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There is undoubtedly a lot of excitement for Stellar Blade, SHIFT UP‘s AAA debut title, including many newcomers who may not be familiar with the studio’s work or looking to dip their toes into the next big action game with one badass waifu protagonist. The uniqueness of Stellar Blade comes not only from EVE, but also from the combat that merges elements from character action and Souls-like, which certainly require some understanding for players to master, including preparations that are no less important to ensure a more satisfying gaming experience.
For those looking to step into the fantastical and downright sexy world of Stellar Blade, we have prepared some beginner tips to help you get a head start in the early portions of the game, and we hope you get a highly rewarding experience through good preparations.
Settings to Tweak
First off, start with the settings, which are plentiful in tweaking your experience to your liking, but there are a few that enhance the experience greatly compared to the default settings. One particular setting that you should absolutely turn on is the Auto Loot Items option. Normally, you would need to pick up items manually by pressing R2, which gets tedious over time. But with the Auto Loot Items turned on, you no longer need to tap the R2 button repeatedly, which greatly quickens the pace of the game as you explore the post-apocalyptic Earth.
Aside from Auto Loot Items, there are a variety of useful options that will greatly enhance your gameplay experience, and they are as follows:
- Turn on Auto Loot Items from Settings → Gameplay.
- If you find the controller vibration distracting, you can adjust the intensity through Settings → Vibration.
- The game does have QTE segments, but since the timing is extremely generous, you may find it distracting to the experience. We recommend turning on the QTE Auto Success from Settings → Accessibility, sitting back, and enjoying some epic cutscenes.
- You cannot turn off the HUD completely, unfortunately, but the experience does feel a lot more immersive by setting the Show HUD option to Dynamic from Settings → Interface.
- If you find yourself distracted by EVE’s… long hair, you can adjust the length to Short through the Ponytail Length option from Settings → Gameplay.
- The game provides 3 different Graphics Mode from Settings → Display. While all of them work wonders, Balanced is the way to go, retaining smooth performance and stunning high-fidelity visuals.
Balanced Challenge
To the surprise of many, Stellar Blade’s gameplay and combat take more cues from Souls-like games than character action. This may raise concerns from players who may not be proficient at action titles with high-difficulty gaps, but Stellar Blade is quite a forgiving game. For example, you can play through the game in Story Mode, which makes the combat significantly easier as you enjoy the narrative. Even the standard difficulty, which is the Normal Mode, is still quite accessible, especially if you assign the right Exospine and Gears to EVE that suits your playstyle.
For example, there is one that makes it easier to perform well-timed Perfect Dodge and Parry, one that bolsters your ranged weapons, one that buff effects from consumable items, and so on. Seeking for tougher challenges, there is an option just to strip EVE to only have her wearing the Skin Suit, which lowers her defense significantly as she will not have armor to reduce incoming damage.
TAKE. IT. SLOW
Like other Souls-like, Stellar Blade’s combat can be quite slow and calculated, as you take some time to recover after performing certain actions, leaving EVE vulnerable. This is why you need to take the combat slow, calculate your movement, and anticipate enemy attacks before safely performing your combo. Is not that you cannot play aggressively, but it is far more difficult to do so, especially in the early portion of the game where you can’t recover much Beta energy or have fewer capabilities to consistently stagger enemies.
How to Engage
Knowing how to engage enemies is crucial when it comes to combat because some encounters can prove to be a challenge, even when dealing with only one foe at a time. The game gives plenty of options to take advantage of your surroundings to get the upper edge, such as baiting a horde of enemies to a nearby exploding barrel. But what if you have to deal with a horde without advantages? Then you can always bait one out for a duel, fighting one at a time to generate more Beta energy and take advantage of EVE’s robust selection of skills, especially ones with a wide attack range such as Slash.
