‘Stellar Blade’ was heavily hyped, but this sparkling knife still needed some sharpening | Games

Not that it’s due to the hype, because in recent weeks you have been bombarded on all sides with trailers and other marketing material for Sony’s big new exclusive title. Everything from ‘making of’ videos to even K-pop music videos of the main character were released into the world to spread the word about ‘Stellar Blade’, and the demo was eagerly downloaded and discussed. Would it be an action game à la ‘Bayonetta’ or ‘Devil May Cry’, or rather a soulslike or perhaps something else? The answer is yes. To all questions. ‘Stellar Blade’ borrows greedily and shamelessly from different genres and other titles, and mixes it all into a whole that strangely enough often works, except when it doesn’t.

‘Stellar Blade’ opens spectacularly, with an apparent invasion by a fleet of spaceships that are then blown to pieces with a number of explosions worthy of Michael Bay. Along with the falling debris, main character EVE also lands, immediately throwing you into the action. This first level obviously serves as a tutorial that teaches you the basic movements and anyone who has ever played a Souls game will immediately be familiar with the combat system of attacking, parrying and ducking.

So there is little new under the gameplay sun, but you cannot simply dismiss ‘Stellar Blade’ as yet another clone of Demon’s, Dark and other Souls. The combat system is gradually evolving into something that is somewhere between the typical Souls style, the fast moves from ‘Devil May Cry’ and the hectic quicktime events of ‘Bayonetta’, including firearms.

The fights are the strongest point of ‘Stellar Blade’, but… although the fights are flashy and challenging (especially on the higher difficulty level), unfortunately there are also platform sections in the game. And they are, to put it politely, awful. EVE can jump, but whether you actually land where you want is often the question. Especially in levels where missing a jump is fatal, and that happens more and more often later in the game, this imprecise control is much, much more frustrating than any enemy.

The world of ‘Stellar Blade’ looks phenomenal. From the first second it becomes clear that this game is a showcase for what the PlayStation 5 can display in terms of graphical power. But… as beautiful as the graphics are, the world can be just as empty and boring. During the (surprisingly many) videos, all stops are pulled out, and the cinematic action scenes that spice up the gameplay here and there also look dazzling. But the color palette, which in many of the levels seems to consist mainly of brown and green, will also trigger traumatic flashbacks to the Xbox 360/PS3 era for older gamers. And no matter how high the resolution is, an empty desert remains an orange plain.

After the first levels, which mainly serve as an introduction to the various game mechanics, you end up in the city of Xion, the last bastion of the survivors of the war between humans and the Naytibas, the monsters that have taken over the planet. It is here that the story really starts to get interesting, with the necessary plot twists that regularly turn everything upside down. But… no matter how interesting the story is, the characters are so flat and lifeless. Characters is even a big word for some figures, because it is largely about stereotypes. EVE itself still has a bit of personality, but you won’t even remember the names of everything else after playing, they are so lifeless and instantly forgettable.

The fact that the voice actors seem completely disinterested in reading their script doesn’t help, of course. It seems like the creators were more focused on making the female characters as sexy as possible, that there was no time left for things like personality. The camera that eagerly focuses on certain body parts, the ridiculous costumes that you can unlock,… it’s all so ridiculous that it becomes embarrassing. Not entirely surprising when you know that Shift Up, the studio behind ‘Stellar Blade’, used to only make mobile games that mainly consisted of busty anime characters, but for a AAA title in 2024, this simply creates vicarious shame.

‘Stellar Blade’ is not easy to review. Just when you think “no, this game won’t work anymore”, you suddenly end up in a new section that turns everything upside down and makes you want to continue playing again. But it also ends in an uninspired trek through boring, dead landscapes and a cycle of level-town-level-bunker that is constantly repeated.

The whole game seems like a mishmash of several good ideas all thrown into the mixer in the hope that the end result would be even better. But a game is more than the sum of its parts, and when more than a few of those parts are half-heartedly developed, you unfortunately end up with a mediocre game that, while it looks very nice, ultimately has little substance.

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