While Eve’s curves are sharp, Stellar Blade’s story is dull.
When I first heard the Adam and Eve story as a toddler, my mother’s eerie voice for the serpent spooked me and my brother enough to beg her to stop. It was probably the last time she read us a biblical tale before bed. That early experience left me with a fear of cautionary tales until my teenage years when I developed a love for literature and history.
I was just so fascinated by all the stories the world had to offer in its tangible records. But more often than not, it got depressing. A plethora of original texts, with characters you want to follow, had them meet a cruel fate. It made me appreciate the Disney versions of classics because good endings were so difficult to come by in folktales.
This brings me to the name Lilith. I did not know of Lilith’s existence prior to a year or so ago, and I suppose many others, including my mother, do not know either. This could be due to the fact that there is no direct mention of her in the Bible. The usage of Lilith was to explain the two contradicting accounts of Creation within the book of Genesis.
So, who is Lilith? Jewish scriptures claim that Adam’s first wife was Lilith. Both Lilith and Adam were made from the same mixture of earth and dust, which meant that they were equal. Although, Adam adamantly demanded that she carry out her responsibilities as wife to him, despite Lilith’s protests that she was no less than Adam.
In her act of refusing to comply, Lilith provoked the fury of God and withdrew to the Red Sea. There, she was expelled from Paradise for all eternity and transformed into the succubus, the breeder of evil spirits, and an abomination of the night that was responsible for the slaughter of children.
Adam holds God accountable for the disobedient Lilith, but it later becomes amusing how he was unable to stop Eve, or himself, from eating the forbidden fruit. Such depictions of the apparently fallen lady, and how they tempt you, have helped perpetuate conventional ideas about what it means to be a woman.
I almost hate that I brought up an innocent childhood memory as some form of introduction to Stellar Blade. There is a reason for it, because what I described plays a big role in the audience’s response to the game, and the creators themselves have a hand in it, with them naming their three main characters in a particular manner. You would be living under a rock to not know what the title, Stellar Blade, entails, and yes, I am referring to the jiggling, along with many other things I will cover in this here review.
In this grandiose release from SHIFT UP Corporation, you are whisked away to a world where the Naytibas, a merciless extra-terrestrial race, have taken control. In this game, you assume the role of Eve, a supposed ‘angel’, whose goal is to reclaim Earth from the alien infestation.
Eve forms alliances with a diverse cast of supporting people. However, I will single out two individuals: Adam, who lived in the last human metropolis called Xion, and Lily, an engineer who had worked on a project two years before Eve joined the struggle. With the naming of these personalities very on the nose, I hope it is obvious to the reader why I started off with that long information dump. But that is not where the correlation ends.
The group’s individuality is unimportant when it comes to their shared foe, the Naytibas, whose genus embraces more than simply the undead or diseased (think: Halo’s Flood). This riveting concept set the stage for an epic science fiction odyssey that expertly combines stunning action as you endure throughout Stellar Blade’s world.
Mastering Eve’s arsenal and timing your combos, parries, and dodges just so will reward you with seamless excellence in battle. As you progress through Stellar Blade, you will discover how similar it is in regards to the Souls aspect, with new elements like guard breaks aerial strikes, and interactions appearing at a regular rate. Every time you think you have mastered Stellar Blade, a new challenge appears, forcing you to re-evaluate your strategy and level up your abilities.
When you successfully parry, dodge, or strike with your basic attacks, parries, or abilities, you build up your energy gauge and may unleash powerful special attacks on the adversaries. The method for upgrading is fundamental to Stellar Blade’s growth. However, I focused on consistently doing damage and relied on a handful of special strikes, so unlocking all of them was not a top priority for me.
There does not seem to be a ton of leeway in the skill tree for creative playstyles, like switching between weapon kinds, but you can level up your character meaningfully and get better tools and weapons as you go. Similar to the famous Elden Ring, I anticipate that Stellar Blade’s community will uncover ways to perfect skill tree setups, identify holes, and elevate experiences via replays.
