Off the Shelf Media

Releasing barely a quarter of the way into 2024, Stellar Blade has already made the case to be on the shortlist for many Game of the Year awards. The maiden console voyage for South Korean developer SHIFT UP has set the bar enormously high – owing to a multitude of aspects that the game simply executes perfectly. 

Though the game executes many moments and aspects perfectly, that is not to say it is anywhere close to being perfect as a whole. I mean, protagonist EVE is pretty perfect but like, the game has its fair share of ‘suck’ and “oh f*ck this part.” Luckily for you, dear prospective consumer (who for some reason still has not picked up this game), there are more reasons for you to buy it than not! 

Gameplay: 2 

Satisfying, weighty combat combined with just enough variety in between to keep many different kinds of players satisfied for a good while. 

Gameplay! What we’re all here for right? Right??? Well, whatever got you in the door, Stellar Blade’s gameplay is what will keep you coming back for a while. Veterans and newcomers to the Soulslike subgenre alike will be satisfied. There is plenty of difficulty and enemy patterns to learn for the veterans, with an option of a ‘story’ (easy) difficulty for the neophytes. Also, the less than steep learning curve and punishment for repeated deaths does not involve the loss of all experience or resources. This departure from the typical formula is a huge factor that might convince those casual gamers to try this soulslike in an attempt to ‘git gud’. 

Stellar Blade largely involves exploring open or labyrinthian environments and engaging nightmarish, demogorgon from Stranger Things-style enemies in combat. EVE’s main tool of the trade is her “Blood Edge”, a sword that materializes from pieces adorning her headdress. The standard light and heavy attacks of a traditional hack and slash are present here, coupled with a parrying system akin to FromSoftware’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. 

Many of Stellar Blade’s various enemies, from lowly mob foes all the way to the strongest bosses, are outright damage sponges. Efficiently dealing with enemies involves keeping a careful eye on their attack patterns and making use of parries and counters. The combat system is not exactly breaking new ground in this game, but it certainly doesn’t have to. EVE’s strikes feel like they have a believable ‘weight’ to them, owed in part to the crisp sound design and haptic feedback of the PS5’s DualSense controller. 

Enemies can have either ‘posture’ or ‘shield’ meters in addition to their health bars. Depleting an enemy’s posture meter opens them up for a punishing finishing move, typically dispatching most mob enemies with ease, or giving EVE the upper hand in a boss fight. 

There are a ton of enemy types to learn here. The ‘Naytibas,’ as they’re called in-game, are a legion of alien monsters that have captured Earth from humanity. These consist of ghoulish, zombie-like enemies, corrupted robots, mutated humanoid boars, and some enemies take on an almost Lovecraftian/Eldritch form. There are basic enemy types that can be found in all the areas that EVE explores, but there are a multitude of enemies that are only found in certain areas of the map, constantly keeping the player on their toes. 

One of my favorite, clearly Demogorgon-inspired enemies was introduced to me via an ambush from underground in the middle of a vast, open desert. This encounter spooked me and kept me cautious when continuing EVE’s journey through the Great Desert area of the map.

 As with a majority of RPGs from the last decade or so, there exists a fishing minigame. It’s worth seeking out all the different nooks and crannies in the game world to find all the fishing spots, as catching all the fish and turning them into the right NPC will net some pretty awesome rewards (more cute outfits). 

There’s also a very fun, ‘Subway Surfers’ style minigame that comes up when EVE has to reach a hideout in the depths of an old transcontinental subway system. This was another welcome break from the regular gameplay loop that kept me engaged and kept the gameplay from getting stale.  

One small thing that might frustrate some players is the inclusion of various quick-time events (QTEs) throughout the game’s cutscenes. These are few and far between in the grand scheme of the game, only happening during moments in which EVE finds herself in extreme peril. While I’m not someone who rails against QTEs like most everyone else (Resident Evil 4 OG enjoyer) if you’re going to have them in the game, don’t space them out as far apart as they are in Stellar Blade. 

These kinds of games have conditioned me to understand that a cutscene is a reprieve from the constant onslaught of hard-hitting enemies. In Stellar Blade however, QTEs seemingly loved to rear their heads when I had just set the controller down, sealing EVE’s fate with an unceremonious fall to her death on more than one occasion. All in all, however, Stellar Blade’s gameplay alone makes this worth both your time and money. Fun, engaging combat, a variety of gameplay elements and an absolutely gorgeously rendered player character make this one of the best action games to drop in 2024. SHIFT UP has shown with their first console effort that they are not only capable at making these games, they are outright skilled at making them.

Story: 1 

No shortage of twists and turns, but the plot isn’t exactly breaking new ground. The prospect of multiple endings and New Game+ does provide a huge boost in replayability.  

