Stellar Blade Review

"Truly Stellar"

Campaign

May 2, 2024 at 7:01pm
By Jason Stettner

This adventure follows Eve as she navigates a post apocalyptic Earth in search of a powerful monster. She’s dropped as part of an airborne squad, arriving with a close friend and thrown right into the action. It’s a nightmare scenario as the planet is well beyond saving or even reclaiming from the monsters known as the Naytiba.

The story is told with a bit of a mystery to it as secrets are revealed over the course of your journey. It’s one that can also be expanded upon if you choose to take in some of the side quests that are present and that will feed into how everything ends up. Your main goal is to take on the alpha, but to achieve that you’ll have to assist remnants of those that remain on this desolate planet.

This has you working through a variety of areas which range from linear to more open world in approach. You have a little sense of freedom depending on the setup and further exploration will allow you to discover more of what’s happened over the course of many wars.

It’s a somber story carried by various calming tunes, locations scarred by conflict and rather grotesque creatures. There’s an element of philosophical elements and it’s strangely more religiously themed than I had anticipated.

It’s an intriguing story with some twists and turns, although some parts may be more predictable than others. Still, it’s quite action packed with challenging bosses and a world that really does feel charming in its quiet but menacing approach. It features new game plus if you want to go through it a second time with some extra challenge to it and you’ll unlock another difficulty upon completion.

In general though, it’s the sort of game that you get more out of it the more you play it as there really is quite a lot to discover if you take your time. I was very surprised by the many hours of regular story gameplay, not to mention exploring in the open areas of taking another ground at it.

Gameplay

This is one of the few games that really does look like a current gen offering in terms of visuals. The fidelity quality here is incredible being sleek and action packed. You even get a few performance mode options on the Playstation5. This includes my recommended balanced mode which is 1440p up to 4k at 60fps, Performance at 1440p 60fps and finally Resolution which is 4k 30fps.

The game really does look gorgeous and the lead character Eve stuns but there’s that sort of quality to every aspect of the world. It looked remarkable slicing a big monster in half and seeing the impacts of the gore. It was so smooth and absolutely excellent to take in. The world as somber as it is really is filled with detail from debris to just a grand sense of lost scale to every section you visit.

I was particularly blown away towards a chilly ending segment that really was just gorgeous in design and aesthetics. I know the characters have an overly sexy style to them, but I enjoyed it and felt it tonally fit the story they were telling here. So honestly, I’m totally cool with it. It’s weird that games are ashamed of this element in the modern era, sometimes appealing things are nice to look at. Just saying.

I did find the combat to be rather challenging initially but as you continue to improve Eve with new abilities, skills and other assets she becomes quite powerful. It certainly leans into the Dark Souls category of gaming so it is challenging at any level until you really get progressing and it becomes easier. I do recommend story mode if you were are struggling too much, but it’s action difficulty in a way that feels somewhat like Bayonetta if you’ve played that one.

The Conclusion

Stellar Blade was an absolutely stellar, gorgeous experience that was filled to the brim with action while still balancing a somber vibe. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, the characters and the world that was presented here. It really came across as being a current generation experience that we’ve really been lacking in seeing for this console generation.

The visual style here looks excellent and it nails that post apocalyptic feel perfectly. There’s a nice balance of movement, puzzles and action. I never felt like the game was wasting my time with the whole experience coming across as a smooth well paced time. It gave freedom to explore further if I wanted to and some well balanced characters with depth to them and their stories. It was an action packed time and I loved it.

It was certainly a surprise for me as I really didn’t know what to expect from the game until the initial demo ahead of its launch and even then I saved as much as I could to try and experience it fresh when playing the game. Whatever the case, I had a grand time playing the game and I look forward to this hopefully becoming a new series in gaming as I’m sure it’s prime for new experiences going forward.

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Stellar Blade Review on Playstation 5
Review Code Provided by SIEC

Rating Overall: 9.4