Even if the Stellar Blade’s regular enemies were repetitive at first, there are going to be many more challenging ones as you advance. These include creatures that combust, attackers from a distance that fire projectiles, and plenty more.
Particularly challenging are the boss fights, which are brutal events that make you feel as threatened as in other games, again, like Souls. Mastering these confrontations, as per tradition, requires you to recognize enemy patterns of attack, take advantage of weaknesses, and manage your resources with precision. Rushing in and hitting huge combinations is enticing, but bosses will punish you if you do.
Stellar Blade also houses puzzle mechanics. To be fair, these puzzles lack the attribute of being challenging or interesting at the beginning of the game. Playing games the way I do usually involves dodging the primary goal in favor of exploring, which leads to unexpected discoveries like solving puzzles you were not really meant to solve at that point in time.
Shift Up also has not done a fantastic job of indicating which parts of the level are interactive and which are not; a cause for concern with a number of the level designs and environmental structures. Consequently, you must put your trust in the scanner to brightly highlight everything that can interact with the yellow glow. Paths, buttons to push, treasure, and, well, pretty much everything else needs this. The fact that we are putting too much faith in this system is really problematic.
This is also noticeable when you go into places with low light, like underwater, or in dark rooms. Because of the terrible visibility, again, I relied too much on the drone’s scanning capabilities to assess my environment.
The puzzles in the later game may be downright frustrating at times – the ones that require mobility, in particular. We have the ability to switch between difficulty levels, like between the story and normal modes, and then you unlock hard mode when you have completed the game.
Of course, it is in no way demeaning if you play on Story difficulty. However, it will not make the difficulty of some of these movement-based puzzles any relaxing. Why is there no skip button? There was a little part of me that was irritated, from a critic’s point of view, because I care about the enjoyment this experience would provide to the ordinary.
Another gripe I have is with the automated vaulting mechanism; I found myself unintentionally leaping over barriers, objects, and walkways much too often. I had a hard time clinging to anything that floated on the water, such as ropes and ladders. The hitboxes seemed to be slipping through my fingers at all times.
There was something I deemed to be a good call from the designers. The game is named Stellar Blade, and then the game sort of just takes away the blade you have been using for a lot of your playthrough. With limited ammo and the restriction of using only ranged weapons, the game takes on an almost survival horror theme. Using your ammunition properly, you are attempting to maintain a steady equilibrium. Since Stellar Blade is mostly focused on combat, it does provide a refreshing variation.
I think Stellar Blade gets weird when it comes to the narrative and the characters. Put in another way, they just are not meaningful. With the side missions, there are a few decent moments. I will not, however, sit here and pretend that these side missions are the most extensive ever when in fact, that is not the case.
The majority of them are just fetched missions. After you have reached the objective location, you are to slay an enemy, then you go to another area, you look for an item, you bring it back, and repeat.
It may anger some folks, but I will not gush about how fantastic Eve is. They did achieve things with her in the end. But it felt that it was too little, too late. Perhaps it was in the last hours of Stellar Blade, that they began to actively pursue Eve’s storyline. I do not think the cast was terrible; they do push things with Adam and Lily as well. I would just describe them as fine, rather than excellent.
When I think back on Adam, Eve, and Lily a few months from now, what exactly will I have to say about them? Maybe the Korean voice acting is superior. It was more dynamic. But that is about it, the answer is modest. They lack what it takes to be exceptional. The story definitely could have been more interesting if they had taken these characters in another direction.
The lore of Stellar Blade’s world is also heavily dependent on discovering, what feels like, millions of notes scattered throughout the regions. I am a reader and have no problem with extensive reading, however, it got to a point where even that got tedious for me. There were so many of them, and yes, they contribute to the world-building, with tidbits of how the whole ordeal came to be, but after a certain amount, it does not feel that any of them contribute to the primary storyline.
Although the story takes a second place, Stellar Blade really comes to life with Eve’s cool clothes, especially the response it got from the initial reveal of the game. However, I will not be one of those to say that the outfits were cheap in taste. I think SHIFT UP Corporation did a solid job when dealing with the female attire.
