Stellar Blade

When Stellar Blade launched as a PS5 exclusive in 2024, it quickly became a massive hit. Unfortunately, much of the conversation surrounding the game focused on its Korean-inspired art style, attractive character designs, and eye-candy visuals rather than the quality of the game itself. But a memorable game needs more than good looks and hot chicks, and this is definitely a memorable game.

Stellar Blade follows Eve, an elite soldier sent to a ruined Earth to help humanity reclaim its home from the Naytiba, mysterious creatures that have driven mankind to the edge of extinction. Along the way, what starts as a simple mission to save humanity slowly unravels into a deeper mystery about the planet's past and the truth behind the war.

The game's story is built around religious themes, creation, and what it truly means to be human or machine. These are topics I usually enjoy, but unfortunately, Stellar Blade presents them in such a cliché and uninteresting way that the entire narrative ended up feeling like a wasted potential.

The narrative and presentation are easily Stellar Blade's weakest aspect. I'd even go as far as to say they're the main reason the game isn't considered a masterpiece. The dialogue often feels dull and emotionless, while many of the major story beats and plot twists are delivered in a way that feels extremely forced. Several important side characters are so poorly written that I eventually found myself skipping dialogue, something I very rarely do in any kind of game.

The pacing of conversations is often painfully slow, and the game's attempts to inject cute anime-inspired moments frequently feel awkward and out of place. Combined with the weak characterization and predictable storytelling, much of the narrative ended up feeling unintentionally cringeworthy, making it difficult for me to take the story seriously despite the interesting themes it tries to explore.

Fortunately, Stellar Blade more than compensates for its weak storytelling with outstanding gameplay.

It's best described as a souls-lite. It borrows many core elements from the souls-like formula, including campfires that function similarly to bonfires, character upgrades, challenging enemies, and a combat system heavily focused on parries and dodges. Unlike traditional souls-likes, however, it doesn't go out of its way to punish the player and even includes multiple difficulty options.

It also takes a very different approach to storytelling. Rather than dropping players into a mysterious world and relying on environmental storytelling and lore snippets, Stellar Blade follows a much more traditional narrative structure filled with lengthy cinematics and scripted story moments.

Personally, I prefer this approach. It creates a best-of-both-worlds experience, combining the satisfying combat and exploration of a souls-like with a more accessible and story-driven adventure. I've never been a fan of games that expect players to piece together the entire narrative through item descriptions and scattered lore, so the game's more direct storytelling worked better for me.

The combat in Stellar Blade was incredibly satisfying from start to finish. It combines fast-paced, combo-driven, hack-and-slash action with stylish slow-motion dodges and rewarding counterattacks. Unlocking new skills always felt meaningful, and experimenting with different moves and combo finishers remained enjoyable throughout the entire game.

The game offers a wide variety of special abilities suited for different situations, while successfully parrying and staggering enemies adds another layer of satisfaction to an already precise and responsive combat system. Boss fights are challenging, but they rarely feel unfair. Success often requires learning attack patterns, adapting to timing windows, and making smart use of your abilities, which adds a surprising amount of depth and strategy to every encounter.

There is a ranged combat option as well, featuring multiple ammo types and missiles, but it never really shines. Whenever the game forced me into ranged-only sections, I found myself missing the melee combat almost immediately, as those segments ended up being some of the weakest parts of the experience.

I feel like I have to mention Stellar Blade's minigames because it's rare to see this much variety done this well. While I'd still give the crown to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, this is easily one of the strongest contenders I've seen in recent years.

The game features a surprisingly diverse selection of minigames, including photography challenges, a third-person rail shooter, tower defense segments, and much more. Better yet, they aren't just distractions thrown in for variety; they're genuinely fun and offer worthwhile rewards.

Fishing, however, deserves its own section. Stellar Blade features the best fishing minigame I've ever experienced in a video game. There are dozens of fish and collectibles to hunt down, plenty of opportunities to earn money, and a steady stream of rewards that make progression feel meaningful. As your fishing rank increases, you unlock everything from outfits and swimsuits to consumables and other useful items.

What surprised me the most was how engaging it remained even after many hours. I ended up spending nearly fifteen hours fishing throughout my playthrough, and somehow it never stopped being both challenging and enjoyable.

When it comes to gameplay, I have two huge disappointments. The biggest one is definitely the loot system. Exploration should be exciting, rewarding players with meaningful gear upgrades, unique equipment, or items that improve your character. Instead, most of the loot consists of small stat boosts, crafting materials, and various consumables hidden behind futuristic names that are difficult to get excited about.

As a result, opening chests rarely carries the sense of anticipation that I look for in exploration-focused games. Rather than wondering whether I'll discover a powerful new weapon, armor piece, or game-changing upgrade, I usually found myself collecting another tiny bubble of resource or minor upgrade component. Over time, this significantly reduced the excitement of exploring side paths and searching every corner of the map. I want weapons, not another boring "nano polymer exoblabla component."

Another issue I had with the game was its difficulty settings. There is no balance at all. Normal mode felt too easy for my taste, while Hard mode mostly increased enemy health to the point where some fights started to drag on for far too long. I don't mind dying in a few hits or having to learn tougher attack patterns, but spending several extra hours on every boss because of inflated health bars just isn't my idea of difficulty.

