Now Playing: Stellar Blade

I recently wrote a post about the demo for Stellar Blade in which I shared my first impressions of the game – most notably, the combat. But having now played the entire game, I’d say my initial description of the combat wasn’t entirely accurate. It was accurate for the demo, perhaps, but not for the way the combat of Stellar Blade evolves as you progress.

I said that Stellar Blade features a more slow, ‘reactive’ combat system than a fast, ‘proactive’ one. And whilst that is true during the early stages of the game when your available abilities are limited, once you complete the opening area and unlock several new skills, Stellar Blade’s combat does come to offer a more fast, proactive experience – one in which you can dictate the pace and be far more aggressive with your approach.

Nevertheless, Stellar Blade is certainly not a Devil May Cry or Bayonetta style action game and approaching it as if it were will only be detrimental to your experience. It touches lightly upon the mechanics of those games but it is, like I said in my previous post, a more potent mix of Dark Souls and Sekiro.

You have ‘camps’ (bonfires) at which you can rest, restore your health and your healing ‘flasks’, spend skill points and upgrade your gear – but which also re-spawn all enemies within the world. Like Dark Souls, the combat is far less mobile than DmC or Bayonetta, even when you’ve unlocked all of your skills. You may be able to blast your way through lesser enemies with ease later in the game but careful, deliberate timing (and energy management) is still key for tougher enemies and for the boss fights in particular – which I’ll touch upon in a moment.

From Sekiro, Stellar Blade borrows the ‘poise’ system and transforms it into enemy ‘balance’. Break an enemy’s balance by performing enough perfect parries and you’ll be able to perform a powerful ‘retribution’ counter-attack – essentially the ‘deathblow’ from Sekiro. But Stellar Blade is certainly more forgiving in terms of timing than Sekiro (and can be made even easier thanks to certain skills / gear upgrades), and more forgiving in terms of defeat than Dark Souls – you don’t lose anything upon death.

Whilst Stellar Blade may borrow various aspects from other games (and not just in terms of combat), it combines these aspects in a way that doesn’t feel as derivative as you might expect. The combat experience it offers is a unique beast all its own – a beautiful chimera, if you will – one I came to enjoy and appreciate quite a lot by the end . . . although it’s certainly not without its problems or potential improvements.

The game demands that you play a particular way to be effective – mastering timing is key. Perfect parries and dodges are the basis not only of your defence, but for creating openings you can then exploit. There’s a satisfying flow to combat but it does, I must admit, grow a tad repetitive before the end. Whilst the game does a great job of pacing out various new skills and abilities as you progress, there’s not quite the creative selection of combat options I’d want in a game like this. Using the drone as a ranged weapon within combat is fun, for example, but somewhat limited in terms of actual effectiveness.

You also get access to a couple of sets of energy limited ‘special’ attacks and these are also fun, but they don’t fundamentally change the way you fight. There’s also an ‘ultimate’ style time-limited ability that looks super cool visually but is surprisingly weak in terms of damage output meaning it’s not half as much fun to trigger as it should be.

What I feel Stellar Blade really needed (and I hope the sequel leans into) is a selection of new weapon types, each with their own move-sets and special attacks – heavy weapons with slow attack speeds but high damage, spear-like weapons with extended reach, or simply fast paced, dual wield sword sets. Not exactly original, no, but that’s the direction I’d like to see Stellar Blade take in a sequel – a variety of weapon types with their own strengths and weaknesses and ideal use scenarios to really mix things up and keep combat fresh from start to finish.

That said, whilst the combat doesn’t offer the variety or the creative options for the player I’d like, it does offset its somewhat limited scope by providing a fantastic and varied range of enemy types to fight. You’ll encounter new enemy types all throughout the game, each with their own attack timing and patterns. So whilst the way you fight doesn’t really evolve in the way that I’d like, the game finds other ways to keep you on your toes.

And that’s where the great boss fights come in – there’s so many satisfying and fun boss fights in Stellar Blade that it’s kind of ridiculous. They’re easily the real highlight of the game and where the combat system really shines as you’re forced to utilise all of your skills to succeed – well, you can spam some moves and cheese your way through to a degree, but it’s more fun when you really lean into the system and find your groove.

And the enemies look great. I love the designs. In fact, I love the look and design of the world and characters as a whole. There’s a few oddities here and there – certain looks or designs that don’t quite feel like they belong. But overall, Stellar Blade is a fantastic looking game with great environments and character models.

