Stellar Blade review: PS5 exclusive’s beauty is only skin deep
Stellar Blade MSRP $70.00 Score Details Pros
- Stunning enemy design
- Beautiful art direction
- Fluid and flashy combat
- Helpful Action Assist feature
- Dull narrative
- Boring level design
- Stiff platforming
About halfway through Stellar Blade, its hero, Eve, fights Tachy, a former friend and mentor turned enemy. It’s an awe-inspiring battle thanks in part to Tachy’s striking design — one that contains shades of both Sephiroth and Elden Ring‘s Melenia. The “cool” factor didn’t last long. Even though I was experiencing a visually stunning battle with deep combat, I just didn’t care much about what was going on around it. With a lackluster narrative and bland level design, the flashy action only had so much pull.
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Stellar Blade is undoubtedly gorgeous, but that beauty is only skin deep. Strong visuals and excellent enemy designs nicely complement thrilling combat that finds the middle ground between Dark Souls and Bayonetta. But the style-over-substance approach to developer Shift Up’s PlayStation 5 exclusive left me wanting something more.
A not-so-stellar story
Stellar Blade follows Eve, a soldier made to rid Earth of the threat called the Naytiba. They are grotesque creatures that can grow to be quite powerful and brutal. Eve’s airborne squad, including Tachy, is wiped out almost immediately, but she’s saved by a Scavenger aptly named Adam. After that, she works with Adam and another soldier named Lily to rid the world of the Naytiba threat and learn more about where they came from. Unfortunately, this plot didn’t do much to grab me beyond that strong sci-fi setup.
Eve and Adam aren’t particularly strong characters, while Lily often feels sidelined despite having a standout voice performance. Thematically, Stellar Blade asks what it means to be human and interrogates how
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