Six years after its initial announcement under the title Project Eve, Korean studio Shift Up’s magnum opus of an action title -Stellar Blade- is finally seeing the light of day. We had a hands-on with the upcoming PlayStation 5 title, which just so happens to fulfil the criteria of being an action game with some interesting design choices, as well as unique aesthetical ones.

After all, Shift Up is the studio formed by ex-Blade & Soul (and MagnaCarta) illustrator Kim Hyung-tae, whose art style depicts the female form in the most, how shall we say, curvaceous of ways. This is clearly emphasized in the game’s opening scene and sole level, complete with a boss fight for good measure.

Half-And-Half

As the subheader suggests, you play as a Colony soldier named Eve who ends up being rescued by a survivor after a botched dropzone mission, helping him out with multiple means of claiming back Earth. All the while, she will be combating against a horde of mutants called the Naytiba while exploring remnants of Earth. The demo we played offers three modes of presentation: Balanced, Performance, and Fidelity. You can already tell that the latter two are 60fps and 30fps with 4K respectively, with the first option being half-and-half. So far, the game seems to play really well with not much frame-dipping and sacrifice in fidelity via Balanced mode. And you can turn off Motion Blur, so that’s always a plus.

The demo allowed us to play through an area of Earth called Silent Street. The place is a bunch of ruins of a modern-day city, complete with alleyways and alcoves housing deadly enemy surprises and treasure. Eve can run, jump, swing from handlebar to handlebar to the other side, and find passcodes to unlock safes and password-protected doors. The main crux of Stellar Blade is the combat, and this is where things get a little spicy; not Nikke spicy (though there is that aspect I’ll touch upon). The game’s combat is a hybrid of Dark Souls/Elden Ring target-and-strafing sword-slinging style and Devil May Cry/Bayonetta high-flying attacks, theatrics, and mash-friendly inputs.

Enemies don’t hit as hard and as cheap like in From Software games, but they aren’t slouches and can take Eve down quickly if she’s careless. Parries and dodges have lenient timings, so even if you fail a couple of times at the start, you’ll get the hang of it with practice. You can even do a cool flash step-like teleport to get behind the enemy as a special move, but only when prompted and when you see an enemy’s super-strong and highlighted attack coming. And I didn’t include the other cool moves she can unlock, like her wave blade projectiles (activated by holding the L1 trigger and pressing the assigned face button) and other combo-centric moves from her weak and heavy attacks, as well as a diving jump attack that can take enemy shields down better.

Speaking of which, you come across cars with lit-up parts you can scrap for resources. As we alluded to earlier, Eve has a skill tree and equipment that contains all those abilities I’ve mentioned. I managed to get through most of the combat because of the diving jump attack, as well as the “flash step”. I’m not used to playing this hybrid of action RPG-slash-gaming, but I do welcome it. This came full circle when I came across the boss of the demo: a giant vertical smile-bearing Naytiba who fights with two axes. I dodged and blocked a lot of this monster’s attacks until he tried to land a special attack on me, which I countered with the flash step backstab move I unlocked earlier. While not that easy to deal with, I got through the fight with patience and baiting the opponent to pull off a big winding move, effectively letting me land a few powerful hits and blows until it was dead.

I do need more hours with Stellar Blade to see and gauge if the hybrid between both action genres works in the long term. As of now, the one-hour demo does give a good taste of things to come. With better crowd control moves (possibly unlocked in the full game), access to ranged weaponry, and more freedom of expression in combat, this Korean-made action title might end up as one of 2024’s dark horse titles. The eye candy provided by Shift Up’s brand of artwork brought to 3D life does help.

Stellar Blade will be out on 26 April exclusively for PlayStation 5.