If you were to ask anyone to talk about Stellar Blade, there’s a pretty good chance that they’d talk about one thing — the oddly proportioned, but still conventionally attractive lead character. A lot has been said about her body shape, and the real-life body model for the character, and to be honest not all of the discussion around it has been particularly tasteful.

Some are going so far as to say that EVE — the main character of Stellar Blade — is some sort of saviour from the DEI (meaning Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) landscape that video games have found themselves in. One where modern main characters are apparently too ugly, or feature too many minorities, or something.

After all, 2023’s GOTY nominees Baldur’s Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, Resident Evil 4, and Spider-Man 2 was just full of notoriously ugly characters wasn’t it?

But this conversation isn’t just false, it turns out it’s actually pretty reductive, because it just so happens that Stellar Blade is more than eye candy. I’ve played the Demo, and beaten the optional boss that unlocks in the main menu afterwards. While many have been focusing on EVE’s character model, for better or for worse, I’m here to assure you that the game is… good? Surprisingly so in fact, at least assuming that the vertical slice given to us in the demo is representative of the entire game.

The first thing that stands out is how gorgeous the game is, and I don’t just mean the unsettlingly-pretty cast. Although that even extends to the lone male example in the demo, Adam, for whatever it’s worth. Stellar Blade’s direction is brilliant, with a shockingly wide variety of enemies just in the demo alone that occupy just about every area of ‘horrifying alien’ that you can picture. There’s a flying squid that looks like it could be related to the thing in the movie ‘Life’ for example. There’s big, dramatic bosses that feature flesh saws, or lightning swords in the case of the one that closed out the demo’s main area.

Then there’s the smaller, more delicate enemies designed to whittle down your health between checkpoints. Some will look vaguely humanoid, but with giant swords or maces built into their contorted bodies. Others look like Dead Space relatives, with pincers sprouting out of their torso midway through battle. Some of these hide as dead, ash versions of themselves so you never know (without hitting them first) which are going to suddenly turn into a real enemy.

All of them have a strong throughline, straddling the line between far fetched and believable. In the world that Stellar Blade sets up, these are incredibly dangerous creatures that wipe out EVE’s squad in the opening minutes, and both the visuals and sound design match up to this expectation brilliantly. I was most impressed with the variety, as almost none of the enemies seemed to borrow move sets or timings. I expect this variety to die down as the release version goes on, or perhaps suspect that the Demo might’ve been altered slightly to feature more enemy types than is normal, for the sake of demonstration.

Performance was good as well, especially when you consider how games like Suicide Squad, Starfield, and Dragon’s Dogma 2 are all restricted to a rather unsteady 30fps on console. Here there’s a Quality mode that prioritises resolution and graphical fidelity, a Performance mode that prioritises framerate above all else, and finally a Balanced mode that straddles the two.

I was sat in Balanced for the entire demo and didn’t really have any problems whatsoever. The game may look or perform better in the other two modes, but this happy medium works well, especially if you have VRR on your TV to support. Stellar Blade was buttery smooth in this mode, and I didn’t suffer with any combat issues as a result of lost frames or input delay. Though it’s worth noting that the demo was made up of linear sections, with some very light exploration bolted on. So I can’t rightly say whether this standard will hold up in the bigger, more open areas.

What you’re left with is a game that looks gorgeous, with cutscenes and animations a particular standout, but that also performs well. At least in these early hours. If the April release of Stellar Blade follows in a similar manner, this could be one of the more impressive console releases of the year from a technical standpoint.

The post-apocalyptic stylings of this distant Earth look great too, with rubble and damaged cars peppering the landscape, slowly being dominated by weeds and foliage. Civilisation on Earth has all but ceased, and while the visual design won’t surprise anyone (especially if they’ve played any other post-apocalyptic games) it’s still very, very pretty. The trailer at the end of the demo showcased a huge variety of environments that don’t look like this too, so there’s hopefully no risk of getting bored.

So how does it play then? A lot has been made of Stellar Blades action combat, especially in the mostly-positive previews that landed a week or two ago. Comparisons to Nier, Sekiro, Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, and more might’ve set alarm bells ringing in some people’s ears. Is Stellar Blade trying too much? Does it lack an identity? No to both of those questions. Stellar Blade instead manages to balance its undeniable inspirations in a rather entertaining, stylish package.

