Stellar Blade was introduced for the first time in 2019 under the name project eve, the first shift up corporation game that was supposed to be released for consoles and PC, and unlike other shift up games, it was not made for smartphones.
In 2022, the main name of the game was determined and it was called stellar blade, also in 2022 it was announced that the IP rights of the game belong to SIE and it will be released exclusively for PS5.
With the increasing popularity of Stellar Blade, criticisms started on the protagonist’s design and body and caused a lot of arguments in social media.
In 2022, it was announced that stellar blade would be released in 2023, but there was no news of it in 2023, and finally in January 2024, it received its exact release date of April 26.
Stellar Blade is an action-adventure game with few Soulslike elements, Stellar Blade is a linear game but has regions that are open-world.
Now the question is, has shift up been able to optimize its first console game well and make a game with the standards of AAA console games?
STORY
The story begins with the deployment of Airborne Squad 7 to earth. The mission of this squad is to destroy Elder Naytiba.
When the space ships are approaching earth, missiles are fired at them, which disrupts the mission and the pods that contain eve and her comrades did not experience a good landing without deaths and injuries, after the fight in the battlefield eve will be the only one who survives and meets adam who takes him to the last remaining city of humans, the only place where Life still goes on.
The story of the game is about the soldiers who are sent from space to the earth to reclaim the post-apocalyptic earth and try to reclaim the earth after defeating the naytibas and make it a place for humans to live again.
Eve’s goal is to get four alpha cores by killing four Alpha Naytibas and use them to make a key to reach the elder Naytiba and destroy it, in this way Eve gets informations that explains the reason for Naytiba’s existence and the reason humans left the earth, the story is very slow in the first and the secrets that the game wants to show to the player as a surprise are completely predictable and do not make much of a difference in the overall story. It’s very simple and predictable and doesn’t manage to get you very involved and excited to find out the rest of it.
It takes about 15 hours to finish the story of the game, it could have been a little longer.
CHARACTER DESIGN
The characters are excellent and lovely in terms of appearance, each of them has a completely unique appearance and body, both the cute characters and the rough ones are all well designed and there is no weakness in this part.
The criticisms that were made about the body shape of the protagonist of the game before the launch are completely unfounded and Eve’s body is just a normal body, whose private parts are covered in the entire game, and the sexual organs are never naked.
The personality design of the characters is almost zero and from each of them we only know the basic information such as their name and job, we are not even given much information about the protagonist of the game and this is a big weakness that affects the story as well, Voice actings are very emotionless and most of the time you don’t notice any emotions in any situation whether it is happy, sad or surprising, the voice actings are completely flat.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is very diverse, fast and attractive, combos, skills, parry and dodge are all well placed in the gameplay and do not allow the fights to become repetitive and thanks to the good level design you have to use different tactics and skills.
There are two weapons in the game: the melee weapon, which is a sword, and the ranged weapon, which is actually a drone, which turns into a gun on Eve’s hand by holding L2.
The gun has 5 different types of ammo, each of which has its own unique power and fire rate. Eve’s main weapon, the sword, has eight different combos, and these combos can be upgraded in their own skill tree.
In addition to the combos, there are two other attacks: beta, which are special shots that are activated by holding L1 and pressing one of the X, square, triangle, and circle buttons, and there are 4 that can be upgraded in their own skill tree, burst are other special attacks that can be used by Holding R1 and pressing one of the buttons X, square, triangle, circle and there are 4 of them, and it has its own skill tree like beta and combos.
There are a total of 5 skill trees in the game, each of which has its own branches.
Surfing in different parts of the game is very interesting, and by exploring, you get rewards that can make you stronger, such as exospines and gears, you can use two exospines and four gears at the same time, and each of them increase your stats in different ways.
One of the most important things is parrying, which gives you little time to react, and sometimes you have to parry several times quickly and in a row, and this creates a lovely challenge in the game, the same descriptions are true for dodging.
There are regions in the game that are open-world and the whole map is filled with missions and rewards, which creates curiosity and makes exploring enjoyable.
Platforming can sometimes not be smooth and it can be annoying, even sometimes you feel that the way you went up was a glitch and not the main way.
LEVEL DESIGN
The level design is wonderful and never allows the fights with the enemies you have already fought to feel repetitive, in each fight the combination of the enemies is different and by changing these combinations it forces you to use different tactics, the missions are all rewarding And they are always worth doing.
SIDE-QUESTS
The side quests are great and so interesting that you don’t get bored of them and want to do more of them, the stories, the fights, the puzzles and the rewards are great.
VISUALS
Visually, Stellar Blade is very beautiful and presents a wonderful post-apocalyptic world, but some of the textures that you see up close during the game are strangely lacking in detail and are low quality, while most of the other textures have good quality.
There are three graphics modes in the game: prioritize performance, balanced and prioritize resolution. You can choose any of these modes according to your interest, all these modes are well optimized, but my suggestion is balanced mode, which has a great performance and It also has a great resolution, this game is undoubtedly one of the most optimized games that I have played in the last few years, and as the first shift up console game, this was completely unexpected.
SOUND DESIGN
The sound design of the game is good and has high details.
The soundtracks are great, whether in tense or calm moments, in any case, the soundtracks are very pleasant and you will not encounter a bad soundtrack.
CONCLUSION
Stellar Blade has an mediocre story that doesn’t keep you interested, it’s short and predictable.
The characters are cute in appearance, but their personality design is bad and without details, the voice acting is dry and emotionless.
The gameplay is fantastic and never gets repetitive with its variety, its challenges are well balanced and neither too hard nor too easy and the only issue with the gameplay is its platforming.
The level design is fantastic and all the missions are very rewarding.
Sidequests are fun and worth doing.
Visually it is good and there are minor problems in some textures, performance and resolution are great.
