Stellar Blade

You're viewing the source. Log in to edit.

<above>
{{ Stellar Blade/Banner }}
</above>

{| style="max-width: 400px; width: 100%; border: 2px solid #C8CDD4; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| colspan="2" style="background: #000; text-align: center; padding: 10px 8px 12px 8px; border-bottom: 2px solid #C8CDD4;" |
<div style="color: #C8CDD4; font-weight: bold; font-size: 1.4em; margin: 3px 0 1px 0;">Stellar Blade</div>
<div style="color: #ffffff; font-size: 0.92em;">스텔라 블레이드</div>
|-
| colspan="2" style="text-align: center; padding: 0;" | ![[StellarBlade-main_cover.webp|alt=Stellar Blade cover art, showing Eve with her blade against a ruined skyline]]
|- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;"
! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center; width: 36%;" | Developer
| Shift Up<ref name="psgame">"Stellar Blade™ – PS5 Games." ''PlayStation.com'' (official). [https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/stellar-blade/ playstation.com/en-us/games/stellar-blade]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref>
|- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;"
! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Publisher
| Sony Interactive Entertainment<ref name="psgame" />
|- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;"
! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Director
| Kim Hyung-tae<ref name="gamesradar">Kim Hyung-tae, interviewed by ''GamesRadar+'', February 2024.</ref>
|- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;"
! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Music
| Stellar Blade Sound Team, including Oliver Good and Keita Inoue<ref name="rpgfan">White, Rob. "Stellar Blade Original Soundtrack — Music Review." ''RPGFan'', 2024. [https://www.rpgfan.com/music-review/stellar-blade-original-soundtrack/ rpgfan.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref>
|- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;"
! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Engine
| Unreal Engine 4<ref name="80lv-ue4">"The PC Version of Stellar Blade Will be Powered by Unreal Engine 4.26." ''80 Level'', 2025. [https://80.lv/articles/the-pc-version-of-stellar-blade-will-be-powered-by-unreal-eninge-4-26 80.lv]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref>
|- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;"
! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Platforms
| PlayStation 5<br>Windows<br>Nintendo Switch 2 (announced)<ref name="psgame" /><ref name="vgc-switch">"Stellar Blade is coming to Switch 2 later this year." ''Video Games Chronicle'', 2026. [https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/stellar-blade-is-coming-to-switch-2-later-this-year/ videogameschronicle.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref>
|- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;"
! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Released
| April 26, 2024 (PlayStation 5)<br>June 11, 2025 (Windows)<ref name="psgame" /><ref name="forbes-sales">Tassi, Paul. "'Stellar Blade' Rockets To A Million PC Sales In Three Days." ''Forbes'', June 16, 2025. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/06/16/stellar-blade-rockets-to-a-million-pc-sales-in-three-days/ forbes.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref>
|- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;"
! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Genre
| Action-adventure, hack and slash<ref name="psgame" />
|-
! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Mode
| Single-player<ref name="psgame" />
|}

'''''Stellar Blade''''' (스텔라 블레이드) is a 2024 action-adventure game developed by the South Korean studio Shift Up and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was released for PlayStation 5 on April 26, 2024 and for Windows on June 11, 2025, and is Shift Up's first console title after a decade of mobile development.<ref name="psgame" /><ref name="forbes-sales" />

The player controls [[Stellar Blade/Eve|Eve]], a soldier dropped from an off-world Colony onto an Earth overrun by creatures called the [[Stellar Blade/Naytiba|Naytiba]], with orders to wipe them out and reclaim the planet.<ref name="psgame" /> What the game is actually about is what she learns on the way — the official description promises that "her values and everything she has held true to this point are about to be questioned".<ref name="psgame" />

