Not to put too fine a point on things, but the full version of Stellar Blade presents a way sharper package than the demo you played. The debilitating input lag that marred that taste-test—the troublesome hesitation between button press to sword hitting flesh, and Eve’s reluctance to combo cancel or shift attack vector? That’s all been solved.
Stellar Blade’s combat is now honed to a sublimely razor edge. Our heroine’s responsiveness is tighter than her barely there skin suit. Speaking of, if you do stumble across my YouTube longplay videos, we should probably address my lack of dress. Much like the loincloth-wearing “Depraved” starter class of Dark Souls, developer Shift Up has included the option to go au naturel to create an unofficial hard mode.
That’s not phrasing—foregoing Eve’s many, many unlockable wardrobe ensembles will render you shield-less. The idea is less risk-reward as it is a risque reward for bragging rights.
Stellar Blade
Now, if you’re a difficulty-chasing masochist like me, this was always going to be the way to play. Even if that also meant that I was forced to play locked in a room away from my kids after I reassured my partner with: “Babe, I’m playing this for the articles, I swear.”
When it comes to setting and aesthetics, Stellar Blade bears more than a passing resemblance to 2017’s Nier: Automata. So much so, the developer of that obvious spiritual inspiration—PlatinumGames’ Yoko Taro—has already endorsed Shift Up’s efforts. Hell, he even went so far as to acknowledge Stellar Blade as a superior product. A huge call and quite the compliment.
It won’t take too long to understand why the comparison was drawn. The bigger plot and structure of Stellar Blade feels like deja vu: you’re Eve, a cyberpunky battle angel who gets meteored down onto a devastated future Earth by some enigmatic outer entity (called “Mother Sphere”) who’s hanging in orbit.
The singular goal of you and your Fox Force Five Hundred squad of fellow “Angels” is to eliminate an infestation of mutants called Naytibas. Problem: your invasion goes full Bay of Pigs and Eve becomes a lone survivor who must rely on the know-how and support of a small cast of quirky human locals to seek and destroy four Alpha Naiytibas.
Aside from half a dozen shopkeepers and quest-givers who don’t get fleshed out that much—free cyborg joke there—your most meaningful interactions are with Adam and Lily. The former becomes your mysterious rescuer in the opening moments, and sadly, he isn’t particularly well voice acted at all. Lily fares much better as your chirpy sidekick, who provides engineering support and the odd comedic moment.
Without revealing much more than that, Stellar Blade provides a reasonably satisfying yarn that managed to wrong-foot me with a twist (which I always love). Better yet, it had a decent 32-hour runtime and game completion unlocks a hard mode. But, sorry, there’s no New Game + at the time of writing.
However, I can confirm that there is a fishing mode to get hooked on and lose extra hours too, a collect-a-thon challenge where you must find sweet, sweet cans, plus a few decision points in the guts of the game that affect a multiple-choice ending. And at least one of those outcomes left me scratching my head, wondering if I did indeed get “the good” ending.
All in all, in terms of hours and length, we get a pretty good deal with Stellar Blade. For what is essentially an action game with RPG elements, it’s got surprisingly long legs.
Quick confession: I found the combat in Stellar Blade’s demo to only be okay. But when it comes to dishing out violence in the fully-fledged final version, I liked big cuts and I cannot lie.
As I noted in the intro, huge leaps have been made in the responsiveness department, and dipping back and forth between my demo save and the full game felt like night and day.
Many of you are already quite familiar with the three main branches of Stellar Blade’s perk tree. They let us elongate and damage enhance Eve’s existing pool of two-button combos, make her “perfect” dodges/parries easier to pull off or unlock an incredibly useful stealth-kill element.
The demo also gave reasonable access to four branches of “Beta” special moves that are fuelled by successful hits and reside on an L1 + face button toggle. These are invaluable for mass-culling crowds of mutants, punching through shields, or disrupting bosses as they wind up big hits. Stellar Blade takes a distinctly Sekiro approach with those, too, using big colourful flashes to denote when to hit dodge, parry once, parry a bunch, or heel ‘n’ toe your ridiculously stilettoed self off the catwalk completely.
Dispensing ultra-violence gets easier and more satisfying as you continue your invigorating climb up the perk power ladder to the stuff that was shrouded from view in the demo. Stuff like Burst skills, which can be boiled down to even flashier-looking, far more damaging Beta skills that can be accessed by holding R1 instead.
