Stellar Blade is unexpectedly good

Stellar Blade is a good game. I’ve played it for about 20 hours so far and I still have plenty left, but I can’t wait to finish it because the devs got it right. Stellar Blade is that kind of game that successfully hooks you and doesn’t let you get bored, but you always say “let’s do this again” — and then you discover that it’s 2 am in the meantime.

The story is interesting. You play as Eve, a kind of super-soldier sent on a mission to Earth by the Colony where Earth’s survivors have taken refuge. Our planet had been conquered and practically destroyed by all kinds of monsters called Naytiba, and Eve’s mission is to find the original one and capture it. I put below a gameplay clip with the first minutes, basically the tutorial phase.

Of course the story is more complex than that. Almost as soon as you land and then arrive in the city of the last human survivors on Earth you learn of possible conspiracies related to the war. The sentinels seem to be plotting something, various people disappear without explanation and so on. So there’s a lot to explore on the story side, and I understand the game has multiple endings, though I’ve successfully steered clear of any spoilers on that so far.

The developers of the game are called Shift Up, who I understand are Korean and on only their second game. However, they did excel in a few aspects in Stellar Blade. The combat system is very good, for example. The game is a classic soulslike, you have normal and heavy attack, dodge and parry, various combos and so on, but what they did well is the balance related to the difficulty of the battles and the way you use your skills.

For example, monsters telegraph their attacks long enough before you can parry or dodge without being a pro gamer, but not so long before that fights are too easy. The challenge is constant, the monsters get tougher or more numerous as you get better at killing them, and the skills and combos complement each other well.

(Stellar Blade is exclusive to PlayStation 5. You can find it in the PS Store or at eMAG/Altex. The game is one of the few modern ones that has a demo available for free, by the way. You can find it here.)

If you want a tip for starters, there are skills that increase the amount of time you can Perfect Dodge or Perfect Parry, which then allow for some good counter attacks. Invest early in these skills and one called Rush, which allows you to quickly cover the distance to an enemy, practically jumping on top of them.

The monsters in the game, those naytiba, are very varied and well drawn. They really look scary and… monstrous. There are also many “elites” in the game, plus quite often you come across a boss who demands much more of you.

From place to place in the game there are areas where you can rest and replenish healing potions, but, according to the classic formula, the enemies in the area also revive on this occasion. However, going through an area again is never boring or repetitive, especially when you start hitting combos or special attacks.

Another thing they have done well in the game is character customization. Perhaps the influence of Japanese and Korean cartoons is felt, but the developers, if they still drew a main character, made him look good. The game allows you to change Eve’s clothes, and most of the outfits are modern/party/sexy.

Moreover, you can change her hairstyle, earrings and even put on glasses once you reach the in-game shops with such. I didn’t think I’d say this, but I did all of the above. As another gamer once told me, if you keep looking at a character on the screen for 50 hours, at least it should look really good, so he always chose a female character, not a male one. In Stellar Blade it looks downright good.

Here’s another character you run into as an example of how the producers went in that sci-fi/fantasy direction where they’re all scantily clad like in Barbarella:

The game basically starts in an abandoned town that is pretty linear, more like an advanced tutorial. Once you complete it and first reach the city of human survivors (surprisingly named Xion, probably because the developers were fans of the Matrix — another city is actually called the Matrix) the map becomes more open. I’m not going to say open-world, but it’s pretty much the same system from the recent Jedi Survivor, where you can explore a map in whatever direction and order you want, there are (simple) side quests to take, mysteries to investigate and so on.

(They were big statue fans before the disaster.)

The fights are well regulated, the exploration about the same. The game also has small moments of platforming, which seem to be not as well tuned, but it does not matter. They’re too short to matter, we’re talking about a few chain jumps or Uncharted style climbs, not anything more difficult.

Another thing I liked is that there are quite a few skills in the game, but the upgrade points are done quickly and naturally. There’s no need to farm, you’ll gain enough experience simply by following the normal game path to have almost all of them. There is also a sort of training simulator to practice them and I liked that it shows you on the screen what commands you gave and what the result was. This way you can quickly find out that you didn’t get a counterattack, but only a block because the game considered that you held down a certain key too little.

There are other elements that I like. The little messages you recover from victims are effective, even if they are a common mechanic in games. The plots, the little tidbits about a possible other war or the source of the naytiba monsters, even the question of what the Mother Sphere will be, the fact that you befriend the item sellers all contribute to that feeling I told you kept me playing and see what the next area or quest has in store.

Anything to complain about? Nothing significant. I don’t like the music, it seems repetitive, I turned it down. Then again, it seems to me that the producers were afraid to give Eve a stronger personality. Or maybe that’s just the type of character in their culture, the badass with a mission and no time for emotions. Eve is the kind of character who gladly helps everyone, she wants nothing in return and her only desire is to be guided to where the enemies are because that is her mission, to kill the naytiba.

I get it, it’s a purpose-built super soldier in a future with cybernetic upgrades that provide the RPG side. At the same time, however, it would have been interesting to know her personal views on what else is going on there or the world she comes from. For example, some survivors of Xion see the Colony as a refuge for the wealthy, who fled there and thus escaped the destruction of the planet. Others see Eve as an angel coming from heaven to help them, many even call her Angel in town. The producers thought, therefore, of a more complex society. Eve, however, as a character in the middle of this situation, you hardly ever see her reacting to this society around her. It’s always like “I have a mission to fulfill, where my enemies at?”

As I was saying, my guess is that there’s some Korean and maybe Japanese pop culture influence here, the kind of blasé character who just lets the sword do the talking.

Basically, to sum it up, I really like Stellar Blade, I play it with pleasure and enthusiasm. This is what makes me wish the developers would have taken it even further, gone to a point like some old Final Fantasy where the main characters also have moments of introspection or interact awkwardly with each other or evolve as people , which made them memorable in gaming history.

Even without these, however, I think Stellar Blade will appeal even to those who don’t usually play this style of action game. I find it a good entry point even for those new to dodge/parry and the rest of the mechanics of a soulslike precisely because it doesn’t have the difficulty of Elden Ring and comes with an interesting story as well.