''Stellar Blade'' was directed by Kim Hyung-tae, Shift Up's founder, who also designed Eve.<ref name="gamesradar" /> It drew broadly favourable reviews, an unusually public argument over its protagonist's design, a clean sweep of the 2024 Korea Game Awards, and sales past three million copies by mid-2025.<ref name="opencritic">"Stellar Blade Reviews." ''OpenCritic''. [https://opencritic.com/game/16510/stellar-blade opencritic.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref><ref name="kga">"PS5's Stellar Blade Sweeps All Seven Categories at Korea Game Awards." ''Push Square'', November 2024. [https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2024/11/ps5s-stellar-blade-sweeps-all-seven-categories-at-korea-game-awards pushsquare.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref><ref name="forbes-sales" /> A sequel, ''[[Stellar Blade: Blood Rain]]'', was announced in June 2026.<ref name="gi-bloodrain">"Shift Up Announces Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, A Sequel Currently In Development." ''Game Informer'', June 5, 2026. [https://gameinformer.com/2026/06/05/shift-up-announces-stellar-blade-blood-rain-a-sequel-currently-in-development gameinformer.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref>

== Gameplay ==

''Stellar Blade'' is a third-person action game built around melee swordplay. Eve fights with a single-edged blade, and the combat is defensive at its core: rather than trading damage, the player is pushed to parry and perfect-dodge incoming attacks, which builds the Beta and Burst gauges that pay for her heavier skills.<ref name="game">''Stellar Blade'' (Shift Up / Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2024).</ref> Enemy attacks are colour-flagged for the responses that beat them, and boss fights in particular are built as long call-and-response patterns rather than damage races.<ref name="game" />

Outside combat, Eve is customised through exospines and gear cores that reshape her gauges and passive abilities, and accompanied by a drone that provides ranged fire, a grapple line and an environmental scanner.<ref name="game" /> The world is a series of large connected areas rather than an open map — the ruins of Eidos 7, the Great Desert, the Wasteland Abyss — with the surviving city of [[Stellar Blade/Xion|Xion]] as a hub where side quests, vendors and the game's few civilians live.<ref name="game" /> Dozens of alternative nano suits, hairstyles and accessories are unlocked across the game as collectibles.<ref name="psgame" />

Reviewers singled out the combat system as the game's strongest element, praising its fluidity and its boss encounters while judging its role-playing systems comparatively thin.<ref name="opencritic" />

== Setting and characters ==

Earth has been abandoned. Overrun by the Naytiba, the surviving human population fled to an orbital Colony, from which airborne squads are periodically dropped to retake the planet.<ref name="psgame" /> Eve arrives with the [[Stellar Blade/7th Airborne Squad|7th Airborne Squad]] under the command of [[Stellar Blade/Tachy|Tachy]]; the drop goes badly, and Eve is left as effectively the last soldier standing.<ref name="prologue">''Stellar Blade'', prologue: the descent on Eidos 7 (Shift Up / Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2024).</ref>

She is taken in by [[Stellar Blade/Adam|Adam]], a scavenger who knows the wasteland far better than any briefing prepared her for, and by [[Stellar Blade/Lily|Lily]], an engineer from an earlier squad who keeps Eve's equipment running. Xion's residents, who call Eve "Angel", are the human stakes the mission acquires as it goes on.<ref name="psgame" /> [[Stellar Blade/Raven|Raven]], a soldier from the earlier 2nd Airborne Squad, moves against her, and the Colony's governing intelligence, [[Stellar Blade/Mother Sphere|Mother Sphere]], directs the war from orbit.<ref name="lategame">''Stellar Blade'', main scenario (Shift Up / Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2024).</ref>

== Plot ==

The opening is straightforward and public — it is the content of the free demo. The 7th Airborne Squad's drop on Eidos 7 is torn apart, Tachy dies shielding Eve from a Naytiba the squad was never equipped to fight, and the title card cuts in over the moment. Eve wakes in Adam's care and takes up the mission alone, working outward from Xion and recovering the hyper cells that keep the city alive.<ref name="prologue" /><ref name="psblog">"Stellar Blade demo arrives March 29." ''PlayStation.Blog'' (official). [https://blog.playstation.com/2024/03/25/stellar-blade-demo-arrives-march-29/ blog.playstation.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref>

Everything past that point is a major spoiler, including the game's three endings.

