It’s not idle at Sony, which is one after the other excluding people for its PS5. Rise of the Ronin last week and in a month, Stellar Blade will arrive on the console to prove to us that 1/ games with next gen rendering, well they exist on PS5 and that 2/ Korea knows it too make big AAAs when she gives herself the means. Because yes, Stellar Blade is the work of the South Korean studio Shift Up, little known to the general public and which until now only made mobile games. A bit like the Chinese studio Game Science, which will release Black Myth Wukong next summer. But as I tell you every 4 mornings, Asia is waking up and Japan will no longer be the only territory to offer us large-scale, ambitious and quality games. Coming back to Stellar Blade, we all knew it in 2019 under the name Project EVE, but since then, the game has made its way, caught the eye of Sony and in particular Shuhei Yoshida, who decided to make it exclusive to PS5 in 2021. Three years later, here we are, the game is ready, it’s coming out on April 26 and you know what? I had the opportunity to play it for many hours and I will tell you right away what I think of this action game, which is the fusion between Bayonetta, Nier Automata and Sekiro. And yeah, just that!
Since the PS5 was released, there have been few games that offer truly next-gen gameplay. Certainly, there was the effect of novelty with Demon’s Soul and Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart when the PS5 was released in 2020, then God of War Ragnarok and Horizon 2 Forbidden West in 2022, which also remains the game the most breathtaking of the PS5 in terms of graphics. But apart from these few titles, in almost 4 years of existence of the PS5, we cannot say that the so-called next gen games are legion. Worse, we have reached a point where certain titles regress visually, and the last one to do this to us is none other than Rise of the Ronin. And by having games with average rendering, or which could run on the previous generation, well we’re starting to get used to it in real life. So obviously, when a game like Stellar Blade comes almost out of nowhere, we get a little pie in the face. Because yes, the game displays devastating plasticity, and not only because its main character was designed to put glitter in our eyes. Offering a game with high-end graphics was one of the leitmotifs of the South Korean studio Shift Up, which used the Unreal Engine 4 to obtain the desired result. We don’t know if the developers have upgraded to version 5 of the Epic Games engine in the meantime, but the result remains stunning.
EVE, ANGEL AND BED
And Shift Up wants to give us this visual slap from the outset, which explains such an intro sequence, designed for spectacle and the wow effect. Between the in-game cinematic, this crash on an extinct Earth where Humanity has given way to NA:tives (deformed and organic creatures with a truly daring design), and the very stylized presentation of EVE, the goal is obviously to seduce the player from the first minutes of the adventure. Stellar Blade immediately impresses with the richness of its settings, its ultra-detailed textures, the wind blowing through the palm trees in a very credible manner, the explosions, the particles dancing in the wind, the ships in the sky, the flames and volumetric smoke effects, debris everywhere; In short, we’re in for a treat, the show is there and the immersion is total. It’s also the time to get to know EVE, this young woman with advantageous and generous shapes who have sparked serious debates on social networks on the image of women in video games. It’s true that everything is done to make the male player react in front of his screen, from his attributes to his ultra sexy outfits, also through his animations or his poses, there is a certain sexualization of the character. The game director of the game, Hyung-Tae Kim, also justified such a design to GamesRadar by explaining that he liked playing with characters who are more beautiful than him in real life. He also clarified that the character of Eve was modeled after the model Shin Jae-eun, who also lent her face to play Tachy, EVE’s teammate who loses her life at the very beginning of the game. Elsewhere, I can confirm that there will be plenty of customization options for EVE, with around thirty different outfits, distinct hairstyles too and lots of accessories. These will be purely cosmetic bonuses to unlock in the game, and perhaps to come as DLC later.
EVERYTHING IS IN THE TIMING!
But you will see that very quickly, the physicality of EVE is actually quite secondary in the game, because the gameplay will quickly take precedence over the rest, and from the first minutes of the game, we understand that we are dealing with a game with a fairly complex system. It’s pretty obvious, but Stellar Blade is positioned halfway between Bayonetta, Nier Automata and Sekiro, the three games that inspired game director Hyung-Tae Kim, who clarified that he shaped his game with these three references in the back of his mind. And then once we have access to the skill trees, we understand that the game is clearly not there to joke. You just have to take a look at the number of skills and combos to unlock to understand that Stellar Blade is above all a game where gameplay takes precedence above all else. We’re going to shit for sure and if you allow us this rudeness, and we will also have to learn to manage the timing in the game. This will also be the key to success in getting out of this because the enemies do not of gifts, especially the bosses who joke zero. In fact, the possibilities are so numerous that it is even possible to train once you unlock a skill. And I suggest you not skip this passage training if you don’t want to find yourself a bit of an idiot when faced with bosses when the time comes.
Of course, at the start of the adventure, all the movements and other combos are not accessible, and it is by gaining XP and collecting currency that we will be able to make EVE evolve. Roughly speaking, the entire combat mechanics reside in this ability to avoid and counter enemy attacks, but with precise timing. Because by making perfect counterattacks and dodges, you can then create a window of a few frames to counterattack behind and do maximum damage to the enemy. Because the latter, mainly the bosses, they hit hard and some of their attacks are capable of draining a third of your free PV bar. You will also have to take a look at this energy gauge often, remember to drink potions as soon as possible to stay alive, knowing that when you dress your wounds, you are vulnerable for a few seconds, so you must also be careful before to take out the medikit. We’ve said it and we repeat it, it’s all about timing, and like in Nier Automata or Sekiro, reading boss patterns is also one of the skills to showcase as a player.
Another very pleasant element in the game: its artistic direction. We navigate in a post-apocalyptic atmosphere, with the city of was able to see in Bloodborne, Dead Space, Silent Hill and of course Bayonetta. All these references work wonderfully in the game and for what little we were able to discover in this preview, that is to say very urban places and this beach in the intro scene, it was rather convincing. We’re waiting to see how the level design will fare, because if there is one aspect in which the game still struggles, it’s the platforming phases. It is clearly not in this area that Stellar Blade will excel, because the jumps lack amplitude, the swings lack inertia and we should not overuse these sequences too much. platformers not always optimal so as not to unbalance the game. Obviously, it is clearly not in this aspect that Stellar Blade is expected and from what we were able to test, the game of the Koreans of Shift Up clearly does not lack audacity . The possibilities in the combat system look monstrous and we hope that these very good impressions will materialize next month, April 26, 2024, the same release day as TopSpin 2K25. Clearly, the publishers do this on purpose…