The main storyline is in a word: decent. Like many aspects of Stellar Blade, it isn’t exactly giving us something we’ve never seen before. Unfortunately, there are times when the plot just gets straight-up predictable. Perhaps it’s due to my consumption of various movies, video games, and series within this genre that certain tropes become common, even across different forms of media. I won’t spoil the twist at the end. Certainly, however, a reasonable person can eventually see said twist coming from a mile away a significant time before its big reveal. 

Several side quests in the game have their own unique micro stories within the game’s larger narrative, making them both rewarding and fun to seek out. There were only a handful of times where I scoffed at the rewards for my efforts in seeking out these quests. Either there is a cute story involved or the reward is too beneficial to overlook. One such quest involves EVE going out into the wasteland to find a new set of legs for a resident within humanity’s last bastion of civilization, Xion (get it???). The quest was both rewarding and heartwarming, and made me decide to continue to seek out all the optional quests in hopes they too had a good story attached to them. 

Atmosphere 1 

Beautifully detailed environments but again, nothing really groundbreaking done here. The music does a much better job of conveying the atmosphere than the scenery, leaving something to be desired to make those two aspects more compatible. 

That said…

AWOOOGA HUMMINA HUMMINA HUMMINA YEOOOOOOWWWWZA *GRENADE WHISTLE* *EYES BULGE OUT OF MY FACE**BEATS SELF OVER HEAD WITH A CARTOON MALLET* STIFF_WOODEN_BOARD_THUMP.MP3* 

Yeah, okay, EVE is gorgeous. I did not buy this game for the plot. Who cares about the fucking plot? Sword lady. Hot sword lady. In fact, real-life ladies scanned their faces and bodies to create this absolute marvel of feminine beauty that is the player character EVE, and we owe it to their sacrifice to appreciate this work of art. 

Honestly, a gorgeous woman in a video game in the year 2024 is a breath of fresh air. As Western studios are increasingly pressured by institutions like Sweet Baby Inc. to make games more ‘inclusive’, it is nice to see Eastern developers and studios realize what continues to get the eyeballs drawn to their products. 

You’ve seen the infamous Fable trailer, the ‘new and improved’ Lara Croft, and Aloy in Horizon Forbidden West. For too long,  games have featured female characters that cross over into the uncanny valley, under the guise of ‘improving’ or ‘updating’ them. If a type of product widely enjoyed by men is going to have them play as a woman, by God, may she at least be an attractive one. This thought brings me to some questions I have for Western devs: Are good looking women inherently evil to you? Does the protagonist always have to be some alternative-looking outcast? Are you saying these characters are analogous to the people you’re trying to market to? What does that say about how you perceive the people you are making the product for?

Despite the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the game’s protagonist, the game is so much more than her. Comparisons have been made to Platinum Games’ NieR: Automata, and while the side-by-side of these games makes this comparison obvious, the similarities aren’t just skin deep. Both games feature great atmospheres, combat and exploration. Both games also feature a delicious blend of multiple types of gameplay elements. 

The game does so many other things right outside of simply satisfying combat and exploration. While the game is still not perfect by any stretch by the merit of its gameplay, other factors such as the soundtrack, graphics, and sound design come together to take Stellar Blade from ‘pretty good’ to ‘great’. 

Much like the aforementioned NieR, The soundtrack is one such spot where the game really shines. With at least 100 different tracks to be heard over the course of the adventure, there is something for everyone here. Powerful orchestral flourishes, early 2000s-inspired K-pop jams, and intense metal riffs are just a small sample of the types of music featured. Each one feels right at home in each situation and there are hardly any reused tracks. 

As you progress through the story, some areas that you frequent will change their background music to indicate changes to the game world. In other words, if there’s a BGM track you don’t like, you’ll be through the area soon enough and on to a new one or the music will be different the next time you return. 

In addition to a great soundtrack, the game’s sound design in general is incredible. The sweet, almost melodic clang of EVE’s sword against an enemy blow when executing a perfect parry was enough to convince me to nail down my parry timing just so I could hear that sound effect again. You can tell these sounds were developed with time and care, as no one sound effect sounds like a stock file someone downloaded from the internet. The PS5 makes further use of the DualSense controller with the controller speaker even making many of the same sound effects heard on screen, a nice detail that keeps the player immersed in this wonderfully crafted world. 

The graphics are, well, stellar! We’ve already talked about how great EVE looks throughout the game, but the other main characters alongside EVE are just as beautifully rendered. Her pilot and drone-flying companion Adam (get it????) is perfect ‘husbando’ bait to distract your girlfriend while you play this game. EVE’s engineer, Lily is another great example of a wonderfully rendered and animated character model. While Lily has considerably less obvious  sex appeal through her outfit and figure than EVE, her attitude, facial expressions, and voice make for a really cute character that I couldn’t help but smile at whenever she spoke or was on screen. 