{{Collapse|text="'''[ Spoilers — full plot and endings ▾ ]'''"|color="#C8CDD4"|style="width:100%; text-align: left;"}}
|-
| The war Eve was sent to fight is the reverse of what she was told. Eve and every other airborne soldier is an Andro-Eidos — an artificial being, engineered past human limits and never informed of it. The Naytiba are what became of Earth's actual human population after a forced-evolution project run by the scientist Raphael Marks. Mother Sphere, the supercomputer Marks built, came to regard the Andro-Eidos as humanity's proper successor, moved to eliminate the humans outright, and then rewrote the record so that the Colony's androids believed themselves the survivors of a war against monsters.<ref name="endgame">''Stellar Blade'', late-game scenario and endings (Shift Up / Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2024).</ref>
|-
| Adam is Raphael Marks — the first Naytiba, the only one to keep his mind, and the man responsible for both sides of the war. The repeated squad deployments are the EVE Protocol, a cycle Mother Sphere runs to keep the Naytiba suppressed and her own version of history standing.<ref name="endgame" />
|-
| Raven reached these conclusions before Eve did and broke under them. Passed over by Adam in favour of Eve, she attacked Xion and slaughtered its people; she is also the one who implanted an Alpha Core into Tachy's corpse and set her against Eve at Matrix 11. Defeating Tachy leaves Eve with the Tachyon Blade and Tachy Mode.<ref name="endgame" />
|-
| The game ends three ways. In ''Colony'', Eve refuses Adam's offer and kills him: the Naytiba end with him, but Mother Sphere's plan and her lie both survive intact. In ''Cost of New Memories'', Eve accepts fusion with Adam and is forced to fight the Providence exosuit, which Mother Sphere pilots remotely through Lily; Lily dies. In ''Making New Memories'', reachable only with Lily's relationship fully built up, Lily breaks free of Providence's control, both survive, the last hyper cell wakes Xion's sleeping citizens, and Eve remains on Earth as the city's protector.<ref name="endgame" />
{{Endcollapse}}

== Development ==

Shift Up was founded by Kim Hyung-tae, who had spent eight years at NCsoft as an illustrator on the ''Magna Carta'' series and latterly as art director on ''Blade & Soul'' before leaving the company in January 2014.<ref name="kotaku-kim">Ashcraft, Brian. "One Of Korea's Most Talented Game Artists Is Leaving NCsoft." ''Kotaku'', January 2014. [https://kotaku.com/one-of-koreas-most-talented-game-artists-leaving-ncsoft-1497760897 kotaku.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> The studio he built spent its first years on mobile titles, and ''Stellar Blade'' was its move to console. Shift Up first announced the project in April 2019 without showing much of it; it surfaced properly at the PlayStation Showcase in September 2021 under the codename ''Project Eve'', and was retitled ''Stellar Blade'' when it returned at a State of Play in September 2022 — the codename having never been the intended title, though the protagonist kept the name.<ref name="gamerant-history">"Stellar Blade: The History of Project Eve." ''Game Rant'', 2023. [https://gamerant.com/stellar-blade-project-eve-development/ gamerant.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref>

Kim drew the first version of Eve in 2020, a sketch he later shared labelled "First EVE"; the design that shipped kept its core while trading a checkered chest pattern for white and green, replacing cape-like extensions with shoulder drapes, simplifying the gloves and reducing the braided hair to a ponytail.<ref name="automaton">"Stellar Blade director Hyung-Tae Kim unveils protagonist Eve's first design." ''AUTOMATON WEST'', 2024. [https://automaton-media.com/en/news/stellar-blade-director-hyung-tae-kim-unveils-protagonist-eves-first-design/ automaton-media.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> The character's body was produced from 3D scans of the Korean model Shin Jae-eun, with the face built by the development team.<ref name="tg-design">"Why Is Stellar Blade's Design So Controversial?" ''TheGamer'', 2024. [https://www.thegamer.com/stellar-blade-eve-character-design-model/ thegamer.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref>

The game was built in Unreal Engine 4, a choice the studio carried through to the PC port: rather than move the project to Unreal Engine 5, the Windows version shipped on version 4.26 of the older engine.<ref name="80lv-ue4" />

The soundtrack was produced by a large in-house and freelance team credited as the Stellar Blade Sound Team, with Oliver Good and Keita Inoue among the composers and arrangers. Running to 189 tracks across more than ten hours and moving between electronic, ambient, rock and jazz, it was received as one of the standout game soundtracks of its year.<ref name="rpgfan" />

== Release ==

A free demo covering the opening of the game through its first boss fight was released on March 29, 2024, ahead of the April 26 launch on PlayStation 5.<ref name="psblog" /> Post-launch support ran for more than a year: a PlayStation 5 Pro enhancement update, a photo mode, and two substantial crossovers.