The game’s structure is split between more focused, linear levels and a couple of open world maps you can explore – and these are the two areas you’ll spend the most time within if you’re interested in completing the numerous side quests available. Most of these are very basic quests along the lines of ‘go to X, find Y’ but they do push you to explore very nook and cranny of the map.

And there are a handful of pretty good narrative driven side quests, and some even lead to fun optional boss fights. I had a great time working my way through them all and finding all the collectibles I could – especially the extra outfits for Eve and the cans. I also liked the odd platform section or simple puzzle to solve – it helped break up the combat. The side content even introduces the best character in the game – Clyde – who teaches you about fishing. No, I’m not joking, Clyde is easily the best character and must feature in the sequel.

Whilst the structure of the game does work quite well, the ‘point of no return’ (which the game does thankfully warn you about) seems to come very quickly and if – like me – you want to catch all those fish and finish all those side quests, you might find yourself putting the main story on hold for several hours before you get back to it. That’s something that really could have been paced out better.

Okay, so let’s move onto the weakest aspect of Stellar Blade and you’ve probably already guessed what it is given that I’ve described a fishing mini-game side character as the best character in the game. Yes, Stellar Blade has some bloody terrible characters.

The story of Stellar Blade, though clearly evocative of NieR Automata, is . . . fine. It tells its own story – it just doesn’t tell it very well. Describing it as ‘messy’ would probably be the nicest way to say it. But it does have some cool ideas and it’s really not the problem with the game because to me, the story isn’t the most important thing – the characters are.

Great characters can elevate a weak story but Stellar Blade is sorely lacking. Now, you might think I’m primarily talking about Eve because Eve isn’t a very good character. As I said in my demo post, she starts the game with the personality of a brick. But here’s the thing – I get what they were going for with Eve. She’s meant to be serious, matter-of-fact and somewhat naive – although her naivety too often comes across as her being incredibly thick.

But I at least see the intent with her character and she does, to a degree, begin to show some semblance of a personality towards the end of the game and in a handful of the side missions. It’s a shame because, as I also said in my demo post, a game like this really benefits from a strong character at its core.

But no, Eve’s not the worst character in Stellar Blade – that honour goes to Adam. Adam, the man with no soul. Adam, the personality black hole. I have no idea what their intent was with Adam. He’s as important to the plot as Eve is – arguably even more so for reasons I won’t spoil here. But he’s so damn boring. There’s just nothing to latch onto with Adam. No charm, wit or humour – he’s about as exciting as a bar of soap.

He needed to be more of a rascal – more of a Han Solo type. A thief with a heart of gold. Cliche? Sure! But he would at least act as an appropriate foil to the more serious Eve. Their partnership and what should be a developing friendship (if not romance?) throughout the game should be key, especially given what the game builds to at the end.

But there’s nothing. There’s no real relationship. It’s all so flat. Unlike Eve’s butt – and we can’t review Stellar Blade without talking about her butt because her butt has more character to it than Adam. It’s a shame her butt seems to be the main talking point about this game because there’s so many great aspects to it that deserve more attention.

I really like the outfits. Do they all fit within the world? Hell no, but who cares? It’s a video game! There’s plenty to unlock, some very skimpy, and others not at all. Some are just silly – in fact, I kind of wish there were more silly outfits like the Fluffy Bear suit. I guess the problem is, because Eve lacks a strong personality, she ends up feeling more like a plastic doll you’re just dressing up.

This isn’t helped by the game’s dialogue, a lot of which is absolutely f**king atrocious. It’s so bad it’s at least unintentionally funny at times. I can’t really blame the VA – they had to work with what they got and what they got was f**king terrible.

Overall, Stellar Blade is an excellent action game that may borrow generously from other titles in terms of combat and narrative, but it successfully forges its own path and builds its own unique identity. It is – as I said – a beautiful chimera, which is somewhat appropriate given one way the game can end. It has great visuals, animations and music. But it’s not a game without its flaws and I hope to see those flaws addressed in a sequel.

More weapon types and move-sets. A more considered and structured narrative. BETTER DIALOGUE. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD BETTER DIALOGUE. Give Eve an actual personality. More environment types. Improve the pacing of side and main content. I can see so many ways the sequel to Stellar Blade could take this foundation and build something truly spectacular upon it. Or maybe they just give us more butt. That will probably work too, but this series (if it becomes one) deserves to be known for far more than that.

8/10