Stellar Blade PC Review
Stellar Blade is an action adventure, hack and slash game developed by Shift Up and released by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The game made it’s launch on April 26, 2024 for Playstation. On June 11, 2025, after over one year, the game made it’s launch on PC as well. I finished the game, enjoyed it and I wanted to share my opinions about the game with this review. Let’s get into our review and examine this beautiful game.
Decent Story with Impressive Gameplay
Our story begins with Colony deploying 7th Airborne Squad to Earth in order to eliminate Alpha Naytibas as well as locate the Elder Naytiba, leader of the Naytibas. However, the operation ends disastrously; Eve becomes the sole survivor after her squadron is all but eliminated, including her commander Tachy, who is seemingly killed by an unidentified Alpha Naytiba. Eve is rescued by Adam, a human scavenger who was left behind on Earth. After rescued by Adam, Eve wants to avenge Tachy and accomplish her mission. Then, our adventure leads us to Xion, who is created by bunch of survivors. In Xion, there are lots of NPC, stores and missions we can explore. We can either stick to main storyline and try to locate the Elder Naytiba, or help the people of Xion, in order to make our adventure filled with cooperation. I personally finished every side mission, there are many stories needs to be lightened in Xion. For example, in Sisters Junk, we can meet Kaya, which helps us during our missions and we can shop some items from her store. Kara, her sister is missing, we can help her to find her sister during our adventure. On the other hand, we can find Enya, who is a singer in “The Last Gulp”. Her body is severely damaged, if we help her and complete her story, we can get her fixed. Her body becomes whole once we finish her mission, which is incredible moment to witness.
With these type of side missions, we can help bunch of Xion people and even unlock ourselfs hair dresser, which is called Gven Hair Dresser, if we bring back required tools for him, we can customize Eve’s hair and fit color with whole list of costumes we can choose from. We can also accept missions from Bulletin Board, which expands when we progress in the main storyline. If you ask, I can say you can ignore Bulletin Board missions and stick to Xion side missions only. But I also have to inform that Bulletin Board missions offering a lot of good rewards we can use. That’s why I finished every mission in Xion and my Eve was complete once I finish the game.
Let’s talk about gameplay, Stellar Blade is an action adventure game. We have one weapon along with drone we can use as a weapon or scan our environment in order to locate items we missed or mission objectives if we had hard time to find our way out. After we progress in the story and get some upgrades, we can learn more skill movesets. With each skill we learned, Eve becomes stronger and defeats her opponents faster than before. After almost middle of the game, she can also transform into Tachy and become invisible for few seconds and cut her enemies like Tachy style. I really loved Tachy mode, the transform animation and moveset of her. Not just Tachy mode, general combat elements of Stellar Blade is amazing. If you love hack & slash games like me, you will enjoy defeating your enemies in Stellar Blade a lot. I satisfied every moment of Stellar Blade, especially defeating enemies.
Open World Filled With Rewards You Can Collect
Stellar Blade became popular with it’s costumes. There are +70 costumes we can collect. Some of them are rewarded by missions, some of them are in open world to complete and some of them are behind some secret events like fishing or defeating certain enemies in Boss Challenge Mode. If you like games like Sims, you enjoy customizing your character, dressing to impress, then you will love this feature a lot. You can collect a lot of Nano Suits for Eve and fit them together with different earrings, sunglasses or hair styles. As for me, I love customizing character, that’s why I changed Eve’s outfit in my every step, fit her dress with suitable hair style and earrings. Speaking of outfits, you can also use Photo Mode to take cool selfies. If you open your camera near Adam or Lilly, they will also give pose to you, which makes great moment to take selfies. It’s so much enjoyable to use Stellar Blade’s photo mode.
There are few places we can explore in Stellar Blade. In every map, there are different enemies we can encounter. The most annoying ones are in Wasteland. I hated exploring Wasteland because of these enemies. Not to mention they will respawn once you get into Camp. Some of them are really annoying to beat. Their rewards are good but if you want to solve puzzle or complete your mission, we become annoying each moment. In another map called Great Desert, there is swallowing sand, which is insta kill if you don’t pay attention. I sometimes lost in desert and end up swallowing by that sand because of bad map navigation.