The ''NieR:Automata'' collaboration arrived as paid downloadable content on November 20, 2024, designed jointly by Kim Hyung-tae and Yoko Taro, adding outfits that turn Eve into 2B and A2 among other items.<ref name="nierdlc">''Stellar Blade x NieR:Automata'' downloadable content (Shift Up / Sony Interactive Entertainment, November 20, 2024).</ref> A ''Goddess of Victory: Nikke'' expansion followed on June 11, 2025 alongside the Windows release, adding shooting missions, a boss encounter and further outfits drawn from Shift Up's own mobile game.<ref name="nikkedlc">''Stellar Blade x Goddess of Victory: NIKKE'' downloadable content (Shift Up / Sony Interactive Entertainment, June 11, 2025).</ref> A Nintendo Switch 2 version was subsequently announced.<ref name="vgc-switch" />

== Reception ==

''Stellar Blade'' was received favourably, holding a top-critic average of 81 on OpenCritic with 81% of critics recommending it across some 168 reviews.<ref name="opencritic" /> The consensus was consistent: the combat and boss design were widely praised as fluid and rewarding, the visual presentation was treated as a genuine technical showcase for the platform, and the story and role-playing systems were judged the weaker halves of the package.<ref name="opencritic" />

The louder conversation was about Eve's design rather than the game's mechanics. Supporters argued that the styling is a coherent authorial choice with plenty of precedent in the medium, and noted that the body being called anatomically impossible was scanned from a living person; critics held that a protagonist framed to be viewed from behind and dressed through dozens of unlockable costumes sits in a long tradition of treating women as decoration.<ref name="tg-design" /><ref name="denofgeek">"How Stellar Blade Became 2024's Most Controversial Game." ''Den of Geek'', February 16, 2024. [https://www.denofgeek.com/games/stellar-blade-controversy-explained/ denofgeek.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> Kim's own framing — that he plays games to see something "more ideal" rather than something normal — was read by each side as confirming its case.<ref name="gamesradar" /> Den of Geek's account concluded that the game had become a lightning rod for arguments people were already having, with relatively little of the discussion actually concerning ''Stellar Blade''.<ref name="denofgeek" />

=== Commercial performance and awards ===

The game passed one million units within roughly two months of its PlayStation 5 launch, and three million across platforms by June 2025 — a figure reached when the Windows version sold a million copies in its first three days and peaked above 190,000 concurrent players on Steam.<ref name="forbes-sales" /><ref name="vice-sales">"As 'Stellar Blade' Reaches 3 Million Sales, Shift Up CEO Rewards All 300 Employees With a Switch 2." ''Vice'', June 2025. [https://www.vice.com/en/article/as-stellar-blade-reaches-3-million-sales-shift-up-ceo-rewards-all-300-employees-with-a-switch-2/ vice.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref>

At the 2024 Korea Game Awards in November, ''Stellar Blade'' swept all seven categories it was eligible for, among them the grand prize, Best Developer and the popularity award.<ref name="kga" /> It went on to nominations at The Game Awards, the D.I.C.E. Awards and the BAFTA Games Awards.<ref name="kga" />

== Sequel ==

Shift Up confirmed a sequel in development in 2025, and revealed it as ''[[Stellar Blade: Blood Rain]]'' at Summer Game Fest on June 5, 2026. The reveal trailer introduced a new protagonist, Evie, who fights unarmed rather than with a blade; the game was announced for PlayStation 5 and PC with no release window given.<ref name="gi-bloodrain" /><ref name="vice-sales" />

== See also ==

* [[Stellar Blade/Eve|Eve]]
* [[Stellar Blade/Tachy|Tachy]]
* [[Stellar Blade/Naytiba|Naytiba]]
* [[Stellar Blade/Xion|Xion]]
* [[Stellar Blade/7th Airborne Squad|7th Airborne Squad]]
* [[Stellar Blade: Blood Rain]]

