Stellar Blade is a Action-Adventure game was released for PS5 in 2024, and it was also later released for PC in 2025 this month. It was developed by Shift Up and published by SONY Interactive Entertainment.
The genre of Action-Adventure or Action-RPGs in general are quite an fun experience for video games, so it's all to do with the big open-world environments where you get to do stuffs like exploring around the towns, talking to NPCs for hints and tips, collecting hidden items, gathering more golds, opening treasures, visiting the new locations, upgrading weapons and armours, levelling up your skills and attributes, and of course your major goal is to defeat the evil and save the world is what makes the genre quite interesting to play, but not only just the whole gameplay design but you do really need a rich storytelling, likable characters, and strong presentation throughout the quests are also the major key part of the genre to enjoy the game.
I previously had a great time with the games that I've been spending time of playing it for 6 to 9 hours a day, so stuff like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Secret of Mana, Terranigma, Ys I and II, Demon's Souls (2020 remake), Final Fantasy VII: Remake, Xenoblade Chronicles 1, and of course Nier: Automata.
While I'm still keeping busy with the video games to play, there's one of the game that caught my attention when I remember back then in around 2021 watching the SONY's Playstation Showcase where I've discovered the teaser trailer of a South Korean action-adventure titled as Project EVE which I was impressed to see the stylish fight sequence, large open-world environments, rich-detailed presentation, and of course combat gameplay design which really reminds me of similar game like Square Enix's Nier: Automata in terms of style and settings.
It was then been renamed it as Stellar Blade as the main title of the game and finally got released in 2024 for PS5 release with mostly positive reception for its visuals, sounds, and combat. It had sold over 1 million copy for PS5 release in 2024, and as in 2025 launch day for PC release it had ranked 1st on Steam's global top sellers list reached over 183k players on Steam within a day, which made the game the highest played ever for a Action-Adventure game published by SONY being loved by the gaming fans communities.
I've bought a copy of the game for my PS5 console to see if this game is actually fun to play, so I've spent playing it for a whole week on single playthrough and did managed to beat the game entirely.
What are my thought on this game? it's a stellar PS5's Action-Adventure title that I'm incredibly amazed to see how gorgeous this game plays which is why I am here to review this game with pros and cons to discuss through.
So without go further do, let's start the review.
Presentation
The game set in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has been forced to escape the earth after their defeat in a war against the monstrous creatures known as the Naytibas.
It's all started with the gorgeous android lady named EVE and her squad are deployed from the colony in attempt to liberate earth from the Naytibas.
Unfortunately the invasion ends in disaster with EVE being the sole survivor of the landing force, and then her close friend Tachy sacrifices herself to save EVE from an unidentified creature named Alpha Naytiba.
She then being rescued by a scavenger named Adam offered her help throughout the quest, and then she also encounters a survivor named Lily who are also joining her as engineering support.
As they settled in the city of Xion, they begin forming relationships with the residents, and of course made an established contact with the elder named Orcal who insisting them in search for hyper cell power source are needed to restore Xion to it's full functionally are the only way of keeping the humans alive, so they agreed to go on their quest in the mission is to save the humanity and reclaim the Earth back to normal, as well as on their goal is to defeat the Naytibas empire once for all.
The story in the game is very good because it's explains the war conflicts that took place in planet Earth are being invaded by the group of evil empire creatures that wipes out many human beings as possible causing a lot of people to flee their home I repeat running for their life from the terrifying war invasion attack which the earth are no longer safe to stay at dangerous warzone.
It's just like any of video games with similar story setting, but it's more than that because it's all really to do with EVE and her two companion had survived from the invasion and both made an agreement to join themselves for their journey to find the ways of saving the world is what I liked about the game's plot.
I say EVE is a stunning female protagonist that are eye-catchingly attractive with her long-ponytail hair, glossy-green outfit, has smooth face with eye-lashes and lipstick, and of course her body-physics and design is what I find her quite appealing.
She described as a strong-wiled and compassionate person that deeply cares about her friends and allies, as well as making interaction with people in Xion's residents who are in desperate needs referring to her as Angel.
She also shares with her interest in learning about human culture and loves collecting stuffs like books, maps, and cans added to her collection is what makes her character's personality quite interesting in the game.
Then you have some supportive characters like Adam which I described him as helpful guy who has a desire to bring humanity together and help everyone in the earth, and lastly you have Lily Artemis II who is a loyal skilled technician committing to help EVE with her quest such as providing the upgrade equipment and solve puzzles.
