Game Review: Stellar Blade

When rating Stellar Blade for the casual gamer on a scale of 1 to 5, where does it stand and is it worth investing in?

"To The Final Scoring"

Stellar Blade is an action role-playing game for the PlayStation 5 created by the gaming company Shift Up. It's a single-player game with a story-driven campaign. It was released on April 26, 2024. With the hype and many controversies surrounding the game up until it's release, what can we say about the actual game of Stellar Blade? Can it hold its own with other games in its genre or will it fall way below expectations?

Story Exposition:

In Stellar Blade, you play as Eve, a trained combatant from the Elite Seventh Airborne Squadron tasked to reclaim the earth from a monster species called Naytibas. At the start of the game, the squadron falls quickly to the Naytibas, leaving Eve as the sole survivor. From this point on your tasked to help Eve complete her mission by going to various different regions, recruiting allies and learning the true history of humanity.

First Impression: Gameplay

Once you get control of Eve in the opening of the game you are greeted with a small tutorial that does not overwhelm you with inputs, prompts or tries to hold your hand with very long winded explanation. The flow of the story does not get interrupted and controls seem to flow fluidly. Reminders pop up as you play, while providing plenty of foes for you to test them on. As you progress through the beginning, the game provides you with one final challenge so you can apply everything that you've learned and prepare you for the game. Although the boss battle in the end is scripted, if you're good enough you can beat the boss without needing to lose the fight.

The Good and The Bad:

Stellar Blade right off the bat gives you a stunning world of visual designs from the semi-open world map, character designs, and enemy designs and wraps it all together with music that compliments the fights and stages. The boss battles is where the main focus is and the game gives you several unique bosses that challenges the way you play the game. The game provides players with various Exospine items that form the foundation of a player's gameplay style, as well as Gear items that allow for additional customization to excel in their preferred style or to increase the level of challenge. Another great aspect to consider is the parrying and dodging systems. As you face more powerful enemies at higher levels with formidable attack and defense, it becomes essential to familiarize yourself with their attack patterns. By doing so, you can unleash devastating counterattacks that inflict greater damage than your regular attacks or special abilities.

Where the game excels, the opposite can be said. The boss battles is one of the best feature but lacks variety with too few boss enemies, resulting in repeated encounters with the same boss in different settings. The Exospines and gears that enhance your gameplay are too widely spaced out across levels, making you forget that you even collected them. The parrying and dodging systems are so crucial to the game that once you have memorized the bosses pattern the difficulty falls way down and only prolongs the fights as the harder modes gives the enemies a massive increase in attack and defense. The story alone takes about 22 hours to complete but if a player is willing to continue the progression it can be done in about 15 hours.

The Final Score: 3.5 out 5

Overall objectively the game was fairly well done. The story was compelling and believable. Majority of the gameplay and controls keeps you engage and doesn't pull you out of the immersion. The music heightens your adrenaline and enhances the atmosphere during the action sequences and scenery. What pulls it down is the fact that there isn't enough bosses and mini bosses. The story feels too short and almost rushed. There were many collectable items that were hard to find or blended into the environment a little too well. After a couple of hours, exploring started to feel like a enormous task due to the long distances between rest stops and the constant threat of enemies gradually draining your health and depleting your limited items that were already low to begin with.

While the story is intriguing, it could be easily described as straightforward, with minimal surprises to challenge your expectations. Having the game feel so short leaves you wondering if Shift Up hadn't cut out a good portion of the game. Despite all of that, the game is worth purchasing for yourself or even borrowing from a friend for a few weekends. It will keep you well entertained for the little time you have.

Personal Note:

In my personal opinion the game was very fun to play in the first play-through. Learning to use combos and using the parry and combo systems against bosses were some of the best time I had with the game. The visuals were amazedly well detailed and the character designs are stunning. Even though the game does feel short it is the perfect single player campaign for those with little time and need a little escape from their everyday life.

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