I enjoyed exploring the world of Stellar Blade, but I wish there is only one desert map. With Wasteland, it makes two desert maps. Maybe they could unite Wasteland and Great Desert so it wouldn’t feel like it’s repeating itself. These two maps are also bigger than other maps, which means you will spend most of your time in desert during your playthrough, which is something I dislike about game. Not to mention there is less camps to rest or fast travel. Most of them are stop points, you can only refresh your health and make all Naytibas respawn, which brings some annoying enemies back. Speaking of bringing enemies, I loved this feature, bringing back some enemies but let’s say your cleared your way through your mission area to navigate easier, if you rest, all of your enemies will be back and you have to kill them again and of course, you will lose health and all, end up in camp again. I think this feature needs to be changed in the upcoming Stellar Blade, which developers also confirmed, they will do it.
I Loved These Collaborations
Just before launch to PC, Stellar Blade made collaboration with Goddess of Nikke and Nier Automata. For Goddess of Nikke, character called Skarlet is added to game along with some missions to complete. She is also in Boss Challenge, you can compete with her. You can also aquire outfits once you complete all missions. As for the Nier Automata collaboration, you can aquire famous outfits of 2B, 9S and A2 and drone skin. If you wear one of outfits with Eve, you can also listen musics of Nier Automata during your gameplay. These two collaborations are one of my favorite things in Stellar Blade. Especially Goddess of Nikke, developers implemented Skarlet into the game very well. It’s like she became part of the story, I loved her design during my playthrough in the game. As for the Nier Automata, I love this franchise a lot, that’s why it’s good for me to see them in Stellar Blade. Because developers took inspiration from Nier Automata during developing Stellar Blade. With art style, story, gameplay, if you know Nier franchise, you will notice details between them.
What I Loved About Stellar Blade, With Other Details
Stellar Blade impressed me with it’s combat style and animations. I loved how developers implemented parry system along with hack & slash combat and fast actions. If you perform perfect parry constantly, you can deal a lot of damage to your opponent, which means you beat it faster and cooler way. I had hard time learning perfect parry when I first started to game, after few hours I learned it better and my experience evolved much better. Developers also put some quick time events before defeating boss enemies. It’s a cool feature but sometimes you can miss it while focused on how scene going. But that’s a cool feature developers implemented in game.
Story was decent in Stellar Blade, I liked how it started, but story wasn’t progressing enough to make you wonder what will happen next. Maybe fast phase story progression would be better since this is an action game. But in the end, things turn out fine and I loved how the game ended. A lot of potential left behind for second game. I have my thoughts what will happen next regarding the game lore but don’t want to get into spoiler that much in the review.
Things Annoyed Me in Game
As I mentioned before, Stellar Blade contains a lot of side missions you can finish. Most of them contains lore behind it, but aside from that, other NPC quests feels copy paste. For example, a lot of NPC side missions asks you to find their lost combrade, only to learn that they are dead or find lost item and you can’t get these items if you don’t have the quest active. Let’s say you run into an item quest during your playthrough, if you didn’t take the quest before, you can’t interact with that item. Some of them are in places which takes minutes to get into. No camp point, no map. Of course you can just skip these quests, but their rewards are useful.
Speaking of map, map navigation could be better. Some constructions are not visible in the big map and some confusing areas doesn’t even have big map. You can get lost easily while searching for your mission objective. The last place we visited doesn’t have map for example, I lost my way a lot.
On the other hand, game optimization is great but I guess some bugfix patches broke the game because I was playing the game just fine until few patchs drops. My game performance dropped with these bugfixes. Aside from that, I can say game optimization is good.
Last Words Regarding Stellar Blade
Stellar Blade is a successful action adventure game. I enjoyed every moment I spent in the game and happy to share my thoughts. I’m looking forward to see more from Shift Up about Stellar Blade 2.
Score: 7/10
You can check Stellar Blade Steam page here.
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