Mark Twain once famously wrote “All ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources,” or, that there are no original ideas left. In this vein, Stellar Blade, the first console game from Shift Up is in fact an idea thief. Many of the elements from the story, to combat, to exploration are, for lack of a term, farmed from other games and movies to the point that going down the rabbit hole can offer confusion as you try to navigate the who’s ideas are who’s, and what ideas work in the body of the product they come to form.
Now, this may sound like I am criticizing Stellar Blade but no, in fact, this is the highest form of praise I can give. Here we have a case study of a game that knows exactly what it is and thrives in being just that. It is a homage to an era of gaming that has long since passed, a game that steals from the best and yet finds a way to feel unique at the best of times, and a new IP that one can hope has a life ahead of itself. Stellar Blade is by no means perfect, and flounders occasionally in its sea of ideas and concepts, but it succeeds in being an unapologetic action game that feels both familiar and original.
“All ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources,”
In the opening moments of the game, our lead protagonist Eve is thrown into a planetary assault against an alien race that has destroyed the earth we knew. One might be forgiven for forgetting that everything that follows is going to be inspired by the biblical story of Adam and Eve. In fairness, Eve plays far more like Lilith anyway from a story standpoint, being strong and independent as she fights hordes of Naytiba with her allies safely miles away and communicating through her robot.
This intro manages to stay with you and make its mark long after the game slows down into its steady pacing. While the game uses some elements of the Souls franchise, admittedly it felt less Souls to me which was perhaps why I liked it more. Before you even unlock the hub or, most of the tools really, you are required to travel through a mostly linear with backtrack doors that can be found. Based on that description, I can see where the comparisons come from. This being said, the game does eventually open up.
Eve manages to be an engaging character through all this, even if she isn’t a character we haven’t seen before. The game uses camps, similar to campfires, for the character to heal up and upgrade, interestingly also using them for narrative drops. While the game is filled with legitimate cutscenes for narrative, like most games of this nature you will get these moments shoved at you, locking you into a short exchange of information that you the player probably already have.
The best moments in the game though are when Eve rips her sword out and goes to town. Fairly easy QTEs lead to intense monster-slaying action sequences to end most boss fights, while the game additionally has a lot of cinematic moments in between long stretches of forward progression in levels, adding to a fun distraction. While Stellar Blade suffers from Devil May Cry Syndrome, where your character is a total badass in cutscenes and then never reaches those rights in gameplay, I will say Stellar Blade is one of the closest I have come to feeling in control and powerful once the action is in my hands.
Expect the story to fade quickly into the background as the action takes center stage. It is a relatively short narrative, being compostable in around 10 hours, and honestly pretty predictable. If you have played both of the Nier games in the past, there are multiple overlaps. It’s not the worst sin this biblical allegory could commit, but it’s a shame that the moments that Eve truly gets to shine are so few and far between, never quite reaching the levels of Dante or Bayonetta in terms of persona.
“The best moments in the game though are when she rips her sword out and goes to town,”
Eventually, the player unlocks Xion and the game opens up considerably, from the Soulslike game it might have appeared to be. Here you will take on the game side quests to level up and get the materials you need to craft items. One of the items I’m sure you will craft a lot of are outfits, which there are a lot of in-game. They are fun to unlock, serve as some pretty solid motivation to explore, and let you express yourself. Beyond that, there are a lot of things to discover if you just make the time. You are also going to want to find every can you can, if only for Eve’s adorable poses as she proudly displays her found treasure.
Side quests range wildly from simply being tedious to offering deep insight into the world. One of the later side quests shocking opened up an entirely new area to explore in the first region which I was not expecting to happen. Since the fast travel system can be a bit tedious, needing to teleport from camps to other locations in a region to then travel to another region, many of the fetch quests can start to drain you. There are plenty of fetch quests in the game to so expect to bounce around.
Stellar Blade also has a serious pacing issue which stood as the cardinal sin it committed in my experience. Without verging completely into complete spoiler territory, there is a moment in the game that effectively blocks much of the side content, around the halfway point. This leaves a LARGE amount of the content in the game only accessible up to the halfway point of the game. You still gain access to most of the maps for the sake of completionist goals, but with all tasks locked except for the main narrative it kind of locks you moving forward.