There’s the classic mix of light and heavy attacks that you’ll expect to see in every game like this. But there’s also a dodge that — unlike something like Dark Souls — doesn’t appear to feature i-frames. Instead hit-boxes come into play, relying on player reactions instead of game mechanics. There’s also a parrying ability that you’re encouraged to use constantly, much in the same way as Lies of P or Sekiro. These four abilities are the main points of combat, and where Stellar Blade can play like a hack and slash, it borrows a lot from soulslikes.

Not in terms of difficulty I should stress. Even the hardest boss I faced — unlocked in the main menu after beating the demo — only took me three or four attempts to beat. I only died a dozen times across the whole demo, usually while I tried to work out a brand new enemy. Stellar Blade may borrow mechanics from From Software — even down to Estus-like healing items and checkpoints that respawn enemies — but it doesn’t feel anywhere near as oppressive. In part this is down to the comprehensive skill tree that EVE has, but I’d still recommend that experienced players roll up the difficulty if that’s the experience you’re looking for.

Early on I struggled slightly with the tight parry windows, so I immediately unlocked an ability that made these more forgiving. Problem solved. Counter attacking after dodging an unblockable was difficult against faster enemies, so I unlocked a skill that allowed me to do a very cool teleport and lunge when the enemy tried using one. Problem solved.

Stellar Blade’s skill tree leans more into the flashy, DMC style moves and it adds a new flavour to what can be a stilted, frustrating system in lesser games. You aren’t restricted to the classic ‘attack — block — attack — dodge — block’ loop of so many action games over the last decade, and Shift Up has provided ample upgrades through the skill system that feel great. At least on first glance. In fact, once you have an attack pattern down against even a boss, you can dominate them pretty gleefully.

The final boss of the demo — a massive creature wielding dual swords that pull lightning down from the sky — killed me pretty handily a few times. But then I managed to beat him practically without taking a hit. The posture system (of sorts) will stun enemies when you land enough successful parries, and bosses have multiple posture bars. So, nail those parries and counters, and you can near-stunlock even the biggest enemies in the game.

It’s a huge rush, and I was laughing out loud at the sheer spectacle of the excellent animations, the excellent soundtrack — which is great across the demo by the way — and the QTEs that punctuate these bigger fights.

So the combat is good, what about everything else? Well there’s the obligatory ‘climb the yellow ledges’ exploration that’s in pretty much every third person game these days, and there was even one example of a water area where you had to push around a floating plank, The Last of Us style. This stuff is clunkier than I’d like, especially the water section, and any platforming with EVE feels like an educated guess at best. I lost health to plummeting into an abyss more than a few times, in part due to the fact that in-air control of EVE feels non-existent. Thankfully this doesn’t return you to the last checkpoint, unless you were already close to death.

It’s an odd contrast, where the combat feels almost pitch-perfect but the exploration and platforming feels clumsy at best. I found myself enjoying the former much more than the latter as a result, despite feeling at home swinging from yellow-coloured bars, or navigating an array of yellow ledges.

I haven’t mentioned voice acting, characters, or story at all yet and that’s mostly because the demo doesn’t give a lot away. EVE lands on Earth with a squad of fellow fighters, almost all of whom are promptly murdered. The rest of the demo is spent hunting a creature that killed your friend, and that’s about the sum of it. I tried the game in English dub — which does have dedicated lip syncing — and it seemed fine. I restarted in the Korean dub and found that to be much better, but I found it irritating to read subtitles while trying to parry attacks or explore so I’m not sure which will be best for native English speakers. Your mileage may vary I suppose, but I do commend the dedication to provide lip syncing for multiple languages.

Make no mistake, the highlight of Stellar Blade is the visuals and the combat. Both are excellent and the combat particularly seems to be perfectly at home replicating popular systems, and then making them fit Shift Up’s vision for their game with flashy, over the top moves and combos that defy the usual format of these types of games. I went from curious about Stellar Blade, but not a likely purchaser, to a nailed on day-one buy just thanks to Shift Up’s surprisingly comprehensive demo.

That says a lot about why demos are great, but more importantly demonstrates that Stellar Blade is more than meets the eye. EVE’s character design may be what’s attracting attention, but the game sports more substance than I could have predicted prior to sitting down with it.

