At first glance, the sci-fi hack & slash action game Stellar Blade (PlayStation 5) seems like it was made by people who really love the Devil May Cry games, the Bayonetta series, and other games in which someone uses sharp instruments and expert gymnastics to take down monstrous enemies.
But the more you play Stellar Blade, the more you realize that the good people at Shift Up love other games, too, and it’s that love which has led them to create a compelling and engaging game of their own.
In Stellar Blade,
humanity was driven from Earth by aliens called the Naytiba. But while we may be down, we’re not out, which is why they’ve sent you — a sword-wielding acrobatic bad ass named Eve — to try and take it back.
Like Dante in the Devil May Cry games, and Bayonetta in hers, Stellar Blade has Eve using her swords, her spry legs, and (to a much lesser extend) her guns to rid Earth of the Naytiba.
But it’s not just the basic mechanics that make comparing these games so apt. Stellar Blade also has a similar aesthetic.
Eve and her coworkers, for instance, are all super pretty, and that includes the men. It’s the kind of flawless, impossibly perfect beauty that seems to be a hallmark of Japanese games (and animes, and mangas…).
Conversely, the Naytiba are just as weird and creepy as any you’d face in a Japanese game (or see in those shows and movies, or read in those comics…). Gigas, for example, look like the original King Kong if you replaced his head with a tire, the tire’s treads with spikes, and the manufacturer’s logo with the face of a baby from a Greek statue.
But as similar as Stellar Blade may be…
to those aforementioned games, it can also be somewhat different.
For starters, while the initial level is largely linear, and she later goes to others with a single path, Eve also explores some rather large, and open areas, ones as vast as those in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands.
Then there’s Stellar Blade‘s combat. While the stylish way she cuts down her enemies is reminecent of what you do in the Devil May Cry and Bayonetta games, Stellar Blade also recalls both Ghost Of Tsushima and Rise Of The Ronin — and, sadly, not that many other games — by having enemies who come at you from all sides, and at the same time.
But it also recalls those games, and Welcome To ParadiZe as well — and again, not enough other games — by having Eve’s sword swinging injure any enemies within striking distance, and not just the one you’re focused on.
Stellar Blade even recalls God Of War: Ragnarok by allowing you to buy a device called a WB Pump, which, like the Resurrection Stones in God, allow you to revive yourself right where you are when you die.
Then there’s Eve’s gun,
which does not work like the ones you have in Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. While those games were as much about the gunplay as the swordplay, hence why you could do cool combos utilizing both, in Stellar Blade Eve’s gun is decidedly a secondary weapon.
This is largely due to how little ammo you can carry at any given time, coupled with how your enemies always like to get up close and personal. Though, as you progress, your gun becomes a bit more helpful as you unlock different kinds of ammo, as well as the ability to carry more of it.
What further pushes Stellar Blade away from being just like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta are that it also has mechanics we know from other games, including those where your weapons aren’t sharp, and the main character isn’t out of your league.
For starters, Eve can climb, jump, and even swing from a rope like Aloy in Horizon Forbidden West. She can also wall run and do a mid-jump dash like, well, like a lot of video game heroes: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor‘s Cal Kestis, the different princes in the Prince Of Persia games…
Then there’s how some Naytiba…
look like necromorphs from Dead Space, how there’s a guns-only section reminiscent of Resident Evil 3, and how you occasionally run into robots who clearly want to be treasure goblins in Diablo IV when they grow up.
Now, all of these disparate mechanics do manage to work really well together. The hack & slash combat is fluid, especially when you unlock and master some of the more effective button combo attacks. Which you’ll need to do since your enemies are not pushovers (even if some do need to work on their situational awareness).
It also helps that these enemies are nicely varied, and not just the bosses, either; the grunts, too. Not only are there various kinds of Naytiba, but you also face robots who hate humans just as much.
The same goes for the locations.
While the linear parts are desolate and abandoned, the open ones are warm and sunny, with lots of interesting nooks and crannies.
That said, there are times when I wished the aforementioned good people who made Stellar Blade had played even more games, because this has some issues, and while some are unique, others are all too common.
As I mentioned, there are linear levels and wide open ones. And the first of these is the city of Xion, which actually serves as a staging area for another open section, The Wasteland.
The problem is that while Xion has a lot of side quests, most feel more like busy work than anything that either moves the story forward or challenges your button mashing skills.
In addition, while there are fast travel points in Xion, The Wasteland, and other areas of Stellar Blade, you can’t fast travel between them, even between Xion and The Wasteland, which Eve can walk to. Granted, the other areas are further apart, and require Eve to take a ship to travel between, but even this seems like something they could’ve fudged for convenience sake.
Which…
is something else irritating about Stellar Blade: you sometimes have to go through unnecessary extra steps.
For instance, with the default settings, you have to pick up anything your enemies drop. Most of which are small, and can be easy to miss. Thankfully, your gun is also a drone, and the drone has a helpful scanner. Though what works even better is to turn on the option that makes Eve automatically pick everything up without asking.
Similarly, when you tell Eve to take something to restore her health, she likes to flip it up and catch it. But that motion can be interrupted if she gets hit, which not only means she remains injured, but also that you have to tell her again to take her medicine.
In a related note, it’s odd that none of your enemies drop health packs, only cash and resources.
It’s also weird how you find the passcodes for certain locks, but Eve doesn’t automatically input the code when prompted, even though you can pull up the pass code onto the lock’s viewscreen.
What’s ironic is that,
at other times, Stellar Blade is rather convenient. When going down a ladder, for instance, she slides down it rather quickly. Similarly, when using a rope, you don’t have to wait for her to slowly climb it up or down, she slides down and uses a device to quickly pull herself up.
The thing is, when doing any of this, the game gives you a very clear look at Eve’s butt. Which I only mention because so much has been made of how she wears an extremely skintight cat suit.
But while it is silly, especially in this post-#MeToo era, as someone who’s not easily offended (or turned on by CGI boobs, no matter how much they jiggle), I never found any of her outfits — or those of her even less covered up acquaintances — distracting or a reason to stop playing or so deeply offensive that I wanted to cancel the good people who made this game.
Though it helps that Stellar Blade doesn’t take itself, or Eve, or her fashion choices, all that seriously…as you’ll see the first time you find a can of soda.
Stellar Blade also has an issue so common that I include a version of this paragraph into every relevant review: the text is sometimes too small. If you sit at a reasonable distance from your TV — y’know, like your mama told you to — you’ll have trouble reading the mission objectives, the instructional text, and other messages. Which is weird given that there are options to make the hud and the captions larger.
Thankfully,
none of these issues ruin what is otherwise an engaging and often effortlessly fun game. Sure, it often feels like something we’ve played before, albeit a while ago, but it never feels dated. Or retro. Or redundant. Instead, Stellar Blade feels like an updated and modernized version of a 20 year old game that we’re only now getting to play.
SCORE: 8.5/10
