REVIEW: ‘Stellar Blade’ Is An Even Sharper Blade On PC

Stellar Blade is Sony and SHIFT UP’s hit hack-and-slash adventure game that has impressed a lot of players since its launch. Now, a year later, the game’s upcoming PC release has the potential to impress even more players with its newly added content and slew of new PC features. The port elevates the gameplay experience with these new additions, but it also doesn’t address the game’s existing issues.

Set in a desolate future where monstrous creatures overrun Earth, called the Naytiba, the game follows protagonist Eve, a warrior from an off-world colony and member of an elite unit known as the 7th Airborne Squadron, sent to reclaim Earth.

Her quest eventually leads her to Xion, a surviving human settlement, where she meets several characters and decides to help them against the Naytiba threat. As Eve investigates the source of the Naytiba and helps the people of Xion, she uncovers hidden truths about humanity’s past, the origin of the creatures, and the real reason she was sent to Earth.

Stellar Blade‘s narrative is grand, engaging, and thought-provoking. The concept, while familiar, works quite well thanks to the world-building and interesting lore details players learn as they play through the game. However, while the story itself is interesting, the characters lack personality in comparison, as most of them are stiff and overly serious. Thankfully, there are characters like Lily who go against this norm with infectious energy, but there aren’t enough like her to make the narrative more engaging.

Stellar Blade encourages aggressive combat.

Gameplay-wise, Stellar Blade is centered around stylish melee combat that’s akin to games like Nier: Automata while maintaining a unique flow of its own. Eve fights with a sword and ranged weapons, including a versatile hand cannon with several bullet types. The combat system encourages an aggressive playstyle rewarded by perfect parries, dodges, and combos.

The game feels responsive and tight, especially once you’ve unlocked additional moves and stances. Enemies are aggressive, with a Souls-like intensity, but the game provides ample upgrade paths through gear, skill trees, and “Beta” abilities, which are flashy and effective special attacks.

The only notable issue observed during combat is the limitation of dodging compared to the game’s counterparts. The dodge move is way too limiting to be effective against big swinging attacks from bosses. Thankfully, you can upgrade the move later in the game, but this takes a while, so players must suffer through it until then. Additionally, enemies are too aggressive when navigating open areas, such as the Wasteland, which hampers the exploration factor.

Speaking of bosses, Stellar Blade sports some intricate, challenging boss fights. Each major boss is a grotesque, visually creative obstacle that tests your reflexes. While the enemy variety falters in the midgame, the game consistently raises the stakes with increasingly brutal, large-scale encounters.

The Stellar Blade PC port elevates the already striking visuals.

There’s also plenty of optional content, including bounty hunts, side missions, and world exploration, which allows players to uncover lore and resources. The game has a slew of puzzles. Some are incredibly fun and engaging, but some, like platforming puzzles, are absolutely miserable because movement is either too floaty at times or too stiff.

Visually, Stellar Blade‘s port is impressive in many ways, as it elevates an already visually striking game to the next level. The game features an amazingly detailed world, excellent art direction, richly detailed character models, and fluid animations. The overall visual fidelity is backed by a strong sense of apocalyptic atmosphere. The PC version improves the visual experience with newly enhanced textures, 4K capability, new aspect ratios, and more.

While there are some frame rate dips early on in the game, the majority runs smoothly with no issues. The PC version also adds NVIDIA DLSS 4, AMD FSR 3, unlocked frame rates, DualSense controller and Haptic Feedback support that feels amazingly immersive, and more.

The new Stellar Blade Complete Edition DLC are great, too.

Overall, Stellar Blade looks beautiful and runs exceptionally well on PC, which significantly enhances its gameplay experience. The PC version also adds all DLCs via the Complete Edition, including the new “Goddess of Victory: Nikke” collaboration DLC.

The DLC is shockingly well made, as players can play several really fun NIKKE-inspired cover-shooting levels with enemies from Stellar Blade. You can also unlock several NIKKE outfits for Eve and meet and fight Scarlet from NIKKE. While tough, her boss fight is surprisingly fun and well-crafted. Scarlet is designed with the Stellar Blade style and sports excellent character design and voice acting.

All in all, while not without flaws, Stellar Blade‘s PC version is the definitive version of the game, thanks to the upgrades and all the included content. The game remains fun and engaging a year later, with the experience only getting better.

Stellar Blade is available now on PC.