You may discover a wide variety of clothing, from your sexiest, most exposing ones to your most fashionable ones for daily use. The best part is that you have no need to spend any money on it; instead, you may earn it just by playing the game. With the exception of the possible release of costumes from other IPs, Shift Up has accomplished something ground-breaking for a modern video game by releasing a fully functional game at launch without microtransactions.
This leads me to address the very obvious pressing controversy tied to the Stellar Blade title. Many publications condemned Eve’s purposefully attractive design in the days leading up to Stellar Blade’s debut. Sony seems to have responded to this with censoring; changing Eve’s clothing to cover more of her body. In an effort to get the original artistic vision back, fans have taken to Twitter with the hashtag #FreeStellarBlade.
I think the censorship controversy was blown out of proportion, that it is almost laughable now. Pick any bikini skin and you will see for yourself that censoring nudity was not really an issue. You still spend 99% of the game witnessing her behind, not to mention the aforementioned jiggle physics. For those who have complained, it comes off as if the Stellar Blade trailer did not already hint at the provocative aesthetic of Eve.
There are plenty of other games to pursue if this nature of female protagonists is not your cup of tea. There are also plenty of other games that have it worse when it comes to how women are dressed, and still, this is the game that got singled out. Yes, many games with skimpy-clothed ladies can be disheartening if they affect how men behave with real women, but, with the example of Ellie from The Last of Us franchise, countless other female main characters have set the standard higher, and you are not obligated to play nor enjoy this game.
As for those who belittle the people offended by another woman protagonist in this manner, I think it is important to empathize with why it is a grievance. There are bad apples that are unable to differentiate between fictional representations of women and women in the real world. We can never know who consumes this type of content in a degrading way until it is too late. It is this type of imagery that can hurt when it is met by the wrong individual.
With any luck, future updates will address my suggestions for improvement. Allow me to begin by discussing the maps. For whatever reason, there were not any in the more linear parts. This is especially costly for players who have not yet become well-acquainted with the terrains. Stellar Blade also notably lacked the pins that are so ubiquitous in modern games for marking and tracking places. There was also a lack of easy access to fast traveling.
Returning to the subject of boss fights, you will face several side adventures, and they happen to be much more difficult than the ones in the main quest. The presence of these enhanced difficulties is great, but they are not permanent. No respawning. Like the battle assignments in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, I really want Shift Up to implement a means to let the game respawn these monsters—for both sorts of hustles.
This game also lacks a chapter select menu and has only one save space. Once you have beaten the last remaining boss, you can access your save file up to that fight, but you are unable to return back in time. Considering Stellar Blade offers three distinct endings, I think these elements were necessary from the start. After putting in the time and effort to get a great run, players will likely value the ability to easily go back to certain regions and challenges using their upgraded skills without losing the progress of their game.
I know it is a stretch to suggest, but Eve may have benefited from having access to Adam’s hoverbike in the desert. It would have made traversal much more enjoyable and stylish.
The music is superb; it is far from generic and unoriginal. Even though I’m not a trained musician, I do know my way around music well enough to see that a lot of the songs contain fascinating chord progressions, unconventional genre mashups, and intriguing structures.
I would classify this action adventure as more of a Souls-lite than a Souls-like game. While there are Souls-inspired factors, this just is not the traditional sort. Stellar Blade follows the standard Souls pattern of leveling up, exploring, and defeating opponents, but you are to lose nothing when you die.
I must come clean and say that the controversies surrounding Stellar Blade were what drew me to play it. Turns out that it is only Eve’s clothing and movements that were what had people fuming. Other than that, there is nothing really sexual about the game, and I most certainly will not complain about a lady’s butt cheeks being on semi-full display.
Whether or not I recommend this game, I really think that Stellar Blade is mediocre, and you can get the same level of enjoyment, if not more, from several other titles of the genre. I did have fun, and this review was clearly a huge read compared to other ones I have written, but that was mostly due to the need to comment on femininity, and this game is nothing to write home about.
