re talking about. The combat system is at the heart of everything and Shift Up nailed it. Easily accessible, lightning fast, and death just a few hits away, you’ll quickly realize that timely blocks and dodges will keep you alive until the next encounter. Pressing buttons is of no use because you have to think tactically and decide when to launch your attack and when it is advisable to retreat.
Advertising:
Enemies have a pattern to their attacks and you must learn to recognize it. This goes hand in hand with the importance of timing your attacks, blocks and dodges. To emphasize the importance of knowing how to block an enemy properly, most enemies are equipped with a “balance meter” that slowly depletes and unbalances them as you execute perfect blocks. When this happens, you can deliver a very powerful punitive attack. As you progress through the game you unlock more attacks and moves and I have to say that it’s a real pleasure to get to know the combat system: it works wonderfully.
If you’ve played the demo you’ll also know that the game is pretty linear, but really only the first 4 or 5 hours are like that. Without giving too much away, I can say that it opens up and becomes a semi-open game consisting of a core open world and side quests (which are pretty boring), and I think it loses a little of the magic that it had in the beginning. The missions are still fairly linear and are actually quite varied in nature. A few times I came across missions where everything became a third-person shooter in an environment that could be similar to Dead Space. It’s a far cry from the finely tuned, Bayonetta-inspired combat system that the game offers.
Stellar Blade is packed with upgrade options. There are no less than five skill trees where you can improve your attacks and other combat skills. In addition, your drone, which always follows you, has its own skill tree and you can also upgrade your ExoSpine, which is basically the backbone of Eve and her basic and fundamental skills. There are also lots of accessories to play with; As mentioned at the beginning, Eve, like Adam and Lily, can be equipped with different outfits and even the drone can be customized.
We already talked about Eva’s appearance at the beginning, so I won’t go into it any further. The entire game world is beautiful and detailed most of the time, although not all locations are equally exciting and some surfaces are strangely low resolution, such as in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. What increases the visual impact is that the developers didn’t skimp on visual effects. There are lots of close-ups of Eve and the other characters and the beautiful fight choreography is the icing on the cake. Stellar Blade looks great and in true Asian, almost cheesy fashion, the game isn’t afraid to show it all off, with alternate camera angles, slow motion, lots of beautiful scenery and cutscenes.
Enemy design really excites Asian game designers and is almost a discipline of its own in this country. This can be seen in Stellar Blade, where the large Naytiba bosses in particular are well designed, but the smaller bosses are also finely designed. Luckily they’re not as crazy and “anime” as one might fear, because they look pretty organic and somehow most of them look like living things and not something dreamed up by a designer wearing triangular glasses.
Stellar Blade offers three graphical settings: Performance, Balance and Resolution. It’s hard to tell the difference between Performance and Balanced since both run at 60fps, but Performance seems to run a little smoother but also looks a little grainier, although you have to look closely to see the differences. Resolution has noticeably sharper graphics, but only runs at 30fps, and while I’m not hysterical about 30fps vs 60fps, 30fps isn’t enough in a fast-paced game like Stellar Blade, where timing, precise blocking and dodging are very important. In my opinion, Stellar Blade is best played in a balanced way.
Finally, the soundtrack is excellent. The voice actors do a good job, the sound effects are nice and strong, and although the very typical Korean pop soundtrack isn’t exactly my style, it makes a nice backdrop for the soundtrack if you turn it down a bit.
Of course, Stellar Blade isn’t perfect, but it’s a truly accomplished action game that you don’t see very often anymore. There are some issues with the controls, which can be a bit imprecise in certain sections, checkpoints are sometimes unevenly spaced and some locations are boring, but overall these are minor issues.
Overall, I think Stellar Blade is a pleasant surprise and a pretty exciting game. It doesn’t follow the usual patterns of action games and that means some strange and sudden changes in style, but in the end it’s very refreshing.
If you like Bayonetta, Nier: Automata and Devil May Cry, I think you should check out Stellar Blade because it has some of the same vibes and quirks as those other games and is basically a very entertaining action game with a combat system that works very well and is easily accessible but difficult to fully master. Stellar Blade is the first major Shift Up game and I’m sure we’ll see more in the future.