If you were to ask anyone to talk about Stellar Blade, there’s a pretty good chance that they’d talk about one thing — the oddly proportioned, but still conventionally attractive lead character. A lot has been said about her body shape, and the real-life body model for the character, and to be honest not all of the discussion around it has been particularly tasteful.

Some are going so far as to say that EVE — the main character of Stellar Blade — is some sort of saviour from the DEI (meaning Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) landscape that video games have found themselves in. One where modern main characters are apparently too ugly, or feature too many minorities, or something.

After all, 2023’s GOTY nominees Baldur’s Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, Resident Evil 4, and Spider-Man 2 was just full of notoriously ugly characters wasn’t it?

But this conversation isn’t just false, it turns out it’s actually pretty reductive, because it just so happens that Stellar Blade is more than eye candy. I’ve played the Demo, and beaten the optional boss that unlocks in the main menu afterwards. While many have been focusing on EVE’s character model, for better or for worse, I’m here to assure you that the game is… good? Surprisingly so in fact, at least assuming that the vertical slice given to us in the demo is representative of the entire game.

The first thing that stands out is how gorgeous the game is, and I don’t just mean the unsettlingly-pretty cast. Although that even extends to the lone male example in the demo, Adam, for whatever it’s worth. Stellar Blade’s direction is brilliant, with a shockingly wide variety of enemies just in the demo alone that occupy just about every area of ‘horrifying alien’ that you can picture. There’s a flying squid that looks like it could be related to the thing in the movie ‘Life’ for example. There’s big, dramatic bosses that feature flesh saws, or lightning swords in the case of the one that closed out the demo’s main area.

Then there’s the smaller, more delicate enemies designed to whittle down your health between checkpoints. Some will look vaguely humanoid, but with giant swords or maces built into their contorted bodies. Others look like Dead Space relatives, with pincers sprouting out of their torso midway through battle. Some of these hide as dead, ash versions of themselves so you never know (without hitting them first) which are going to suddenly turn into a real enemy.

All of them have a strong throughline, straddling the line between far fetched and believable. In the world that Stellar Blade sets up, these are incredibly dangerous creatures that wipe out EVE’s squad in the opening minutes, and both the visuals and sound design match up to this expectation brilliantly. I was most impressed with the variety, as almost none of the enemies seemed to borrow move sets or timings. I expect this variety to die down as the release version goes on, or perhaps suspect that the Demo might’ve been altered slightly to feature more enemy types than is normal, for the sake of demonstration.

Performance was good as well, especially when you consider how games like Suicide Squad, Starfield, and Dragon’s Dogma 2 are all restricted to a rather unsteady 30fps on console. Here there’s a Quality mode that prioritises resolution and graphical fidelity, a Performance mode that prioritises framerate above all else, and finally a Balanced mode that straddles the two.

I was sat in Balanced for the entire demo and didn’t really have any problems whatsoever. The game may look or perform better in the other two modes, but this happy medium works well, especially if you have VRR on your TV to support. Stellar Blade was buttery smooth in this mode, and I didn’t suffer with any combat issues as a result of lost frames or input delay. Though it’s worth noting that the demo was made up of linear sections, with some very light exploration bolted on. So I can’t rightly say whether this standard will hold up in the bigger, more open areas.

What you’re left with is a game that looks gorgeous, with cutscenes and animations a particular standout, but that also performs well. At least in these early hours. If the April release of Stellar Blade follows in a similar manner, this could be one of the more impressive console releases of the year from a technical standpoint.

The post-apocalyptic stylings of this distant Earth look great too, with rubble and damaged cars peppering the landscape, slowly being dominated by weeds and foliage. Civilisation on Earth has all but ceased, and while the visual design won’t surprise anyone (especially if they’ve played any other post-apocalyptic games) it’s still very, very pretty. The trailer at the end of the demo showcased a huge variety of environments that don’t look like this too, so there’s hopefully no risk of getting bored.

So how does it play then? A lot has been made of Stellar Blades action combat, especially in the mostly-positive previews that landed a week or two ago. Comparisons to Nier, Sekiro, Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, and more might’ve set alarm bells ringing in some people’s ears. Is Stellar Blade trying too much? Does it lack an identity? No to both of those questions. Stellar Blade instead manages to balance its undeniable inspirations in a rather entertaining, stylish package.

