Although the genre has evolved and deepened over time, gacha games have historically not been praised for their depth and complexity, often being criticized for being thinly veiled gaming machines. People were then understandably in disbelief when Shift Up – the studio behind Goddess of victory: Nikke – announced in 2019 that it would be pursuing an exciting AAA project called Stellar Blade. A few years later, still others were shocked when this very different and ambitious project turned out to be a pretty solid action game.
Stellar Blade has now been ported to Switch 2 (with cheeky new Bayonetta cosmetic DLC), bringing this exciting and captivating action experience to Nintendo’s audience. It hasn’t made the transition to more modest hardware completely unscathed, but it’s nonetheless a solidly enjoyable and exciting adventure that deserves a place in your library.
The story takes place in the distant future, post-apocalypse, when our planet has been invaded by monstrous creatures called Naytibas. Some humans escaped after losing the war and established an orbital space colony called…the Colony…from which occasional squadrons of elite super-soldiers are deployed to attempt to regain a foothold on Earth.
Protagonist Eve is a member of one of these squads and the prologue opens with her landing mission, a violent meat grinder reminiscent of the Omaha Beach scene in We must save Private Ryan in which she is seemingly the only warrior to survive. Helped by a mysterious man who saved her, Eve sets out to find Alpha Naytiba and, with luck, win a victory for the humans.
It’s a fairly entertaining story, but one that seems a bit shallow in many ways. The characters – Eve included – lack depth and converse in a stilted manner that feels like they’re quoting lines to each other, and some of the later plot twists are the sort of thing you can see coming a mile away. Still, there’s just enough story here to keep you interested in the setting and Eve’s ongoing journey and the occasional moments of levity that help keep things from feeling too dour.
Any disappointment with the narrative is quickly forgotten by the thrill of the combat, which feels like a cross between a Soulslike game and a character action game as Eve skillfully combines enemies with her athletic acrobatics and expert sword swings.
Enemies hit hard and fast and can easily stun you, meaning even a single average enemy can significantly reduce your health bar if you’re not careful and multiple enemies at once can quickly overwhelm Eve due to limited mobility and crowd control options.
In addition to the usual combos you can chain together with light and heavy attacks, Eve also has a variety of limited-use beta skills she can use to turn the tide in her favor. You accumulate beta energy from perfectly timed attacks and blocks or parries, and this energy can then be burned in the middle of a combo to power up an attack or use a flashy guard-breaking attack that can put the enemy on the back foot. This system adds some room for player skill expression, as you can find creative ways to combine combos and beta skills to positively melt enemies.
Although even common enemies can test you in certain configurations, this combat system Really sings when you arrive at one of the many cinematic boss fights against powerful and grotesque monsters. These act as casual skill checks that will forcibly teach you deeper knowledge of combat mechanics as you carefully study their moves for brief gaps and learn (often over the course of several failed attempts) how to best exploit those gaps with your available tools.
Eve therefore feels both omnipotent and vulnerable, giving fights a thrilling, electric feel as you oscillate between slicing enemies to ribbons with practiced cinematic flair and folding completely when you botch a dodge. Practice makes perfect, and there’s plenty of satisfaction in progressing over hours and taking on increasingly complicated and dangerous enemies with honed reflexes and skills.
Yet progress isn’t limited to just raw skill development: there are also light RPG elements that let you slowly shape Eve’s build over time. Not only can you use skill points to unlock and upgrade new combat abilities and beta skills, but you can also improve stats like max health and attack by finding collectibles in the environment.
Equipment can also be found and crafted to give Eve certain passive buffs, allowing you to get more value from the playstyle you typically choose. These RPG mechanics help alleviate some of the more difficult aspects of the often unforgiving combat system, giving you meaningful ways to progress over time, even if you struggle to lose battles to enemies.
The world and level design initially follows traditional Soulslike tropes, consisting of numerous claustrophobic rooms and labyrinthine paths that often loop over each other with unlocked doors and ladders that lead to the nearest checkpoint. While the critical path is generally obvious and easy to follow, there are often a handful of side areas to explore along the way, filled with more platforming gauntlets, difficult enemy placements, and additional upgrades and goodies. This design does a great job of enriching exploration while still keeping you moving forward.
Then, about six hours later, things change with the sudden introduction of a medium-sized open-world area, filled with quests, collectibles, and points of interest to wander through. Traveling between this area and a nearby hub has both gameplay and narrative benefits, as you complete quests and bounties to progress through various side stories for the NPCs living there and find increasingly better gear and unlockables as quest and exploration rewards.
Granted, it seems at first like a strange after-hours left turn that draws very different expectations, but it ultimately feels like an interesting addition to the gameplay loop. And even after its introduction, there are plenty of throwbacks to the more focused, level-based Soulslike design that balances the free but sometimes meandering levels and quests that can accompany the open world.
The graphics look okay, but not exceptional, in part due to the overall art direction and the Switch 2’s relatively modest hardware. Some views of the ruined Earth can be quite pleasing to look at from afar, but many muted colors are used as you navigate tunnels, sewers, deserts, and destroyed office buildings. Environments therefore tend to blend together and often lack visually interesting landmarks or scenery, which can make the more exploration-focused sections a little more boring.
Meanwhile, the game outputs at 720p on handheld and 1080p on dock, which can lead to even blurrier visuals due to scaling artifacts and relatively low internal resolutions.
As for performance, everything technically runs at 60fps, but there’s a pretty big caveat with that claim: that frame rate is only achieved through frame generation. Concretely, this means that there is a significant amount of input lag despite the fact that the visuals themselves appear to animate smoothly. For a game so focused on quick reaction times and granular movement, this input lag can be a death knell and significantly reduces the playability of this port.
However, there is an option in the settings to turn this off and throttle the game down to what appears to be closer to 40fps, which seems like a much more acceptable compromise. The controls here are a little more responsive, while the frame rate is noticeably smoother than 30fps. Some drop-offs can still occur when moving the camera in larger areas, but this doesn’t affect combat playability too much and it becomes less of an issue in the many smaller environments.
All of this is to say that Stellar Blade is a game that seems to push the Switch 2 to its limits, but it’s a perfectly playable and often surprisingly beautiful port that precisely brings this impressive game to a lightweight handheld.
It can sometimes seem easier to single out a port based on its flaws and what it lacks, and while there are valid criticisms to be made here about the sometimes disappointing visuals and performance, it’s hard to get away from the fact that this is a “good enough” version of Stellar Blade that you can play anywhere you want to take your console.
Conclusion
Despite a few drawbacks, Stellar Blade presents itself as an impressive and enjoyable action game that fills a nice niche in the Switch 2 library. Rewarding exploration, thrilling combat, and a challenging but reasonable difficulty push this game far and make it an easy recommendation, even if its story can be a little bland and the visuals aren’t always up to par.
I would recommend it to anyone looking for a bigger budget game that emphasizes exploration and combat; Stellar Blade excels at implementing both and makes a great first impression as Shift Up’s entry into AAA game development.
Gn tech
