Stellar Blade is a fantastic hack-and-slash game with a few surprising twists on the typical formula of the genre.
What Is It? Stellar Blade is a stylish 3D action game. I hear it follows closely in the footsteps of NeiR Automata, a game which I have not played but hopefully that reference is useful for others.
You are Eve, an advanced cybernetic soldier from the 7th Airborne Squad. You are dispatched to Earth in an attempt to defeat Alpha Naytibas. Naytibas are monsters who defeated humans in a war and now have control of Earth. Along the way you are rescued by a human, Adam, and your journey truly begins. Another soldier, Lily, meets up with you shortly after to round out your squad. Adam and Lily interact with Eve through a floating robot which is useful for scanning areas for exits, collectibles, lore pieces, and enemies. Oh, the robot eventually doubles as a gun as well.
The story is fine. It is a pretty standard “humans fighting back” sci-fi thing. None of the characters, outside of maybe Eve and Lily, really elevate above the average story. Mostly, though, that’s totally fine because you’re here for the gameplay in a game like this.
Combat is primarily sword-based. You have a standard light and heavy attack along with block/parry and dodge buttons. Things get expanded with Beta and Pulse energies. These are gauges that get built up through doing normal combat things. Once you have enough, you can unleash a Beta attack, of which you will get four, by holding L1 and hitting a face button. These are high damage attacks that are absolutely vital. Pulse attacks work similarly, providing four more options for special attacks. To top off the spoiler-free gameplay mechanics, you will unlock, via a skill tree, the ability to counter specific move types from enemies. These are signalled by blue or purple circles on screen. If you time them right you will unleash a strong counterattack, but time them wrong and you’ll take a bunch of damage.
The game features healing and grenade usables. The main healing potion refills whenever you rest at a camp which is a nice way to shortcut needless potion purchasing. The whole shop system is efficient if a bit unnecessary because you’ll mostly only be buying ammo and a special item which allows you one immediate respawn in battles.
You will unlock a gun relatively early in the game, and that packs a punch with a handful of different ammo types. The gun is so good that the game will take a break from the sword for entire sections of gunplay areas. These have a distinct survival horror tilt to them, complete with jump scares and obtuse puzzles, that I did not expect at all. It’s a massive credit to the game designers and the quality of the gun controls that these sections are a ton of fun and not an annoying diversion.
Along with the level design, the enemy design here is top notch. There are some incredibly cool enemies you will face along the way, some of which feel like something Resident Evil should have done 20 years ago. There is a fair share of copy+paste with a new coat of paint as you move to different areas, but I think the good outweighs the bad in the enemies by a long shot. The bosses are a tough, fun challenge with some of the later ones taking me a dozen or two tries to get through.
The game will have you traveling to a few different locations. Most of these have plenty of side quests to handle if you’d like, these are often run through the main world of Xion, but you can load up on quests before heading to an area and tackle a bunch at one time. Side quest rewards are XP, used in the vast skill trees to unlock new moves and buffs, along with skins, equipable gear which boost skills, or currencies that allow you to upgrade yourself or your gear.
I spent about 30 hours with the game, but I did a large portion of the available side quests. You can probably speed through it closer to 20, or easily push 40 if you truly want to see everything you can in a single playthrough.
The Best Part: The combat. This is the best hyper-paced, sword combat I’ve played this side of Metal Gear Rising. A major caveat to that claim is that I haven’t actually played very many of them, but the point remains that I think Stellar Blade holds up to MGR in this regard. The basic controls are simple but the game layers on complexity throughout. The simple existence of an actual gun in this game is wild, but it is incredibly useful and controls perfectly as well. The dodge and parry systems are simple but effective, then the color-coded attacks and their counteractions add a nice layer. By the end of the game, you’ll have a wide range of moves at your disposal and you will need all of them to beat those final bosses. One of my favorite measures of any game is if I’m still having fun in the last 10% of the game during routine enemy encounters. Stellar Blade passes that test easily; the combat stayed fun and challenging throughout.
The Worst Part: The platforming. More often than not, this aspect is totally serviceable. Nothing flashy, but for the most part it does work. However, there will certainly be multiple occasions where you die because the unpredictable platforming controls don’t do what you’d expect them to. The entire jumping system feels just a bit off and then that carries over into not being able to grab a ledge you want or having a bad time trying to wallrun. This is easily the most undercooked portion of this game, mechanically, and it really shows when compared to how smooth the combat is.
The Verdict: Stellar Blade is, objectively, probably an 8 or 8.5 out of 10. The story is just kind of there, the platforming has too many frustrating parts, none of the currency/upgrade/consumable systems are particularly rewarding and feel kind of tacked on, and a few more nits I could pick along the way.
Despite that, this game hit like a 9.5 for me. It was exactly what I had been looking for in a gameplay follow up to Metal Gear Rising. The combat is slick and smooth, controlling perfectly and not becoming overwhelming with button combinations to memorize. The ratio of depth of combat mechanics to simplicity of the actual controls is something that is incredibly difficult to get right and Stellar Blade absolutely shines there. Elsewhere, the game looks good, features some great enemy design, and has some truly unexpected gameplay sections that keep the game fresh over the 20+ hour playtime which typically would be bit long for a game like this.
Stellar Blade is far from perfect, but gets so much of the important stuff absolutely right that I can happily overlook the rough edges and enjoy the blissful experience it offers.
How to Play: PlayStation 5*, PC
*console played on for this review
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