While the game shares with great characters, I got to say those Naytibas creatures are looking f***ing insane in terms of designs that looks just like any of creatures just straight out from H.P Lovecraft stuff like you had minions such as thornheads, creepers, mites, and tentacles are small but hideous ones, where as the warriors like beholders, barnacles, butchers, hydras, and lurkers are just as ugly as f**k with creepy faces and noises, and the elite ones such as brutes, abaddons, corrupters, stalkers, juggernauts, behemoths, and belial are suddenly big and scary ones is what I've liked about these enemies and bosses that are looking terrifying indeed.
The presentation in this game is excellent because I really liked the style of settings that are kinda has a Nier: Automata vibes to it in each locations, so stuff like you had Eidos 7 which is an abandoned city filled with empty spaces street, underground parking lot, library, memorial tower, and plaza.
Xion City is a quiet home place for residents has various of junk shop, food store, bar, hair salon, phone booth, and etc.
Wasteland is a large open environment filled with big landscapes, junkyard, great canyon, ruined buildings, and great valley campsite.
Matrix 11 is a underground facility filled with railway bridge, dark tunnels, rotten labyrinth, and sewers.
Great Desert is another large open area filled with broken site of roads and buildings, quicksand area, opera house, statues, towers, palmtrees, and fishing area with big puddles and fishes.
Eidos 9 is another site of area filled with collapsed bridge, rooftop buildings, parking lot entrance, and of course secret garden.
Spire 4 is a space complex zone filled with enormous space center, maintenace sector, cargo lift, lounge, and garden.
Levoires is another underground facility but darker filled with control room, laboratory, laser room, and pods room.
Each of these locations with post-apocalypse style of environments is what I've liked about the game's settings just adds up the overall atmospheres of this open-world exploration...looks so much appealing for action-adventure game like this.
Overall, it has very good story, great cast of characters, and excellent presentation settings.
Gameplay
In single-player campaign, you take control of EVE in 3rd-person perspective of open-world environment, as your main goal is to save the humanity and reclaim the Earth by completing various of main objectives that was displayed on pause menu.
Pushing the left stick control to move EVE around and rotating the camera system with the right stick control.
Press the cross button used for jumping on the platform, as well as climbing on walls and running on red-flat surfaces.
Push the left thumbstick button to sprint allowing EVE to run faster makes easier to traverse through the area.
Press and hold the right trigger button is to interact things like activate the button or picking up objects nearby, but you can also set auto-pickup on the pause menu if you don't want to keep pressing the right trigger button to pick up stuffs.
You can access to item inventory by holding the d-pad up button then select any of items by pushing the right stick control around, so after selecting the items you can use them by pressing the d-pad up button which are used for healing your health bar as an example.
In combat gameplay you'll be engaging with the enemies in battle nearby, so pressing and tapping the square button uses as light melee attack which are quicker but deals weak damage attack on enemies, where as the triangle button uses as heavy melee attack which are slow but deals strong damage attack on enemies.
You can also lock-on enemies by pressing the right thumbstick button to focus target on enemies making it easier to stay on target at enemies nearby, but you can switch target on other nearby enemies by pushing the right stick control.
Press the circle button which acts as the dodge button, so there are ways of avoiding the enemy's melee or projectile attacks where you will see the highlighting colors appeared on enemies which tells you where to dodge on the right spot such as pushing the left-stick forward then press the circle button when the blue-ring appears on enemy, where as you have to push the left-stick backward then press the circle button when purple-ring appears on enemy, so this allows you to evade the enemy's incoming heavy attacks.
The dodging system is also fills up your burst skill meter which I will explain it for later on the review. Then you will have a left shoulder button which allows you to use not only just blocking the enemy's melee attack but also uses as the parrying system which is a phrase where you can perfectly make the timing right by pushing the enemy's melee attack away from you, so you will press the left shoulder button at the same time as the enemy's melee attack came close to you causing to parry them away from you.
The parrying system is also fills up your beta skill meter which then again I said I will explain it for later on the review.
You will also obtain a ranged weapons for later playthroughs which are used for firing a various of weapons such as machine gun which are used for mid-range shot distance deals light damage shot, shotgun shell is for close-range firing shot deals heavy damage shot, rockets fires multiples of missiles with lock-on system deals lethal damage shot, and finally charging laser beam fires a big beam of laser deals much damage shot.
In order to shoot the enemies with your ranged weapons, press and hold the left trigger button to aim then press the right trigger button to fire the shot on enemies, and also you can cycle your weapons by holding both the left trigger and d-pad down button together then it will display the weapon selection on the screen, and you just select these by pushing the right stick control around.