Loading editor…

<above> {{ Stellar Blade/Banner }} </above> {| style="max-width: 400px; width: 100%; border: 2px solid #C8CDD4; border-collapse: collapse;" |- | colspan="2" style="background: #000; text-align: center; padding: 10px 8px 12px 8px; border-bottom: 2px solid #C8CDD4;" | <div style="color: #C8CDD4; font-weight: bold; font-size: 1.4em; margin: 3px 0 1px 0;">Stellar Blade</div> <div style="color: #ffffff; font-size: 0.92em;">스텔라 블레이드</div> |- | colspan="2" style="text-align: center; padding: 0;" | ![[StellarBlade-main_cover.webp|alt=Stellar Blade cover art, showing Eve with her blade against a ruined skyline]] |- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" ! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center; width: 36%;" | Developer | Shift Up<ref name="psgame">"Stellar Blade™ – PS5 Games." ''PlayStation.com'' (official). [https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/stellar-blade/ playstation.com/en-us/games/stellar-blade]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> |- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" ! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Publisher | Sony Interactive Entertainment<ref name="psgame" /> |- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" ! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Director | Kim Hyung-tae<ref name="gamesradar">Kim Hyung-tae, interviewed by ''GamesRadar+'', February 2024.</ref> |- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" ! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Music | Stellar Blade Sound Team, including Oliver Good and Keita Inoue<ref name="rpgfan">White, Rob. "Stellar Blade Original Soundtrack — Music Review." ''RPGFan'', 2024. [https://www.rpgfan.com/music-review/stellar-blade-original-soundtrack/ rpgfan.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> |- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" ! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Engine | Unreal Engine 4<ref name="80lv-ue4">"The PC Version of Stellar Blade Will be Powered by Unreal Engine 4.26." ''80 Level'', 2025. [https://80.lv/articles/the-pc-version-of-stellar-blade-will-be-powered-by-unreal-eninge-4-26 80.lv]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> |- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" ! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Platforms | PlayStation 5<br>Windows<br>Nintendo Switch 2 (announced)<ref name="psgame" /><ref name="vgc-switch">"Stellar Blade is coming to Switch 2 later this year." ''Video Games Chronicle'', 2026. [https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/stellar-blade-is-coming-to-switch-2-later-this-year/ videogameschronicle.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> |- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" ! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Released | April 26, 2024 (PlayStation 5)<br>June 11, 2025 (Windows)<ref name="psgame" /><ref name="forbes-sales">Tassi, Paul. "'Stellar Blade' Rockets To A Million PC Sales In Three Days." ''Forbes'', June 16, 2025. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/06/16/stellar-blade-rockets-to-a-million-pc-sales-in-three-days/ forbes.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> |- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #e6e9ec;" darkstyle="border-color: #2c2c2e;" ! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Genre | Action-adventure, hack and slash<ref name="psgame" /> |- ! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #C8CDD4; text-align: center;" | Mode | Single-player<ref name="psgame" /> |} '''''Stellar Blade''''' (스텔라 블레이드) is a 2024 action-adventure game developed by the South Korean studio Shift Up and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was released for PlayStation 5 on April 26, 2024 and for Windows on June 11, 2025, and is Shift Up's first console title after a decade of mobile development.<ref name="psgame" /><ref name="forbes-sales" /> The player controls [[Stellar Blade/Eve|Eve]], a soldier dropped from an off-world Colony onto an Earth overrun by creatures called the [[Stellar Blade/Naytiba|Naytiba]], with orders to wipe them out and reclaim the planet.<ref name="psgame" /> What the game is actually about is what she learns on the way — the official description promises that "her values and everything she has held true to this point are about to be questioned".<ref name="psgame" /> ''Stellar Blade'' was directed by Kim Hyung-tae, Shift Up's founder, who also designed Eve.