Performing a Perfect Parry can also leave enemies in a daze and stop their relentless attack, opening up opportunities for you to retaliate with your own series of attacks. The same thing applies to Perfect Dodge, where you could follow up instantly with a fast counterattack by pressing △. But there are times when enemies would continue their onslaught without interruptions, so it is best to retreat to safety and keep a distance first.
Best Early Skills to Unlock
Stellar Blade is quite generous when it comes to allowing you to unlock a good variety of skills early on, and many players may instinctively only focus on unlocking new Beta skills. However, it is important to pick the right one for a smoother progression. Beta skills are important, especially Shockwave, which grants EVE early access to ranged options.
However, the Survival skill tree is equally as important, and we recommend focusing on them first, before branching out. Two of our most recommended skills to unlock as soon as you can are Focus Boost, which makes it easier to Perfect Parry incoming attacks, and Reflex Boost, which has a similar effect as the former but applies to Perfect Dodge instead. These two skills make enemy encounters much easier, especially great when you are trying to get in tune with the parry and dodging mechanics.
Here is the list of some of the early skills that you should consider unlocking first:
- Focus Boost – Makes it easier to use Perfect Parry.
- Reflex Boost – Makes it easier to use Perfect Dodge.
- Double Dodge – Allow another Dodge while dodging.
- Unlock all the Beta Skills – Slash, Shock Wave, Triplet, Shield Breaker
- Beta Energy Recharge for each Beta skill
Importance of Exploration
While the game has a more linear structure at the beginning, you may still easily miss some stuff as the hints and markers might lead you to full focus on the mission and not trying to explore the levels at your own pace. A thorough exploration could grant you access to more rare materials to upgrade EVE’s stats or craft new equipment, but do keep in mind, that there are puzzles and challenges that they would need to solve, and they can be tricky to figure out.
Things will only evolve once you arrive at Xion, where the game will transform into a semi-open world experience with many things to discover at every corner. Even simply collecting Cans, which seems trivial at first is important, since you can unlock some crucial benefits such as the amount of potions and consumables you can carry per rest.
Make the Best of the Equipment
There are three main equipment slots for EVE which are Exospine, Gear, and Exterior.
Specifically for Exospine, it’s the main module that determines the combat style and you can keep upgrading it to unlock more benefits. You won’t get much of this specific equipment early on, but picking the right combination could be crucial the further you progress into the game to determine the playstyle you prefer. Gear also has the same uses, except each piece comes with a fixed bonus effect and can’t be upgraded further, but you can equip several of them at the same time. Meanwhile, Exterior solely revolves around cosmetics such as costumes and accessories.
Training Mode
One of the best things about Stellar Blade is how the Skill Tree allows you to access the Training Mode to test out some new skills before brining them out of practice. This mode is especially useful when you are trying to master the ins and outs of combat or gain a better grasp of how to perform certain techniques.
For example, slick maneuvers to dodge enemy attacks or parry them can take some time to get used to, so it’s good to make use of the Training Mode. You can even tweak the settings to fit certain scenarios; let’s say, the enemy type you want to fight, and learn their attack behaviors. Worth noting that you can only access the Training Mode and unlock new skills while resting in Camp.
Don’t Forget to Stop by Supply Camp
Besides the normal Camps that you will often encounter throughout, sometimes you may find Supply Camps, which are expanded versions of the former that grant access to the Repair Console facility that allows you to further augment EVE’s stats, expand Gear sockets, or upgrade the Exospine and so on. You will eventually gather plenty of materials that are needed for some upgrades, so be sure to stop by these Supply Camps every now and then, especially before proceeding to a more treacherous area or going up against tougher adversaries.
And that’s the beginner’s guide to Stellar Blade, which is slated to launch exclusively on the PlayStation 5 on April 26, 2024.
In our 8.5/10 review, we described Stellar Blade as a “product of passion, a lovely combination of some of the best action games, rocked to the top with an incredible soundtrack, and boldly celebrates beauty and sexiness with EVE.”