You will also obtain a two skills for later playthrough such as beta and burst, which I will explain how these two skills are used for in combat system.
Beta skills are special active abilities that consume beta energy when performed that is built up through successful attacks and perfect guards, so you can use beta skills by holding the left shoulder button while pressing any of 4-faced action buttons.
Burst skills are powerful energy-based attacks that are triggered by using burst energy which is charged by successfully dodging, blinking, and repulsing enemy attacks, so you can use burst skills by holding the right shoulder button while pressing any of 4-faced action buttons.
These are the two skills which allowing you to perform various of special powerful attack moves dealing a massive amount of damages on enemies, so stuff like you have slash launches an energy blade forward, shockwave unleashes two waves of fatal energy, shield breaker delivers a sudden strike stuns enemies and deals high damage to their shield, triplet continuously generates arcs to attack forward with the third hit stuns enemies, descending break jumps high and then releases burst energy to crush the enemy, tempest unleashes a devastating storm of blades with the power of burst energy, overdrive loaded the body with burst energy to increase melee attack and speed, and finally punishing edge releases burst energy to deal a fatal blow to nearby enemies.
The best part of the combat is the tachy mode which is a ultimate form can be activated by pressing the both thumbstick button when the tachy energy bar are fully filled, so this will offer you a increased damage output and can be used for both offense and defense attacks.
What makes the combat quite interesting to play is the skill trees that can assign to EVE for use during combat or exploring, so there are 5 different skill trees such as attack, beta, burst, survival and tachy mode which can be unlocked with the special points, so you will able to obtain these special points by defeating more enemies, collecting data items, and completing various of quests.
Each of them revolves around different abilities and you will be able to select what suits your playstyle better when selecting skills and upgrades, so this will improve upon your fighting abilities such as chain system, counter system, damage boost, range boost, quick boost, energy recharge, double jump, double dodge, perfect parry, precise landing, threat detection, and various of skills and upgrades that makes you feel more powerful and stronger to fight against the tough enemies and bosses in later quests.
If this is not enough then you will have two useful enhancements such as exospine and gear, which gives you an option to choose the suitable enhancements like increased beta or burst attacks, increased health points, increased attacking speeds, and others that might benefit your combat system.
The others such as weapon where you can upgrade your blade to its maximised attack power, drone where it extends your types of ammunition like slugs, rounds, and missiles which benefiting your range weapon.
Lastly your body cores that also needs an upgrades which extends upon your health bar status, and finally the beta cores that increase your beta energy capacity making you use beta skills more.
So far, the combat system in the game just works well for most of the time is because the collision detection just feels smoothly for its responsiveness of parrying system and dodging mechanics which I finding it a lot easier to evade the enemy's incoming attacks, and I got to praise the chain attacking system of combos and counters is easier to pull off the amazing moves which I consider it as stylish and acrobatic to play throughout the battles.
I also wanted to praise the use of beta and burst skills which are also a helpful tool for combat battle which does many good things to pull off these special powerful attack moves dealing a massive amount of damages on enemies, and I got to say the parrying and dodging are also really helps with my beta and burst fill meter if perfectly doing it in a right timing.
The range weapons are fine for some parts depending on which weapons are mostly effective on enemies, so it worked better against the types of minions and warriors does take a high damage, where as the elites are tougher ones to kill them with the range weapons but there are ways of shooting them in the right spot during the battle.
The use of skill trees, enhancements, and upgrades on the menu screen is quite a straight-forward to navigate stuff without any of complications because it's simple and easy to use which helps you to pick and choose to equip any of gears and exospine that benefiting your enhancements, where as the skill trees gives you a choice to unlock various of abilities and moves to suit your combat playability making you feel more powerful to fight, the weaker your enemies and bosses becoming vulnerable to fight against you during the battle.
While the combat gameplay is solid throughout the playthroughs, the exploration in each locations are fantastically amazing throughout the open-world environment because I like spending time of doing a lot of discovering and collecting stuffs, as well as participating the side-quests with NPCs or requests boards gives you a task to complete the side objectives which will reward you with the items like your special points, gaining more currencies, and obtaining useful items which is why I like doing something outside of the main story objectives on the whole campaign adventures.
I say eidos 7, wasteland, and great desert are by far my favourite locations to explore is because not only the open-world environments are quite big to wonder around, but I just love going up the high buildings, climbing on the walls, swimming on the underwater, opening a secret crates with codes, finding a camping site, and fighting with the random creatures that kept me busy with the game.
