Stellar Blade | Demo Impressions

Key Takeaways

• Polished demo
• Music reminds me of Nier Automata
• Gameplay similar to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
• Parrying and attacking felt heavier and more impactful than Sekiro
• Great use of the DualSense
• Beautiful realized sci-fi world with great character aesthetics and overall art direction
• Balanced mode looked good visually and ran at solid frames
• Perfect parry and dodge mechanic requires a learning curve
• Demo only an hour
• Enemy variety was decent
• Combat on Normal was challenging and rewarding
• Camps are basically bonfires from souls-likes
• Action Set-piece sequences
• Cutscenes a plenty
• Gameplay NOT like Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden or Bayonetta
• Gameplay and it’s world story presentation will carry this game

After completing the one hour demo of Stellar Blade I rate it a buy. Full stop. The gameplay, the world, it’s tech performance warrants a purchase in my opinion. $69.99 is steep as hell for a single player video game so I totally understand on waiting for a discount if that’s your mindset.

I fell in love with Stellar Blade’s gameplay. It reminds me so much of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice which I adored. With that said, Stellar Blade feels like it’s own game even though you can tell some gameplay ideas came from recent Souls-like video games.

The parry and camp just being the main two souls-like mechanics that stuck out. Honestly, I don’t care where a dev get’s ideas from as long as the game is fun, organic and polished which is what Stellar Blade seems to be. Shift Up Corporation did a bang up job in creating an original sci-fi fun world to get lost in.

The demo only lasts about an hour culminating in a final boss fight followed by a “Buy Now” page. During the hour I spent I got a solid introduction to Stellar Blade’s core gameplay mechanics such as parrying, dodging, retribution and beta skill attacks. There was a small learning curve to master said skills. Lucky for us there is a training section in the demo at a supply camp near the final boss.

Stellar Balde’s demo has various sequences such as slow walking with banter, exploring, combat with action set-piece sequences etc. There is a swimming section where I made Eve use a plank while swimming to reach a ladder The Last of Us style.

Eidos 7 is the ruined city where humanity’s last stand occurred and is where you play most of the demo. The ruined rain soaked city really gave me that sense of “okay let’s go” as I made Eve slice and dice Naytibas to ribbons.

Eve, Tachy and Adam all seem like decent characters early on. Ever play Binary Domain? Characters in Stellar Blade sorta remind me of that lot. The star of Stellar Blade was it’s gameplay. I can see some gamers not jiving with it while the Souls-borne folks loving it maybe. That’s about it. Thanks for stopping by the site – Jason