“Stellar Blade” combines eye-catching cutscenes with great action

Gameplay of Stellar Blade. (Shift Up/Contributed)

Although the marketing for Stellar Blade focused primarily on the character designs and flashy animations, the actual game shows that beneath the surface lies a great action game with clever design decisions.

Players control Eve, a cybernetic soldier tasked with landing on a devastated Earth to destroy monsters called Naytibas. Early on, the player can find clues that suggest that Eve’s mission is not as clear-cut as it is portrayed, and that her overseers are hiding the truth.

Anyone who has played Nier: Automata will notice that there are several similarities between the world and the story of Stellar Blade. Knowing this, the story becomes very predictable and it’s surprising how much of Stellar Blade is taken from Nier. When the more unique aspects of the story come into play, it feels like a crazy anime.

Of course, the real reason to play this game is not the story, but the combat. The combat in this game is most easily described as “Bayonetta” mixed with a bit of “Dark Souls.” The player has access to a growing list of combos and special moves as they level up, but the timing of your dodges and counters is also crucial.

Boss battles are a good challenge, but never too unfair. While the game requires you to master perfect parries and dodges until you reach the final bosses, you can also fight your way through them using brute force and powerful skills. Either way, the game manages to add plenty of spectacle on top of a solid combat system.

The game looks great in general. The character models are very detailed and many environments have a great sense of scale that makes the world seem larger than life. The game also does a good job of fitting cutscenes into boss fights without making them too long, so they don’t overshadow the action.

One aspect that becomes a bigger problem as the game progresses is dealing with side quests. Eve will find many optional missions that take place in one of the game’s two open areas connected to the main hub. After a while, the amount of new side quests becomes overwhelming.

The problem is that it’s difficult to distinguish between missions that have an interesting story and those that are just there to kill time. Additionally, any side mission that requires the player to revisit the more linear areas of a main mission can be tedious since you’re not given a map, meaning the player has to rely on the few fast travel points to find the waypoint.

Stellar Blade is bigger and better than I expected. The combat is great and makes completing the game worthwhile. If Shift Up makes a sequel, this would be a good time to improve the script and side quest design. Stellar Blade deserves four out of five stars.