I got to say the whole story campaign quest had a tons of great segments that made the game quite entertaining to play, so stuff like the prologue mission started off with insane openings of many crash landing and falling objects everywhere in battle zone, sliding through the tunnels with so many hazardous obstacles all over the places, there are a room full of lasers everywhere in space center and abyss leovire, there are a sawblades trap in the ventilation room, figure out the correct order to step on the symbols, the capsule cluster room had a floating bridges of platforms to jump on, the laboratory ruins are full of platforms to run and jump without falling off, fighting the enemies off before the lasers scales down, finding way through on collapsed rail bridge with the train hanging upside down falls apart in matrix 11, defeating multiples of cocoons in sector area of eidos 9, evading the falling heavy-duty crates from above in spire 4, and has tons of action-packed boss battles that are incredibly awesome to play thanks to strategic combat fight between the player and boss making the contact with lot of attacking, dodging, and parrying patterns to do is all about the challenge where you had to carefully defeat these bosses without taking multiple of damage from them is what makes the boss battle a fun to play, so I can guarantee with that you'll be satisfied with the game that offers with great single-player quests and epic boss battles becoming a highlight of the whole action-adventure title.
Overall, it has solid combat system, amazing open-world exploration, great story campaign quests, and satisfying boss battles.
Graphics
Despite running on Unreal Engine 4, the game itself is looking damn gorgeous especially on PS5 console which I did not expect the title like this delivers a significant details of game's environment just to make it look beautiful to see on 4KTV or monitors.
I actually liked the crispy environment of open-world design that are massively big especially in places like matrix 11 and spire 4 shares with large depths of areas from top to bottom, as well as wasteland and great desert are full of details with many foreground objects and landscape settings you see is just looks incredible to see adding the overall atmospheres.
I liked the texture details on the buildings, surfaces, and objects just looks sharp and clean with many signposts, posters, windows, doors, lamp posts, stairs, statues, rooftops, roads, and etc. which they did a wonderful job of keeping up with the details.
The use of lighting and shadow effects are also good in some of places like leovire and some underground area that are sometime can be dark and some others may have light just adds up a good mix of tone that fits the game's settings.
I also liked the use of special effects in some areas like the opening mission in prologue are full of explosion and debris flying everywhere, where as in the eidos 7 uses the rain effects nicely, and the water on the fishing area has a reflection effect in great desert.
I say the character's animation is outstanding for its facial details and capturing movement just looks stunning in the game, and what's even more stunning is the EVE's body-physics just makes her character's design look more appealing and recognisable even with multiples of her costumes.
The game's performances on base PS5 console did able to ran on both 1440p and 4k output depending on these 3 graphical options that might suit your visual preferences, so stuff like you have performance mode ran on 1440p display with 60fps maintaining the better frame-rate performance but little less detail on visual image, where as the balanced mode is on 4k output with 50 to 60fps really maintains the solid visuals image and decent frame-rate performance without any signs of frame-dips and image shimmering thanks to VRR display just makes the whole image of the game look amazing on both 4KTV or monitor, and lastly the resolution mode ran on full 4k natively with 30fps did make the image quality look better but it really dips down the overall performance during the game which really affects the whole gameplay, so I highly recommended to play it on balanced mode which is a perfect way of playing the game with good level of visual quality and performances throughout the playthrough, where as the performance mode are actually better for smooth gameplay that people mostly prefers it to play it on this mode which I can understand that, but for those who really wanted to have both very good visuals and performance then go for a balanced mode is an definite recommended to play it on base PS5 console.
For those who owns the PS5 Pro console, you get to have a two new exclusive graphical options that the base PS5 console had lacked which is the Pro mode and Pro Max mode are fully designed and optimised for PS5 Pro console, so the Pro mode is a enhanced balanced mode which utilizes PS5 Pro's PSSR for superior quality, where as the Pro Max mode is a enhanced resolution mode provides a higher frame-rate performance resulting a superior quality for both visuals and performances to make the game incredibly polished to play.
I also discovered the Steam users who had the PC version were really impressed with the game being optimised well on their gaming PCs with AI upscaling and frame generation using NVIDIA DLSS4 or AMD FSR 3, unlocked framerates, higher texture resolution, and ultrawide display support from 4:5 to 32:9 screen ratios providing the best overall performance for PC hardware.
That being said, no matter what the versions you're playing on because both of PS5 and PCs are still very good indeed to play which has achieved the biggest technical marvel of 9th-gen gaming so far.
