Stellar Blade Review

Beauty, action, and excellent combat!

Watch the review or…

Read it here!

Platform: PS5

Reviewed on: PS5

Developer: SHIFT UP

Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Release: April 25, 2024

Time Played:

Genre: Action Adventure

ESRB: M

Intro:

Stellar Blade is a fast paced, intricate, and gorgeous hack and slash that with some of the best fights I’ve experienced in recent years. From dressing up in some rather risky outfits, to absolutely destroying some big baddies, this game has a lot to offer in terms of action and entertainment. So sit back and allow me to fill you in on the finer points this game has to offer before I give you my own thoughts and give this game an overall rating for my shelves.

Where it starts.

Years after abandoning earth to the fearsome Naytiba, a squad of professionals are sent back to reclaim the planet by destroying the vicious monsters inhabiting it. You play a member of the 7^th Airborne Squad, EVE, who has a rough landing where the fighting starts immediately with hordes of Naytiba ready to stop you in your tracks. After a rather traumatic start, you make some new friends who want to help you complete your mission to save Earth.

Can the kids watch?

The game does have a lot of blood splatter and some dismemberments in the combat scenes. Some of the cut scenes can get extremely graphic with blood and limbs flying everywhere. And the different outfits some of the female characters wear can be quite revealing, never full-on nudity, but treading a fine line between appropriate and not. One thing you shouldn’t have to worry about would be the language, there wasn’t a lot of naughty words used in the game.

Earth’s Remains (exploring)

While on your mission you will be exploring many different places on Earth, from dilapidated cities to hot sandy deserts, you will find a lot of enemies to fight and treasures to help your survival. The play areas will be boxed in so there is only so much to explore in each section. You will, however, be able to come back and explore more of an area after you finish it in the game, before a certain point that is.

Naytibas (the bad guys)

Naytibas are nasty monsters that come in all shapes and sizes, usually having some sharp appendage or two ready to take you out. One on one, most of the fights aren’t a problem, but there will be quite a few situations where you are up against groups of the monsters, really putting your skills to the test. Every now and again you will come up against exceptionally strong Naytibas, accompanied by their own large health bar and mean skills to watch out for. Those fights require everything you have and were a lot of fun to get through.

Defend Yourself (combat)

Combat was fast paced, requiring you to pay attention to enemy movement with a couple color queues to watch out for and react to appropriately. You won’t be getting very far if you just smash your attack button in a fight. You will need to occasionally block and dodge attacks, following up with counterstrikes and special moves. For every successful perfect parry you will knock the enemy a little bit off balance, if you can manage to fully knock them down you can come in with a very strong attack dealing a ton of damage. Or if you would rather take on a more quiet approach, there is an option to one shot most enemies with a sneak attack from behind or above.

EVE’s Equipment

EVE will have a couple slots to equip gear or exo-spines, increasing some stats or her abilities in combat, with more slots unlocking as you find materials or progress the story. Gear and exo-spines can be purchased from vendors or found in chests. Her sword will never change, you will find materials needed to upgrade the sword so it’s always getting stronger with you. In special camps you will have to option to upgrade some of her gear with the plethora of materials you find from enemy corpses or just lying around.

Obtaining More Skills (skill tree)

Every time you take down an enemy or examine an old human corpse you will receive some experience points. Find enough and you will be rewarded with skill points. EVE will have quite a few skill trees to examine and allocate points, with more unlocking as you move through the story. After unlocking a new skill you could go into a testing ground to try it if you wanted. There is also an item available that you could use to reset all of your points, in case you aren’t happy with your build.

Dress Up (clothing)

If EVE’s base clothes aren’t to your liking, then you are in luck, because hidden everywhere are designs for new clothes she can wear. You just need to craft it first. There were a lot of different options from classy to skintight nothing left to the imagination kind of outfit. You could even find new clothes for your companions and drone. I found one that made my drone look like a bunny, and I loved it.

Side Projects (side missions)

Stellar Blade is already large if you just focus on the main quest line, but there a quite a few people that require your special set of skills, asking you to hunt down special items or specific enemies, rewarding you with special items and gold. Sometimes they ask you to look around where your headed for the main quest, sometimes they want you to go back to where you’ve already been. Either way they expand the back story of the world and some of those rewards are worth the effort.

Grab ALL the cans! (collectible)

There were a few different collectibles in the game if you consider the optional clothes collectibles, other than those would be special cans hidden away in nooks and crannies throughout Earth. Those cans offer special rewards after so many are found and come with one of the most amazing little scenes and fanfare. It’s worth collecting them all if only for the animation.

Outro:

I was very impressed with my experience in this game. Starting out was rough with the minor moves I could use, but once I got the hang of the mechanics and started unlocking new skills the game was a lot of fun. Some of the boss fights were a blast, learning the moves of the boss and hitting the perfect button combination to unleash strong attacks and amazing animations. There were fights that knocked me down, a lot, but I still got up and eventually beat them, loving every minute of it. I’m usually not a fan of hack and slash games but this was just so well done, I couldn’t get enough of it.

The story was good, fun twists and turns that could sometimes blow your mind. The only thing I would knock it for would be the almost comical way it was delivered with the translation of a Korean game. The off handed comments the characters made that almost don’t make any sense do have a unique charm in a way, very anime-esque.

The graphics were great and very smooth. I fell in love with EVE’s hair and could spend a long time just watching it as I moved around, very well done. I didn’t suffer any choppiness or getting trapped in areas I wasn’t supposed to, not that I really tried to.

The game does offer a New Game plus, offering a tougher difficulty and a lot more rewards to work toward. New moves, clothes, and gear to work toward after the credits roll. Offering more at an increased difficulty does give a certain appeal to replaying the game.

Have you played Stellar Blade yet? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below, and while you do that, I’m going to get these ratings underway

The visuals were excellent, coming out to a solid five.

I really liked this story, it was full of intrigue, mystery, and action, I’m giving it a four.

Gameplay was superb, I loved the combat system and enemies in this game, I’m giving it another five.

Replayability is there, it depends on what you were into the game for, the story is good once, but if you need more the new game plus model is good, I’m giving it a three

Most of my time with the game was a lot of fun, there were times where the cut scenes got kind of slow and long winded, but not a lot, I’m giving it another four.

Average that out and Stellar Blade get’s an average score of four point two out of five, earning it a spot right there on the beloved Special Reserve. A well deserved spot, I would definitely recommend giving this game a shot. It’s to bad as of right now it’s a Playstation exclusive. Cross our fingers it could make it’s way over to PC sometime for my PC bros.