Summary

  • Stellar Blade is a rare Soulsborne with difficulty settings.
  • Even on Story Mode, there's a real feeling of Soulsborne challenge with parries and dodges.
  • The healing is real bad though. Like, real bad.

Stellar Blade has endured so much discourse already (motivated partially though not entirely by protagonist Eve) that it has seemed to side-step the most obvious one - difficulty. Stellar Blade is a Soulsborne, and therefore its primary challenge is fighting massive bosses whose attack patterns need to be studied and learned in order to be overcome. And it comes so close to cracking the difficulty conundrum that haunts this genre, but squanders it at the last moment for the most trivial of reasons.

Of course, many Soulsbornes would argue they don't have a difficulty conundrum. One must simply git gud. It's an ideology I can respect - these games are hard, therefore to beat them you need to be very good at them. Elden Ring even managed to evolve into a more approachable game by opening up the wider world for exploration to stop players hitting an impassable wall and giving up. But git gud is not the answer for everything.

Stellar Blade Moves Beyond The Git Gud Mentality

While hardcore players reject any thought of difficulty modes, they are the norm in the vast majority of games, and Soulsbornes without the name brand appeal of being a FromSoftware title are embracing them more. Stellar Blade is one such game - it comes with Story Mode, Normal Mode, and (unlocked upon beating the game) Hard Mode. There are a few accessibility customisers too (boss battles end with a QTE that can be manually skipped), but Stellar Blade never goes too easy on you.

Even on Story, you're going to be up against it. You need to parry with precision, and if you're not careful you'll find yourself pinned against a group of enemies. The hardest bosses still pack and punch and keep their instakill moves on Story, while Eve cannot over-rely on her special attacks to dig her out of danger. Story Mode does not just let you swing at enemies at random until they topple politely, it's just a little more forgiving of mistakes.

Stellar Blade's switch between Story and Normal takes it from just under Lies of P's difficulty to just over, giving it an advantage in the 'which Soulsborne is better' race.

Sure, someone like Let Me Solo Her would be able to do Story Mode with his eyes closed (maybe even with a pot on his head), but for most players it's the perfect sweet spot. People playing on easier modes mostly don't actually want the game to be easy, they want an appropriate level of challenge for their ability. Story Mode does that where other Soulsbornes fail, but unfortunately Stellar Blade marries that with a needlessly frustrating healing mechanic.

Healing Is One Of The Most Dangerous Things To Do In Stellar Blade

At first, Stellar Blade's healing system seems ingenious. You get two rechargeable med packs that reset whenever you rest. Resting also fully heals you, but brings all the enemies in the area (except the bosses) back to life. This means it's a great tool when on linear quests, but should be used sparingly when in more open areas. As for these rechargeable med packs, you unlock more as the game goes on (I finished with six) making you more prepared for tougher foes.

But I often died when I still had these med packs left, because Eve takes an age to use them. To heal, Eve pulls a needle from her pocket, tosses it into the air, catches it, then jabs it into her thigh. But you don't get any of the healing until this animation is complete, and you often need to press a couple of times for it to work. I was knocking bosses over then unable to take advantage because the break was dedicated entirely to a healing animation - and in a Soulsborne that values speed far more than others as it blends character action into the fray.

Assuming you do use all six and stay alive through the animations, you'll still get a second chance as you can buy extra health packs through the game - ones that heal you instantly like the rechargeable ones, ones that heal you gradually over time, and healing beacons you can drop in battle that heal you whenever you're near them. Again, these all have far too long an animation, but that's not all - there's also a strange limitation to them.

You can buy as many as you can afford, but can only ever use two per rest, so if you're in a tough battle and have the boss down to a tiny sliver, you might not be able to heal yourself even if you own 30 health packs. You can buy something that lets you completely recover upon death, but again, while you can buy them in unlimited quantities, you can only use them once per rest.

It's an entirely artificial restriction that inflates the difficulty in a way that makes no sense, and even with it breaking the difficulty down yet still offering a challenge, it doesn't allow you to brute force a battle you just can't do. It makes the losses feel unearned, and it gets worse as you need to restock health packs you've used (plus ammo, also in short supply) upon death, while the boss goes back to full health.

There's so much about Stellar Blade's difficulty that feels like a breath of fresh air for Soulsbornes, but these annoyances are a lingering halitosis that ruins the whole thing. Stellar Blade is hard enough as it is, but in a good way, and these little tweaks aimed at squeezing every last drop of git gud out of the game just make it a whole lot worse.

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Stellar Blade

Action RPG Systems 3.5/5 9.4/10 OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 81/100 Critics Rec: 82% Released April 26, 2024 ESRB M for Mature Developer(s) Shift Up Publisher(s) Sony Interactive Entertainment Engine Unreal Engine 4
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PHYSICAL

Stellar Blade is an action-driven game from Shift Up, originally revealed as Project Eve. It follows the aforementioned Eve as she battles the alien Naytiba invaders, in a bid to reclaim the Earth for humanity.

Platform(s) PC, PS5 Powered by Expand Collapse