Overall, it has beautiful open-world environment design, rich-detailed textures and special effects, and outstanding character's design.
Music and Sounds
The soundtrack in this game is incredibly brilliant to listen because I really liked the south korean style of mix instrumentation and vocals shares with numerous of great tracks such as "flooded commercial sector", "eidos 7 silent street (combat)", "eidos 7 clock tower", "Tachy boss fight" and "eidos 9 (combat)" which is a electronic synth that are upbeatingly catchy songs, where as others are mix of rock and metal music like "Stalker" and "Belial" are also quite epic to listen making it a perfect fit for combat action.
I also liked the chillout acoustic songs such as "xion 2", and "wasteland 2", where as the easy calm songs like "shelter", "xion 1", "the song of the traveller", and "the song of destiny" which really fits the mood of some area like where you can able to sit and relax in camping site or have a great wonder around in the city or land.
It was composed by Oliver Good, Keita Inoue, and Shift Up's in-house music team did such a stellar job of creating the best video game soundtrack that made the game quite memorable.
I also wanted to praise the sound design in the game for its environmental noises and ambiences throughout the open-world areas just adds up the atmospheres, and I got to like the sound effects of combat system with lot of clings and slashes just to make it sounds gritty, and of course the voice acting in the game is pretty decent especially with the English dub on their character's role is quite acceptable for action-adventure games like this shares with good dialogues throughout the story cutscenes.
Overall, it has brilliant original music, very good sound designs, and decent voice overs.
Special Features
The game has various of costumes, ear-rings, and hairstyles to unlock, as well as some collectables like data, documents, books, and of course cans.
You can also enjoy going on fishing as a mini-games in great desert, and if its not enough then you will have boss challenge on the main menu where your goal is to survive and defeat many bosses as possible with great scores.
It also has 3 endings to choose in campaign, has unlockable modes such as hard mode which is a challenging difficulty for story campaign, and new game plus which lets you start the game at the beginning while retaining your stuffs you have obtained from the first playthroughs really adds up the replayability.
It does have collaboration DLCs stuffs based on other titles such as Square Enix's Nier: Automata which includes 2B's outfits, accessories, hairstyles, and cosmetics from Emil's shop.
It is also confirmed that Shift Up's Goddess of Victory: Nikke will be available on this month which includes Rapi's outfit, new boss battles, and new area.
Overall, an stunning overall content.
Advantages
Excellent presentation settings.
Very good story and great characters.
Solid combat system.
Amazing open-world exploration.
Great story campaign quests and satisfying boss battles.
Beautiful visual design and brilliant soundtracks.
Disadvantages
Resolution mode on base PS5 console dips down performance. (Just stick it to balance or performance mode instead are way better to play).
Final Verdict
Presentation 9/10 - very good story, great cast of characters, and excellent presentation settings.
Gameplay 9/10 - solid combat system, amazing open-world exploration, great story campaign quests, and satisfying boss battles.
Graphics 9/10 - beautiful open-world environment design, rich-detailed textures and special effects, and outstanding character's design.
Music and Sounds 9/10 - brilliant original music, very good sound designs, and decent voice overs.
Special Features 9/10 - has unlockable contents including game modes, new game plus, collectables, cosmetics, costumes, mini-game, and DLCs.
Overall 9/10 - Stellar Blade is an absolutely stellar action-adventure title which I considered this as one of the most beautiful games of 9th-gen platform especially on PS5 console which I am amazed with the visual quality and overall presentation design just looks really outstanding in every details showcasing the system's hardware power.
The story and characters in the game is done pretty good in single-player campaign that you might going to enjoy watching the entire cutscenes of their adventurous mission quest.
The open-world exploration is largely fun to discover around with multiples of side-quests and collectables to do, and the story campaign quests are full-on with action-packed segments and epic boss battles does adds up a fun factor of the whole single-player experience.
The best of all is the gameplay just plays it really well with the combat system, upgrades, and enhancements is what I call it a solid fun to play, and of course it definitely has various of the best soundtracks in the entire game is what makes Stellar Blade a must play for the fans of the genre.
The physical copy of the game is cost around I say £40 on online retail store (via Ebay), where as the digital release on both PS Store and Steam cost about between £60 and £70 on standard edition and £80 on digital deluxe or complete edition.
I say it's a definite recommendation for those who previously enjoys games like Nier: Automata or other action-adventure titles in terms of style and settings, then this game is definitely for you to go check it out.
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