Other NPCs encountered in the game look less ‘human’ than most of the characters we speak to throughout the game. They appear to be heavily modified cyborg humans. Since the story takes place far into the future where cybernetic augmentations allow most humans to be effectively immortal, there exists a great lore excuse to not have to animate skin and hair. 

In addition to the character models, textures like rocks, leaves, water, skin, metal, etc. are all beautifully rendered within the game’s Unreal Engine 4. Even on a vanilla PS5 with settings set to “performance”, the game still looks current-gen without breaking immersion with a last-last-gen-looking rock in the corner of your eye. 

While not necessarily rife with gratuitous gore and violence, there are a few instances of body-themed horror featured in the game that are well done and perfectly creepy. 

As great as these characters look, they don’t always sound all that great. EVE has a dulcet, undisruptive voice when she speaks, but at times it sounds like she’s trying not to wake up a baby. Other times it sounds like she’s reading something. Despite this performance, EVE’s English language voice actor, Rebecca Hanssen has a gorgeous Scottish accent. Admittedly, it would’ve probably been a lot more jarring to hear a thick, vibrant Scottish brogue in the midst of this desolate, post-apocalyptic setting. Hanssen also provided her face for EVE’s character model. She animates very well and her facial expressions look believable, a testament to both Hanssen’s acting ability and the animators bringing her face to life on screen. Adam’s voice actor, Nezar Alderazi, sounds like he’s just woken up or he’s slightly annoyed with whatever is currently happening. The standout performance in this is Rosie Jones as Lily Artemis, EVE’s engineering support. Both a cutesy, anime-inspired character model and Jones’ angelic English accent combine to make a character that almost steals the show.

There are still, however, plenty of times where even Jones sounds like she’s not confident in the reading of her lines, which probably has less to do with the actors’ abilities and more to do with the localization not being clear about what vibe the original South Korean writers were trying to convey. 

Being a game in Unreal Engine 4, it’s easy to recognize assets from other games, which is a little annoying to me. I understand not every dev wants to or is able to build their own engine and assets from the ground up nowadays, but when I see the same futuristic lift platform in Stellar Blade as is in The First Descendant (another Unreal Engine 4 game out of South Korea) it’s a bit distracting. Even EVE’s running animations are eerily similar to many of the female ‘Descendants’ in First Descendant. This isn’t necessarily a huge issue, but companies like Capcom with their in-house RE Engine are able to make each game released on that engine look unique despite sharing many assets and mechanics across multiple games. On the other hand, many games in similar engines today simply seem to look like reskins of previous games, with little changing between entries save perhaps for colors or cosmetics *cough* Assassin’s Creed *cough* Ubisoft, in general, *cough* 

Value: 2

Having just been released this year, Stellar Blade’s $69.99 price won’t be coming down anytime soon, but it is well worth the price tag for the number of hours one will spend finding everything the game has to offer. It’s also a finished product that devs have continued to add tweaks and content to well after the release. Oh, and all of this additional content added after release has come at no additional cost for the player- a welcome reprieve from the usual extra cash companies charge for similar additional content. 

Where the game is a victim of the modern pitfalls of the gaming industry is the existence of a ‘standard’ and a ‘deluxe’ edition. The deluxe edition, while only $10 more than its counterpart, only serves to give EVE a pallet swap of another outfit she can unlock early on. Additionally, it adds new skins for Adam, his drone, and Lily as well. Lily’s Stargazer outfit is super cute but outside of cosmetics and a slight infusion of in-game resources, the standard edition is perfectly fine. Consumers shouldn’t feel compelled to pick up the deluxe.

Duration: 2 

SPOILERS! There are some reused boss fights in this game. While I understand that this might seem like a cheap tactic to pad playtime, this is pretty standard fare for the soulslike genre. Bosses act as skill checks of players’ mastery of the game. Reusing boss fights ensures the player’s initial triumph over a certain foe wasn’t just a fluke. Also, the boss fights are some of the most pulse-pounding moments in the game, with EVE usually finishing off the battle with an anime-inspired, God of War-esque flourish. 

In many ways, the game is as long or as short as you want it to be. You can choose to explore every nook and cranny or find the necessary items, events and locations to progress the game. New Game+ and multiple endings mean a player could easily spend upwards of 100 hours on this game. 

Total Score: 8/10

In closing, a fun fact: SHIFT UP bought most of their employees a PS5 with a copy of the game so they could appreciate the project they had worked so hard to complete. One of the last TV shows I worked on just sent me a box of dominoes…

Thanks for reading! Do you think you could ‘rizz up’ EVE? Let me know in the comments!