suga reviews: stellar blade

17/06/2025

well hello everyone, it's been a good long while lol.

i've been trying to play more games this year and just today i finished one of the 'biggest' releases from last year; shiftUp corporation's stellar blade (since it just came out on pc).

i've heard a lot of things about the game from many different people, some call it a gooner slop sex game, some call it the anti-woke salvation of gaming, some call it just an aight game. but the thing is, all of these people weren't really talking about the game itself, but rather about the progatonist ass.

so here i am after playing it, and honestly? yeah, it's aight.

to properly convey my thoughts on the game in a concise form i think i gotta preface with a quote:

i believe it was one of the doom (1993) guys, forgot which one exactly that said something to the effect of "story in a game is like story in porn, you expect it to be there but its not the main focus".

and for the most part, that's exactly what stellar blade is, pretty good gameplay and not much else.

story

the story in of itself is pretty basic, predictable and tropey for about 80% of the game, the way it's conveyed and how it plays out clearly takes inspiration from other games that came before it, specifically from souls games, and nier automata, in fact, a lot of the earlier segments of the game feel like a diet version of nier automata, ngl.

it isn't until the final stretch of the game where it truly comes to it's own and delivers a much more unique and engaging experience, it's not mind blowing or anything, but once it finally picks up, it's pretty good.

the quality of the writing on the other hand leaves a lot to be desired, i'm not sure if something got lost in translation, this is a korean game afterall, or they didn't have any proofreaders on the team, but some of the dialogue in this game is BAD bad.

the side characters aren't really interesting or memorable, the main characters take pretty much until the end of the game to get any meaningful connections and development, and a lot of the lore and parallels to other stuff (like real world religion) are explored rather superficially, if at all.

for the characters themselves, they're pretty basic:

we have eve, who is mostly a standard protagonist, stoic and maybe a bit autistic(?) with a hyperfixation on soda cans.

then there's lily, your average cute girly girl archetype.

and finally adam, who kinda goes back and forth between being 'just chill like that' and a bit of a bumass backseat gamer.

gameplay

much like the story and plot, the gameplay is similarly pretty simple, at it's core; stellar blade is a hack n slash that tries really hard to be a souls game.

there isn't anything innovative, or specially new about the way the game plays, but what it does have in it's favor is a tremendous amount of polish.

the game includes a variety of combat systems that we see in other games, we obviously have stuff like special attacks, and devil trigger, perfect parries and dodges and a stance break system similar to sekiro

the combat loop is surprisingly balanced, with most of your abilities being useful in their own way, in these types of games it's really common to have one skill that completely breaks it, and that doesn't seem to be an issue with this one.

you have ample opportunities to cancel your enemies attack strings by either parrying in quick succession to deliver a punish attack, or using a perfect dodge to interrupt them with your own attack string. there's very good flow of combat and both the perfect parry and the perfect dodge are incredibly satisfying to pull off.

the game provides you with a gun, and in very hack n slash fashion, it's really useless, it can have some cheese uses like using shotgun shells to one tap groups of smaller mobs or using the range to outrange some of the more annoying enemies, but for the most part it's more an utility tool than a real weapon.

to add to the basic attack strings and combos, eve comes equipped with two types of special skills, beta skills and burst skills.

beta skills are dependant on your ability to parry, and go from multihitting attacks to shield breakers.

while burst skills are dependant on your ability to perfect dodge, and include a similar selection of aoe attacks (and straight up judgement cut) and some temporary buffs for your attack and attack speed.

to dress up the beta and dodge and weave flow of this game even further, eve has 2 special types of dodges, blink and repel. these are tied to specific inputs when the enemy flashes the specific color associated with the motion, blink will open up the enemy from behind allowing you to punish them with an attack string of your own and charin, while repel will open up the enemy from the front, leaving them vulnerable to punish attacks, which is this game's equivalent to doom style executions.

and ofc you also have the ability to use your devil trigger, which gives you a set of abilities specific to this form, while also boosting your stats for a period of time.

i think the biggest detriment that the gameplay has is how much of it feels like an overextended tutorial, your skill trees are tied to story progression and simple skills like double dodges or having the ability to counter after a parry are tied to skill tree upgrades.

outside of combat, you'll be roaming around a series of open hub areas and some more linear interconnected dungeons that will be home to both your main and side content, here you'll find your sidequests, which range from combat challenges to fetch quests, some puzzles and minigames, as well as collectibles in the form of hidden soda cans and fishing spots that you can find along your way.