<ref name="gamesradar" /> It drew broadly favourable reviews, an unusually public argument over its protagonist's design, a clean sweep of the 2024 Korea Game Awards, and sales past three million copies by mid-2025.<ref name="opencritic">"Stellar Blade Reviews." ''OpenCritic''. [https://opencritic.com/game/16510/stellar-blade opencritic.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref><ref name="kga">"PS5's Stellar Blade Sweeps All Seven Categories at Korea Game Awards." ''Push Square'', November 2024. [https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2024/11/ps5s-stellar-blade-sweeps-all-seven-categories-at-korea-game-awards pushsquare.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref><ref name="forbes-sales" /> A sequel, ''[[Stellar Blade: Blood Rain]]'', was announced in June 2026.<ref name="gi-bloodrain">"Shift Up Announces Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, A Sequel Currently In Development." ''Game Informer'', June 5, 2026. [https://gameinformer.com/2026/06/05/shift-up-announces-stellar-blade-blood-rain-a-sequel-currently-in-development gameinformer.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> == Gameplay == ''Stellar Blade'' is a third-person action game built around melee swordplay. Eve fights with a single-edged blade, and the combat is defensive at its core: rather than trading damage, the player is pushed to parry and perfect-dodge incoming attacks, which builds the Beta and Burst gauges that pay for her heavier skills.<ref name="game">''Stellar Blade'' (Shift Up / Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2024).</ref> Enemy attacks are colour-flagged for the responses that beat them, and boss fights in particular are built as long call-and-response patterns rather than damage races.<ref name="game" /> Outside combat, Eve is customised through exospines and gear cores that reshape her gauges and passive abilities, and accompanied by a drone that provides ranged fire, a grapple line and an environmental scanner.<ref name="game" /> The world is a series of large connected areas rather than an open map — the ruins of Eidos 7, the Great Desert, the Wasteland Abyss — with the surviving city of [[Stellar Blade/Xion|Xion]] as a hub where side quests, vendors and the game's few civilians live.<ref name="game" /> Dozens of alternative nano suits, hairstyles and accessories are unlocked across the game as collectibles.<ref name="psgame" /> Reviewers singled out the combat system as the game's strongest element, praising its fluidity and its boss encounters while judging its role-playing systems comparatively thin.<ref name="opencritic" /> == Setting and characters == Earth has been abandoned. Overrun by the Naytiba, the surviving human population fled to an orbital Colony, from which airborne squads are periodically dropped to retake the planet.<ref name="psgame" /> Eve arrives with the [[Stellar Blade/7th Airborne Squad|7th Airborne Squad]] under the command of [[Stellar Blade/Tachy|Tachy]]; the drop goes badly, and Eve is left as effectively the last soldier standing.<ref name="prologue">''Stellar Blade'', prologue: the descent on Eidos 7 (Shift Up / Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2024).</ref> She is taken in by [[Stellar Blade/Adam|Adam]], a scavenger who knows the wasteland far better than any briefing prepared her for, and by [[Stellar Blade/Lily|Lily]], an engineer from an earlier squad who keeps Eve's equipment running. Xion's residents, who call Eve "Angel", are the human stakes the mission acquires as it goes on.<ref name="psgame" /> [[Stellar Blade/Raven|Raven]], a soldier from the earlier 2nd Airborne Squad, moves against her, and the Colony's governing intelligence, [[Stellar Blade/Mother Sphere|Mother Sphere]], directs the war from orbit.<ref name="lategame">''Stellar Blade'', main scenario (Shift Up / Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2024).</ref> == Plot == The opening is straightforward and public — it is the content of the free demo. The 7th Airborne Squad's drop on Eidos 7 is torn apart, Tachy dies shielding Eve from a Naytiba the squad was never equipped to fight, and the title card cuts in over the moment. Eve wakes in Adam's care and takes up the mission alone, working outward from Xion and recovering the hyper cells that keep the city alive.<ref name="prologue" /><ref name="psblog">"Stellar Blade demo arrives March 29." ''PlayStation.Blog'' (official). [https://blog.playstation.com/2024/03/25/stellar-blade-demo-arrives-march-29/ blog.playstation.