Stellar Blade Review – HACK AND SLASH YOUR WAY TO FUN?

Stellar Blade throws you into the depths of a ruined earth that has been taken over by the Naytiba, a horrifying alien race that has only one thing on its mind… eradicate humankind. Playing as Eve, it is up to you to find the source of the Naytiba and put an end to them for good. After losing your friend and mentor, Tachy, you are left isolated in your quest for earth’s salvation and must find a new way to overthrow the powers that be. 

The Narrative in Stellar Blade

The narrative starts off with a bang, as you traverse along a beach taking down Naytiba left, right and centre. With Tachy as your guide, you fight through the alien swarms only to be confronted by an Alpha Naytiba. This was a great way to showcase Stellar Blade’s main threat! Losing Tachy definitely added emotional weight to the game’s opening.  As the narrative unfolds, you cross paths with many different people that aid you on your quest for revenge and eradication. Many of those that you encounter have been cybernetically altered, which definitely raises a few questions. 

There is no denying that the story is full of intrigue, however, it is not without a few faults. Some of the voice cast seem like a slight mismatch with the characters that they are bringing to life, which led to some dialogue catching me off guard. Despite this, the voice acting in itself was mostly fantastic. Though one moment that was supposed to be particularly emotionally charged instead had me chuckling continuously rather than feeling the feels! Whilst I definitely enjoyed the story, there were a few moments that made me roll my eyes or laugh unintentionally.

Stellar Blade and it’s enticing combat

One thing was clear as soon as I jumped into Stellar Blade. It was going to test my mettle and my resolve. The combat, whilst still maintaining a fairly simple hack-and-slash approach, has a high degree of challenge and requires patience. If you run head first into every encounter, don’t expect to come through it unscathed. Learning enemy attack patterns is a vital part of surviving the Naytiba onslaught, especially with the boss battles!

Getting the upper hand requires mastery of the perfect dodge and perfect parry mechanics! Not only do they protect you on a defensive level, but actually reward you with vital openings to take your enemy down. Most opponents have a parry meter below their health bar. Once depleted, it leaves them open to a brutal assault, which Eve delivers with style! The perfect dodge on the other hand lets you teleport Dragon Ball Z style behind your adversary to start hacking them down from behind. 

The game also arms you with powerful abilities, known as beta skills and burst skills, that can be chained with regular attacks to add that extra bit of oomph to each fight. These skills have come into handy more than once when in a sticky situation. Not only are they immensely strong attacks, most have a wide attack range that can hit multiple enemies at once. All these features lead to a very satisfying combat experience that feels very fluid and intuitive.

The lacklustre traversal

On the other side of things, the traversal element of Stellar Blade is a bit hit and miss. Whilst exploring some of the more open areas is still enjoyable, the moment that the game requires any form of platforming or precision movement, it becomes a bit of a slog. It is super easy to overcook your jumps leading you to touch the edge of the intended platform and fall to your death. I know this sounds ridiculous, but it happens much more often than you think.

The moment that you encounter any form of jump puzzle or need to scale a building, things slow down to a crawl. You’ll slowly jump from ledge to ledge to ensure that you don’t overshoot your target. This was particularly irritating whenever you had to swing from beam to beam. Sometimes the game would refuse to accept that you have actually reached the beam and just cause you to fall to your death regardless. This felt so counterintuitive to what you would anticipate from a third person action experience. 

As you would expect, Stellar Blade is filled to the brim with areas to explore, items to find and a variety of characters to encounter. There are plenty of side quests to come across as you stroll around the city of Xion or whilst trudging through the wasteland. Admittedly, one of my favourites was the mission Looking Glass, which opens up the fishing mini game for use at your leisure. Because you know, you can’t have a good RPG without a fishing minigame, right? 

It’s not all Stellar!

A few minor issues I found with some of the core mechanics was the fact that you are required to hold down R2 to pick up items, instead of them being automatically acquired as you run by them. I know that this might not be a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I just can’t understand why the devs put this in… It was so unnecessary. It would’ve just made more sense to auto grab items as you will be picking up everything anyway!

I found that interacting with certain terminals was also a bit of a pain, as at times they required you to face them in a specific way to be able to access. There were a few times where I would be facing an upgrade terminal and because I was just too far it would not allow me to use it! I had to reposition Eve a few times just to access a terminal… Honestly, this definitely did grind my gears!

Also, some fast travel points actually need to be used in order to access later on. Again, I am aware that this is only a minor inconvenience, but when there are many other games that only require discovery for a fast travel point to become active, it just feels like another strange design choice.

The audio and visual highlights!

Whilst Stellar Blade might not be the cream of the crop in its visual design, there is no denying that the game still looks great! Particularly the design of the landscapes. The Devs managed to nail the post apocalyptic style, with each area looking like a sparsely populated wasteland. Also, the design of the cybernetically enhanced humans add to the dystopian future setting.

But it’s Stellar Blade’s epic soundtrack that really steals the show here! The orchestral build ups and electronica heavy tracks will have you bopping your head along whilst sending the Naytiba straight back to where they came from! There are also some sneaky jazz tunes to enjoy whilst resting at any camp so that you can relax whilst Eve does! Admittedly it is a little funny that sometimes the jazz music will poke its head in, even in the midst of a battle to alter the whole feel of the fight. However, this didn’t happen nearly enough for it to detract from the main plot. It was just a bit strange when it did happen. 

Decision

Overall, Stellar Blade is an entertaining hack and slash title with a decent narrative. Whilst it is a relatively fun experience, there is nothing to really keep you hooked. It’s a good game, but lacks that drive that will make you want to see everything that it has to offer!

By Samuel Incze – Reviewed on PlayStation 5

Good

Stellar Blade is a fun hack-and-slash that leaves a little to be desired. The story is decent, the combat is challenging, but traversal and some mechanics bring the experience down. There is a lot to enjoy here, and despite its flaws, it should keep you entertained for a while.

This game was reviewed using a download code provided by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The Beta Network uses affiliate partnerships, however, this does not influence reviews or any other content published. The Beta Network may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links that are on the website.

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