to shake it up a bit, the game game also transitions into some platforming sections and uncharted style action set pieces, as well as some weird third person horror shooter segments a couple times, which are all really cool, and probably the only time you'll get any mileage out of your gun.

performance

i'm not gonna spend much time talking about godrays or shitfart particles and all that mumbo jumbo babble dreamt up by the clinically insane, but i will praise the game on the merits it does have, it runs like butter, ran at a pretty consistent 60 fps for my entire playthrough and only crashed once (which tbf i was also streaming a show with my gf when that happened). keep in mind that my rig is quite outdated and it struggles big time with most modern games.

while i didn't get the prettiest visuals at times, the game is pretty well optimized and good to go in old/underpowered rigs like mine

but something i was not really super into was the input delay, talking with a friend that was also playing it about the same time as me, there seems to be some form of baked in input delay into the port specifically (looking around for ps5 players testimonies there doesn't seem to be any delay in that version). it's not gamebreaking, but it is noticeable enough to where it takes a lil bit of getting used to.

ambience/visuals

the visuals in this game are interesting, they are hi fidelity and very pretty looking, however, a lot of the time they feel very purposeless, like they were just thrown together in a hurry, there isn't much intentionality with how some of the earliers areas of the game look, and as such, they end up feeling kinda samey at times, barren wasteland after barren wasteland, sewer level after sewer level.

much like the story however, once the game picks up towards the end, the visuals get really good and you end up wanting to see more.

visually the highlights of this game are comparable to those of bayonetta, some very cool biblically inspired high tech aesthetics, which when they hit they really hit.

the bosses are more or less on a same page, they are biblically inspired, however while in bayonetta they have some layered designs that start out pristine and then crack to reveal grotesque abominations, here the monsters just look like monsters, mind you, cool eldtritch monsters, but i do wish there was a lot more biblical aesthetics throughout the enemy cast.

in terms of character design, the game evidently employs a mixture of both conventionally atractive characters and some grungy cyberpunk rejects.

the three main characters, eve, adam and lily all look like dolled up kpop idols, and so do some of the supporting characters like tachy and raven.

on the other hand, the male npcs you find around the games different areas are really weird, clyde the fish guy, kasim the hair stylist, and barry the butcher are all these weird clumps of tech and skin that arent really appealing at all.

the female npcs are somewhat in between, the shopkeepers roxanne and kaya are the two extremes, as kaya is a younger conventionally attractive girl, while roxanne is older and has more tech enhancements on her body, and in the middle of them there's the character of enya, a singer at a bar, shes mostly machine but her face is still very much conventionally atractive.

there's also a bot called digger, he's just a small bot, he's fun.

considering that this is a korean game i'm not really surprised that all the characters with a face are conventionally attractive, considering how kpop culture is, but i do find it weird that besides adam, there are no other conventionally atractive males in this game, considering goddess of victory: nikke (shiftUp corporation's other game) has quite a few, albeit not playable.

the music is in my opinion another highlight of this game, naturally like much of this game, it's very nier and bayo inspired, but its really good, a lot of heavy metal and industrial techno, jazz, pop and orchestral influences, with a good mix of both instrumental and vocal tracks, from area exploration themes to boss battle themes.

some of my personal highlights would be the bonfire theme: don't forget me.

the boss themes for stalker, belial and commander mann's boss challenge theme, which specifically reminds me a lot of metal gear rising.

as well as the exploration and battle themes for the eidos 9 level.

customization

i think it would be a disservice to the game and the press around it if i didn't talk about one of the more 'controversial' aspects of the game: the customization.

just as much as this game is a mix between a traditional hack n slash and a souls game, it also has a bit of dressup game dna within it.

the main form of customization you can find in this game comes in the form out outfits called nano suits, which will alter the apperance of eve.

you may also find some accessories in the form of earrings and glasses, and some different hairstyles.

the game kinda goes wild with it, but at the same time there's some things i find lacking about this system.

there's a total of 125 outfits eve can wear, which not counting recolors or dlc collab outfits would come down to a much more realistic number of about 80 or so. and can be categorized as follows:

1- plugsuits: eve gets a good chunk of different form fitting uniforms throughout the game, not too different from something that maybe samus or bayonetta would wear, for the most part they're just differently colored bodysuits with some intrincate designs here and there, but there are some fun ones, like the one that has leon's residen evil 4 jacket (one of my personal favorites).

2- casual outfits: exactly what it says, just some normal ass clothes, sometimes a bit too high fashion, but most of them are very cute and kinda comfy, and definetely where some of my favorite suits to use are.