There’s the classic mix of light and heavy attacks that you’ll expect to see in every game like this. But there’s also a dodge that — unlike something like Dark Souls — doesn’t appear to feature i-frames. Instead hit-boxes come into play, relying on player reactions instead of game mechanics. There’s also a parrying ability that you’re encouraged to use constantly, much in the same way as Lies of P or Sekiro. These four abilities are the main points of combat, and where Stellar Blade can play like a hack and slash, it borrows a lot from soulslikes.

Not in terms of difficulty I should stress. Even the hardest boss I faced — unlocked in the main menu after beating the demo — only took me three or four attempts to beat. I only died a dozen times across the whole demo, usually while I tried to work out a brand new enemy. Stellar Blade may borrow mechanics from From Software — even down to Estus-like healing items and checkpoints that respawn enemies — but it doesn’t feel anywhere near as oppressive. In part this is down to the comprehensive skill tree that EVE has, but I’d still recommend that experienced players roll up the difficulty if that’s the experience you’re looking for.

Early on I struggled slightly with the tight parry windows, so I immediately unlocked an ability that made these more forgiving. Problem solved. Counter attacking after dodging an unblockable was difficult against faster enemies, so I unlocked a skill that allowed me to do a very cool teleport and lunge when the enemy tried using one. Problem solved.

Stellar Blade’s skill tree leans more into the flashy, DMC style moves and it adds a new flavour to what can be a stilted, frustrating system in lesser games. You aren’t restricted to the classic ‘attack — block — attack — dodge — block’ loop of so many action games over the last decade, and Shift Up has provided ample upgrades through the skill system that feel great. At least on first glance. In fact, once you have an attack pattern down against even a boss, you can dominate them pretty gleefully.

The final boss of the demo — a massive creature wielding dual swords that pull lightning down from the sky — killed me pretty handily a few times. But then I managed to beat him practically without taking a hit. The posture system (of sorts) will stun enemies when you land enough successful parries, and bosses have multiple posture bars. So, nail those parries and counters, and you can near-stunlock even the biggest enemies in the game.

It’s a huge rush, and I was laughing out loud at the sheer spectacle of the excellent animations, the excellent soundtrack — which is great across the demo by the way — and the QTEs that punctuate these bigger fights.

So the combat is good, what about everything else? Well there’s the obligatory ‘climb the yellow ledges’ exploration that’s in pretty much every third person game these days, and there was even one example of a water area where you had to push around a floating plank, The Last of Us style. This stuff is clunkier than I’d like, especially the water section, and any platforming with EVE feels like an educated guess at best. I lost health to plummeting into an abyss more than a few times, in part due to the fact that in-air control of EVE feels non-existent. Thankfully this doesn’t return you to the last checkpoint, unless you were already close to death.

It’s an odd contrast, where the combat feels almost pitch-perfect but the exploration and platforming feels clumsy at best. I found myself enjoying the former much more than the latter as a result, despite feeling at home swinging from yellow-coloured bars, or navigating an array of yellow ledges.

I haven’t mentioned voice acting, characters, or story at all yet and that’s mostly because the demo doesn’t give a lot away. EVE lands on Earth with a squad of fellow fighters, almost all of whom are promptly murdered. The rest of the demo is spent hunting a creature that killed your friend, and that’s about the sum of it. I tried the game in English dub — which does have dedicated lip syncing — and it seemed fine. I restarted in the Korean dub and found that to be much better, but I found it irritating to read subtitles while trying to parry attacks or explore so I’m not sure which will be best for native English speakers. Your mileage may vary I suppose, but I do commend the dedication to provide lip syncing for multiple languages.

Make no mistake, the highlight of Stellar Blade is the visuals and the combat. Both are excellent and the combat particularly seems to be perfectly at home replicating popular systems, and then making them fit Shift Up’s vision for their game with flashy, over the top moves and combos that defy the usual format of these types of games. I went from curious about Stellar Blade, but not a likely purchaser, to a nailed on day-one buy just thanks to Shift Up’s surprisingly comprehensive demo.

That says a lot about why demos are great, but more importantly demonstrates that Stellar Blade is more than meets the eye. EVE’s character design may be what’s attracting attention, but the game sports more substance than I could have predicted prior to sitting down with it.