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> Everything past that point is a major spoiler, including the game's three endings. {{Collapse|text="'''[ Spoilers — full plot and endings ▾ ]'''"|color="#C8CDD4"|style="width:100%; text-align: left;"}} |- | The war Eve was sent to fight is the reverse of what she was told. Eve and every other airborne soldier is an Andro-Eidos — an artificial being, engineered past human limits and never informed of it. The Naytiba are what became of Earth's actual human population after a forced-evolution project run by the scientist Raphael Marks. Mother Sphere, the supercomputer Marks built, came to regard the Andro-Eidos as humanity's proper successor, moved to eliminate the humans outright, and then rewrote the record so that the Colony's androids believed themselves the survivors of a war against monsters.<ref name="endgame">''Stellar Blade'', late-game scenario and endings (Shift Up / Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2024).</ref> |- | Adam is Raphael Marks — the first Naytiba, the only one to keep his mind, and the man responsible for both sides of the war. The repeated squad deployments are the EVE Protocol, a cycle Mother Sphere runs to keep the Naytiba suppressed and her own version of history standing.<ref name="endgame" /> |- | Raven reached these conclusions before Eve did and broke under them. Passed over by Adam in favour of Eve, she attacked Xion and slaughtered its people; she is also the one who implanted an Alpha Core into Tachy's corpse and set her against Eve at Matrix 11. Defeating Tachy leaves Eve with the Tachyon Blade and Tachy Mode.<ref name="endgame" /> |- | The game ends three ways. In ''Colony'', Eve refuses Adam's offer and kills him: the Naytiba end with him, but Mother Sphere's plan and her lie both survive intact. In ''Cost of New Memories'', Eve accepts fusion with Adam and is forced to fight the Providence exosuit, which Mother Sphere pilots remotely through Lily; Lily dies. In ''Making New Memories'', reachable only with Lily's relationship fully built up, Lily breaks free of Providence's control, both survive, the last hyper cell wakes Xion's sleeping citizens, and Eve remains on Earth as the city's protector.<ref name="endgame" /> {{Endcollapse}} == Development == Shift Up was founded by Kim Hyung-tae, who had spent eight years at NCsoft as an illustrator on the ''Magna Carta'' series and latterly as art director on ''Blade & Soul'' before leaving the company in January 2014.<ref name="kotaku-kim">Ashcraft, Brian. "One Of Korea's Most Talented Game Artists Is Leaving NCsoft." ''Kotaku'', January 2014. [https://kotaku.com/one-of-koreas-most-talented-game-artists-leaving-ncsoft-1497760897 kotaku.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> The studio he built spent its first years on mobile titles, and ''Stellar Blade'' was its move to console. Shift Up first announced the project in April 2019 without showing much of it; it surfaced properly at the PlayStation Showcase in September 2021 under the codename ''Project Eve'', and was retitled ''Stellar Blade'' when it returned at a State of Play in September 2022 — the codename having never been the intended title, though the protagonist kept the name.<ref name="gamerant-history">"Stellar Blade: The History of Project Eve." ''Game Rant'', 2023. [https://gamerant.com/stellar-blade-project-eve-development/ gamerant.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> Kim drew the first version of Eve in 2020, a sketch he later shared labelled "First EVE"; the design that shipped kept its core while trading a checkered chest pattern for white and green, replacing cape-like extensions with shoulder drapes, simplifying the gloves and reducing the braided hair to a ponytail.<ref name="automaton">"Stellar Blade director Hyung-Tae Kim unveils protagonist Eve's first design." ''AUTOMATON WEST'', 2024. [https://automaton-media.com/en/news/stellar-blade-director-hyung-tae-kim-unveils-protagonist-eves-first-design/ automaton-media.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> The character's body was produced from 3D scans of the Korean model Shin Jae-eun, with the face built by the development team.<ref name="tg-design">"Why Is Stellar Blade's Design So Controversial?" ''TheGamer'', 2024. [https://www.thegamer.com/stellar-blade-eve-character-design-model/ thegamer.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> The game was built in Unreal Engine 4, a choice the studio carried through to the PC port: rather than move the project to Unreal Engine 5, the Windows version shipped on version 4.26 of the older engine.