Friday, March 29th, 2024, the world was gifted a gift from Sony and Shift Up, the Stellar Blade Demo. For those who remember, another demo for the title was released, only momentary, as if someone goofed up, and it was removed from the PlayStation store just as fast. However, for this demo, I was able to get some time to play through the Stellar Blade demo and some time with the boss challenge mode. Stellar Blade is a weirdly controversial title for the appearance of the main character, Eve. It also doesn’t help that it moved from a multi-platform game release to a PS5 exclusive once Sony got involved in the publishing side of the game in September 2022. Despite that, and after some time with the demo, I’m going to get to the question you may want to know: is the Stellar Blade demo a worthwhile experience?
Beginning The Game
Stellar Blade starts with a giant ship being bombarded by lasers on top of Earth in space. Then, escape pods are shot out before the ship gets destroyed. Turns out the lasers shooting at the ship were from the Naytiba, a race of monsters that have forced humanity away from the Earth. One of those pods houses the main character, Eve. She is part of the airborne squad that supports humanity, that are still living on Earth. Once on the ground, Eve finds the latch to get out of the pod busted. But another character, Tachy, comes to Eve’s and helps her escape her pod.
But as they leave and try to rush from the land to a safe space, a horde of Naytiba creatures appears and starts slaughtering the other members of the airborne squad.
As the creatures are killing the members of your unit, you and Tachy are running around and attacking and killing other Naytiba you find. This section of the game is the tutorial section, which teaches you to dodge, attack, and guard. There are fast attacks and strong attacks, and you can also mix things up by performing combos of fast attacks, a combo of strong attacks, or chaining them together into a customized combo of both.
One thing I noticed is how impactful your attacks feel. This isn’t a fast-paced action game like some were hoping it would be similar to Nier Automata or Devil May Cry. It is much more akin to Sekiro in terms of speed and purpose. Slower but more methodical combat. Each hit you take feels heavy, but your hits also feel heavy to the normal enemies around. It also teaches you to lock on to enemies, but I found that you shouldn’t use lock-on during fights with more than two enemies around you. You can lose track of the other enemy and have a surprise hit you.
A bit further into the demo, Eve and Tachy encounter a much bigger Naytiba creature that is demolishing their comrades, prompting the pair to take action and take the creature on themselves. This is where you learn how to parry, thanks to another tutorial. If you guard at the right time, you can parry and stun the big enemy, which gives you an opening to combo him. This is where the Sekiro comparisons come in. Pressing the block button (L1) at the right moment parries incoming attacks, and successfully parrying consecutive attacks will deplete the enemy’s parry meter, allowing you to deal a massive damage-dealing attack called the Retribution, that looks pretty cool in motion.
During the fight, it is revealed that the rest of your airborne squad is slaughtered, and you are the only two left of your unit. Then, Eve and Tachy’s teamwork kills the big enemy. As you celebrate the victory, an Alpha Naytiba, a really nasty creature, finds you and gets a clean hit on Eve, hurting her and forcing her to drop to the ground with Tachy protecting her. As the Naytiba creature is about to strike Eve again, Tachy intercepts the blow, becoming mortally wounded, and then dies. Before the creature gets the chance to kill Eve, she ends up being rescued by a person named Adam. Repairing Eve, however, takes up all the accumulated resources Adam has in stock, and now Eve has to help Adam, who wants to help her find and kill the Alpha who killed Tachy.
This is part of the demo where we get to explore more of Earth is state thanks to the Naytiba. There are tons of destroyed buildings and caved-in alleys. The place is barren aside from the Naytiba, which takes up a place in certain areas of the game. It is a post-apocalyptic Earth, alright. This is where we learn movement, skills, and eventually, how to build and activate camps around the world.
The skill tree has five main categories, with three available for us to look at. The three we get access to are survival, Beta, and Attack. Two are locked out for this demo. The beta skill tree is the skills you get access to by holding L1 and pressing a face button. Attack is your combos, and survival is your guarding and dodging skill tree.
Boss Challenge
The most interesting part of the demo is easily the Boss Challenge mode. This gives us access to a boss who is further along in the full game, with most of the skill tree unlocked. There are a few outfits and exo suits we can switch around to help us customize a build. I chose the reaction-based suit that increases the timing of parries and perfect dodges, and I had to fight the boss several times before I started getting the hang of figuring out the move set and combos I could use.
This was when the game clicked for me. There was a lot of purpose in the combat and a ton of satisfaction in mastering its systems, and being able to master the blink move or the counter after a perfect parry made me feel like I could do anything in this game. I would recommend doing the normal mode difficulty in the demo if just for the satisfaction of overcoming and demolishing a boss character once you learn how combat works.
I was able to record one of my fights with the boss! Be sure to watch it when you can!
Stellar Blade was a game I was looking forward to with the aesthetic it had going for it: the angels, the Naytiba, the destroyed Earth, and a lot of cool science fiction gadgets and machinery. This demo has made me look forward to the combat and the fun irony in learning that Adam and Eve are teaming up to bring life back to Earth.
Stellar Blade comes out on April 26th, 2024, on PlayStation 5.