Also, by mid-game, you’ll get a full, generous page of rage-state perks that I can’t talk about, plus there’s a reasonably deep gear system that lets you massage Eve’s playstyle by buying (or finding) doodads for your six attribute-skewing inventory slots.
While slicing and dicing big chunks of meat is very much the main course of gameplay, some other interesting ingredients are bubbling away in Stellar Blade’s stew. You’ll get some light puzzling, rare blade surfing minigames, and backtrack-heavy chest unlocking, and I’d be lying if I said I went in expecting to stab this many people fairly in the butt as a stealth exponent.
Lastly, do expect to blast things in a functional—but too ammo-scarce to be useful—third-person shooting layer. And there’s some seriously ropey jumpy-jumping sprinkled in that just feels unwieldy as you’re constantly falling to your death after somehow missing elements right in front of you by half a micron. Platforming is wobblier than an unsupported Eve equipped in her Emperor’s New Clothes; easily the lowest point of this whole presentation.
When it comes to visuals, I believe the obvious pun that is “Stellar Blade’s cutting edge” will handle most of the heavy lifting for me. This game looks mind-blowing and runs flawlessly, and only twice did I spot weird object placement glitches that made my experience anything less than bootylicious.
The lighting and shadowing systems are eye-catching, as is Shift Up’s dedication to filling this bleakly beautiful world with tons of object detail that’s also brimming with incidental physics. This world feels real and lived in, particularly the hub town of Xion which slowly blooms into life as you hammer out a respectable haul of side quests.
When it comes to exploration out in the field, you’re getting a mixed bag of environments. With the seven or so “main levels” you can drop ship between, you’re getting an even split of straight-line level slogging, semi-tight branching environments, and two decently-sized, outright sandboxes. (Literally, they’re both deserts.)
Don’t let that fool you in terms of visual variety, though. Whether it’s the oppressive corridors of some dilapidated former downtown, a cave facility of phenomenal technological wonders, or a burgeoning, rustbucket cobblepot civilization—Stellar Blade always finds a way to go above and beyond to impress you.
The only complaint I can level at the environments is when the more intimate ones become path-destroyed, which can sort of snooker you out of revisiting later for loot. As a kleptomaniac, that chafes me harder than the eye-watering moments when Eve zips down ropes using her nether regions as brake pads.
Even if one were to strip away this protagonist, and all the cutscene angle choices that are about as coy as the in-game fishing spots, Stellar Blade would remain gorgeous. It’s just an all-out visual feast that sets a new high bar on PS5.
When it comes to sound design, I also can’t say enough good things about what’s on offer. Granted, Eve could probably stand to do a bit less shrieking with her heavier attacks, but otherwise, the swordplay cuts some pretty sick beats that are punctuated by those validating quick-time-esque chimes.
Likewise, the ethereal soundtrack will open several cans of sweet Korean earworms on you, too. However, it has to be said that the option to change your camp soundtrack really ought to extend to the level tunes beyond these bonfires as well. As wonderful as these tracks are, having them on repeat can eventually grate as you’re scouring the cracks of these overworlds to hassle corpses for diaries that hold chest codes, or free core power prizes from clipped Angel comrades.
At the end of the day, I walked away from Stellar Blade highly impressed. Especially considering this is Shift Up’s first attempt at a AAA console title. Going in, there was the fear that this rookie developer was purely about the titillation factor. Before the demo dropped, the outside observer could have been forgiven for thinking that Eve was nothing more than a lure to reel the thirstiest among you into buying a subpar action title.
While Shift Up do get tongue-in-cheek at times, I’m delighted to say that’s just not the case. There’s quite a lot of substance here, to the point where I almost agree with Taro-san’s appraisal. At the very least, Stellar Blade is indeed Nier enough that it deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as Automata, though I think the slightly inferior platforming, writing, and a large part of the voice-acting component prevent the student from surpassing the master.
However, in most other regards—combat, visuals, side diversions, physics, etc—Stellar Blade proves sharper than its spiritual inspiration. Despite a lack of polish here and there, few could deny that this is a solid debut for a first effort love-letter to a GOTY.
Though this action title doesn’t exactly derrière to be different on the innovation front, it nails many of the key elements of its homage to a great. Stellar Blade is a provocative sword guard thumb-pop that ought to make every fan of the genre snap to attention.
I think Shift Up has shown the mettle needed to unsheathe this into a series.
Stellar Blade was reviewed on PS5 using digital codes provided by PlayStation Australia.