<ref name="80lv-ue4" /> The soundtrack was produced by a large in-house and freelance team credited as the Stellar Blade Sound Team, with Oliver Good and Keita Inoue among the composers and arrangers. Running to 189 tracks across more than ten hours and moving between electronic, ambient, rock and jazz, it was received as one of the standout game soundtracks of its year.<ref name="rpgfan" /> == Release == A free demo covering the opening of the game through its first boss fight was released on March 29, 2024, ahead of the April 26 launch on PlayStation 5.<ref name="psblog" /> Post-launch support ran for more than a year: a PlayStation 5 Pro enhancement update, a photo mode, and two substantial crossovers. The ''NieR:Automata'' collaboration arrived as paid downloadable content on November 20, 2024, designed jointly by Kim Hyung-tae and Yoko Taro, adding outfits that turn Eve into 2B and A2 among other items.<ref name="nierdlc">''Stellar Blade x NieR:Automata'' downloadable content (Shift Up / Sony Interactive Entertainment, November 20, 2024).</ref> A ''Goddess of Victory: Nikke'' expansion followed on June 11, 2025 alongside the Windows release, adding shooting missions, a boss encounter and further outfits drawn from Shift Up's own mobile game.<ref name="nikkedlc">''Stellar Blade x Goddess of Victory: NIKKE'' downloadable content (Shift Up / Sony Interactive Entertainment, June 11, 2025).</ref> A Nintendo Switch 2 version was subsequently announced.<ref name="vgc-switch" /> == Reception == ''Stellar Blade'' was received favourably, holding a top-critic average of 81 on OpenCritic with 81% of critics recommending it across some 168 reviews.<ref name="opencritic" /> The consensus was consistent: the combat and boss design were widely praised as fluid and rewarding, the visual presentation was treated as a genuine technical showcase for the platform, and the story and role-playing systems were judged the weaker halves of the package.<ref name="opencritic" /> The louder conversation was about Eve's design rather than the game's mechanics. Supporters argued that the styling is a coherent authorial choice with plenty of precedent in the medium, and noted that the body being called anatomically impossible was scanned from a living person; critics held that a protagonist framed to be viewed from behind and dressed through dozens of unlockable costumes sits in a long tradition of treating women as decoration.<ref name="tg-design" /><ref name="denofgeek">"How Stellar Blade Became 2024's Most Controversial Game." ''Den of Geek'', February 16, 2024. [https://www.denofgeek.com/games/stellar-blade-controversy-explained/ denofgeek.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> Kim's own framing — that he plays games to see something "more ideal" rather than something normal — was read by each side as confirming its case.<ref name="gamesradar" /> Den of Geek's account concluded that the game had become a lightning rod for arguments people were already having, with relatively little of the discussion actually concerning ''Stellar Blade''.<ref name="denofgeek" /> === Commercial performance and awards === The game passed one million units within roughly two months of its PlayStation 5 launch, and three million across platforms by June 2025 — a figure reached when the Windows version sold a million copies in its first three days and peaked above 190,000 concurrent players on Steam.<ref name="forbes-sales" /><ref name="vice-sales">"As 'Stellar Blade' Reaches 3 Million Sales, Shift Up CEO Rewards All 300 Employees With a Switch 2." ''Vice'', June 2025. [https://www.vice.com/en/article/as-stellar-blade-reaches-3-million-sales-shift-up-ceo-rewards-all-300-employees-with-a-switch-2/ vice.com]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref> At the 2024 Korea Game Awards in November, ''Stellar Blade'' swept all seven categories it was eligible for, among them the grand prize, Best Developer and the popularity award.<ref name="kga" /> It went on to nominations at The Game Awards, the D.I.C.E. Awards and the BAFTA Games Awards.<ref name="kga" /> == Sequel == Shift Up confirmed a sequel in development in 2025, and revealed it as ''[[Stellar Blade: Blood Rain]]'' at Summer Game Fest on June 5, 2026. The reveal trailer introduced a new protagonist, Evie, who fights unarmed rather than with a blade; the game was announced for PlayStation 5 and PC with no release window given.<ref name="gi-bloodrain" /><ref name="vice-sales" /> == See also == * [[Stellar Blade/Eve|Eve]] * [[Stellar Blade/Tachy|Tachy]] * [[Stellar Blade/Naytiba|Naytiba]] * [[Stellar Blade/Xion|Xion]] * [[Stellar Blade/7th Airborne Squad|7th Airborne Squad]] * [[Stellar Blade: Blood Rain]]