3- sexy outfits: weirdly enough this might be the most underrepresented category, there's stuff like bunny suits, swimsuits and even lingerie that serve their purpose really well, but a lot kinda fall into the next category.

4- silly outfits: and not silly as in 'memey' outfits (although there is a bear mascot costume), but rather in a weird way 'outfits that are trying so fucking hard to be sexy they loop around entirely and just come out looking real silly' if that makes any sense.

overall i find the selection of outfits adequate, but how the system works is arbitrary and kinda frustrating at times, let me explain:

there are a couple of ways in which eve can acquire an outfit, you can buy it ofc from the many vendors across the main hub area, you can also find em while exploring, or gain them as a reward for clearing either a collection, a sidequest or boss.

which is all good if not for the fact that you can get the suits on their own, or you can get 'desings' for the suits that you then have to craft at a camp or with lily.

however for whatever reason this isn't that way for hairstyles, for hairstyles you gotta do a whole entire sidequest to open the saloon but then you can just craft and equip any hairstyle you want at any point with no rhyme or reason.

and in the case of accessories, you just find them as they are and can equip them at any point.

it's weirdly inconsistent and i hope they iron it out in the sequel so it's more streamlined.

there's a few extra customizations that the game allows you to do, such as changing lily, adam and the bot's appearance, while they are kinda cool, there's very few options available and the game locks you out of using them at a certain point.

DLC collabs and extra content

other than the main story, the game includes 2 collab dlc's and a boss challenge mode.

starting from most disappointing to most pleasantly surprising: the nier automata dlc collab, which includes a grand total of: 4 nier automata outfits and that's it.

might be underselling it a little bit? well the nier automata dlc includes an extra set of collectibles scattered across the game's 2 open regions, in the form of stellar tears, and emil as an npc, if you talk to emil when you find him you can cash out the stellar tears you've collected for the nier automata outfit collection, consisting of 2b and a2's outfit (as well as their self destruct variants, tied to gameplay), the yorha uniform 1 and the unofficial ceremonial attire, as a bonus, wearing any of these suits will change the freeroam music to the nier automata soundtrack, which song you get will be tied to a specific costume.

on the other end of the spectrum we have the goddess of victory: nikke collab dlc, this one adds another cosmetic store, and this time you actually get some gameplay content, in the form of quick missions that use the nikke gameplay, once you clear a mission, you get currency to use on the cosmetic store, which you can access by finding scarlet and volt in the overworld.

the cosmetic store adds some outfits from some of the nikke characters, specifically: rapi, anis, dorothy, modernia, alice and technically scarlet, more on that later.

this dlc also adds a couple of collectibles scattered across the world in the form of chibi figures of some more nikke characters and lost relics that will have some nikke music for you to use at your camps, as well as a quick little meme mission in the hub area where you'll have to chase the legendary meme creature of nikke lore DORO, upon catching her you'll recieve a doro sticker to use in the game's selfie mode.

generally i quite enjoyed this dlc, and i wish there was a more streamlined way of replaying the missions other than backtracking to the places where you originall found em.

last but not least the boss challenge, which will let you fight against any of the game's 19 bosses and two extra secret bosses.

one of the bosses is commander mann, one of the npcs that kinda do nothing in the story, it's a really challenging fight and honestly really sick, highly recommend this one.

and the other being scarlet from nikke, she comes as part of the nikke collab dlc and is probably the hardest boss this game has to offer, once you beat her you can use her outfit in the main game.

as a bit of extra content i think this mode is pretty fun, as it lets you customize your build and character stats so you can make early game bosses even more of a breeze or make late game bosses infuriatingly difficult.

closing thoughts

is it the absolute peak of gaming, the west is saved, blablablabla the jobless chuds that look like they just crawled out of a sewer make it out to be? no, not really.

is it an irredeemable goonerslop sex game? no, also not really.

in reality this is maybe like a 7.5 to an 8.5/10 game, it starts out a little dry, but the combat is fun enough to keep you engaged, and when the game finally picks up it really gets you wanting more of it.

it ends a little abruptly after that final rush but it does leave the door open for a sequel which i think is good, if they can expand on the good, and leave behind their inspirations a bit more so it can truly shine on it's own i have no doubts that 'stellar blade 2: this time is goonsonal' could potentially be an amazing game.

but as it is: stellar blade is indeed a very good game, while tropey and a bit poorly written/mistranslated, it delivers a fun experience.

ta bien