Graphics are a bit of a mixed bag in Stellar Blade. Character models, textures, and visual effects often look absolutely gorgeous, but the environments can feel surprisingly dated at times. Some landmarks and environmental assets have a low-detail look that occasionally made me feel like I was playing an older game with a modern graphics mod installed on top of it. Perhaps that's partly due to the game's use of Unreal Engine 4, which was already an uncommon choice for a major 2024 release. Nevertheless, the overall visual quality remains impressive, and the game still looks great despite running on an older engine.

The atmosphere is another area where the game excels. The game features a surprisingly diverse range of locations, and each one feels distinct and memorable. Whether you're exploring an underground facility, wandering through a massive desert, or walking through a crowded futuristic city, every area has its own identity and charm. Maintaining that sense of atmosphere across such different environments is difficult, but Stellar Blade pulls it off remarkably well.

Besides its attractive character designs, Stellar Blade is probably best known for its incredible soundtrack, and for good reason. The game is packed with futuristic, anime-inspired tracks that perfectly complement its world and atmosphere. In fact, I ended up adding a large portion of the soundtrack to my personal playlist. Every major area has its own distinct musical identity, and nearly every track manages to leave an impression. Music ended up being my favorite aspect of the entire game, and the overall vibe frequently reminded me of NieR: Automata, which is about the highest compliment I can give a soundtrack.

The sound design is equally impressive. Combat simply wouldn't feel the same without the satisfying audio feedback behind every perfect parry, dodge, and counterattack. The impact sounds, character reactions, and brutal finisher effects all contribute to making combat feel far more intense and rewarding.

Voice acting is another highlight. Despite the script often falling short, the cast does an admirable job bringing the characters to life, and their performances carry many scenes that otherwise wouldn't have had much emotional impact.

Overall, Stellar Blade delivers one of the strongest audio presentations I've experienced in years. From its soundtrack to its sound design and voice acting, the entire package feels remarkably polished and memorable. It has easily become one of the benchmarks I'll compare future games against.

Stellar Blade- Steam Deck Performance

Thanks to the clever usage of the older Unreal Engine 4, Stellar Blade is one of the best-looking and best-performing AAA titles to date, and offers a wide selection of presets to fit your needs.

By default, the game comes with a somewhat stable 60 FPS preset at the start. It looks extremely blurry, the environments look like they are from the 90s, and overall, it is not a pleasant experience visually. Also, when you get into demanding open-world areas such as the Great Desert or Wasteland, the stable 60 FPS becomes a dream, and it turns into a 40-60 FPS fluctuating experience.

The sad part is that the game uses a locked handheld preset that doesn't allow us to change most of the settings, but luckily, we can just add "SteamDeck=0 %command%" to its launch options, and everything should be unlocked.

The game only uses FSR 3.1 as its upscaling option, with optional TSR, and no matter what I tried, it looked VERY blurry. That's why I decided to inject FSR 4.1 via the Decky FrameGen Deck plugin through DLSS 4, and it worked quite well. I recommend everyone do so. It's not difficult to mod, and there are guides about it everywhere.

The DLSS 4 method made the game extremely crisp, with very few performance drawbacks. Therefore, it allowed me to make a 45 FPS locked preset that was somewhat stable. My settings are a mix of low, medium, and high settings that prioritize lowering demanding and low-impact settings while improving visual clarity when needed. You can see the exact settings on the right side of the article.

The only location that suffered major drops was the Great Desert, which is incredibly demanding across all presets. The frame rate will fluctuate between 30-45 FPS while you're there, but it's only a small part of the game, and it's not worth optimizing the entire game around one of the ten major locations. It's still highly playable, though it can be a minor annoyance.

You can play the game at a somewhat stable 60 FPS with the default settings, or you can crank the graphics close to their highest values and cap the game at 30 FPS. Stellar Blade simply scales very well depending on what you're looking for. You can be flexible with your settings, which is very rare for a big-budget title that looks this good.

I think this middle ground preset offers the best of both worlds, and it's what I personally prefer. You can see the visual difference between the default out-of-the-box settings and my FSR 4.1 preset on the slider below. It's a night and day difference.

Conclusion:

Despite its disappointing story, weak loot system, and some questionable design decisions, Stellar Blade never stopped being fun. The incredible combat, memorable boss fights, fantastic soundtrack, beautiful atmosphere, and surprisingly addictive side activities constantly gave me reasons to keep playing. While I don't think it reaches masterpiece status due to its narrative shortcomings, it absolutely deserves its place among the best action games released in recent years. If you're looking for satisfying combat and some of the best boss encounters the genre has to offer, Stellar Blade is an easy recommendation.

When it comes to the Steam Deck, Stellar Blade is another success story. The game scales remarkably well, giving players the freedom to choose between higher frame rates or improved visual quality depending on their preferences. The default settings are far too blurry for my taste, but with a few tweaks and an FSR 4 injection, the game becomes significantly sharper while maintaining excellent performance. Aside from occasional drops in the Great Desert, Stellar Blade delivers a consistently enjoyable handheld experience and stands as one of the most impressive AAA games currently playable on Steam Deck.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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