Even before that, the game struggled with momentum, waffling between hour-long linear levels that felt more traditional, and moments where you could wander to your heart’s content. The game also featured dungeons where the blade is fully disabled and you can only shoot enemies to progress. These were also both linear and time-consuming, made even more annoying by the fact the strongest element of the game was bizarrely locked.
These levels often featured puzzles that acted more as a hindrance than as additional fun. The occasional solve the code challenge or locked box puzzle didn’t bother me too much (though one variation on the box puzzle was very frustrating) but there were plenty of navigation puzzles that just didn’t click. One in which I had to climb up walls and dodge moving saws was particularly annoying, being easy right up until my camera got in the way.
This all being said, the game Nier: Automata-esque soundtrack followed all my successes and my failures. Keiichi Okabe, who previously composed for Nier, did around 40 percent of the compositions here and it is noticeable. Getting lost in the soundtrack might have also led to many of my failures, in which case, I can live with that. The level design both in the linear levels and open-world ones is also particularly beautiful and shockingly created on Unreal Engine 4. Blending both of these elements helped create and inviting world to get lost in.
“Since the fast travel system can be a bit tedious, needing to teleport from camps to other locations in a region to then travel to another region, many of the fetch quests can start to drain you.”
I know what I said at the beginning about the game not feeling Soulslike then proceeding to outline how it feels like that. Where the game carves its own path is the combat, which admittedly starts off slow. Dodging and countering is easy and once you start to nail the prompts becomes so much a second nature you can start to break how combat flows according to how you like to play.
The game has a risk, reward system in which perfecting the block and dodge feeds into multiple mechanics, I never felt that the system was forced on me. This included during the many fights against bosses. Knowing my abilities and enemy patterns allowed me to approach any situation with a degree of freedom I was unfamiliar with in these punishing games.
The abilities go a long way to that as well, only giving your four core abilities to upgrade. Since they all have use in different ways, mastering their usage also allowed me some freedom to play to my specifications. Add your gun into the mix and you can take it even further. Of course, there are loops like breaking an enemy’s stance for a power attack that you will want to exploit, but if you are having trouble finding your rhythm, plan B doesn’t have to be die.
There are plenty of enemy types to fight in the game, but expect most to fall into the usual categories of light, heavy, and ranged with little deviation. Make no mistake, it is fun to fight these enemies, but if you spend as much time collecting things as I did, this becomes very apparent. Thankfully the combat is crisp enough to never make the repetition drag me under, but enemies too suffer the uneasy pacing balance the game attempts to strike.
Verdict
Stellar Blade finds its biggest issue is its pacing, there are just no two ways around it. The game has open areas yes, but a lot more linear ones you need to spend longer periods on. Much of the large volume of Stellar Blades content is also stuffed toward the first half of the game, leaving the second half with little to do but collect missed loot to complete the story. It’s an odd choice.
Where the game excels, however, is in its combat which starts off slow but eventually builds to a fast-paced precision hack and slasher that is wildly fun to play. With incentives like a massive collection of outfits to collect and some side quests built on the world even more, Stellar Blade delivers on its key promises with gusto and doesn’t leave you disappointed.
P.S. Tarantino is the greatest gentleman thief in all of filmmaking, which is ironic for this game considering how many people are referring to the Sporty Yellow as the ‘Kill Bill’ outfit. This is both because Uma Thurman wore a similar-looking outfit in ‘Kill Bill’, with the sporty yellow outfit saying Kill Kill on it in reference.
Stop calling it that! Tarantino was referencing an outfit worn by Bruce Lee, who first dawned the outfit 1972 for his film Game of Death which he unfortunately did not complete before his death. For more of those outfits worn by Bruce Lee stand-ins, play literally any fighting game. Give the man the credit he deserves! Also, if you want to see the greatest moment in cinema history, click here to see a scene in the 1978 film in which an actor who is not Bruce Lee sits in front of a mirror with a cardboard cutout of Bruce Lee over his reflection… Movie magic…
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Developer: Shift Up
Publisher: Sony interactive Entertainment
Release Date: April 26th, 2024
Take the role of Eve, sent to earth to save it from the Naytiba. Hack and slash your way to discover the truth of what happened, and hopefully, save Earth.
Pros:
+ Fast Paced Combat
+ Enjoyable Protagonist
+ Collectables
+ Deep Narrative Side Quests
Cons:
- Pacing Issues
- Some Puzzle Design
- Fetch Quests
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Stellar Blade
