Stellar Blade Review

Shift Up's 2024 action game is a Korean studio's first console release and a much better combat game than its marketing suggested. Eve fights on a parry-and-perfect-dodge system closer to Sekiro than to a character-action game: most enemies cannot be out-damaged, and the beta and burst gauges that power your special moves fill from precise defence rather than aggression, so the whole rhythm is about reading a wind-up and answering it exactly. Boss fights are the centrepiece and several of them are genuinely excellent. Around them is a semi-open structure of hub cities and linear zones through a ruined Earth held by the Naytiba, with a skill tree, exosuit customisation and a fishing minigame. The story is functional post-apocalyptic science fiction with a decent late twist. Its art direction and character design drew most of the coverage, which obscured that the moment-to-moment fighting is the reason to play it. The 2025 PC release added uncapped frame rates and a Nier: Automata crossover.