The Demo Setup
Shift Up’s first console title, Stellar Blade, lands its demo on PS5 on March 29. I got early access to the opening one to two hours, plus a boss challenge that unlocks after completion. I combed every corner of the main path and cleared the boss challenge without using consumables so I could get a clearer read on the combat and level flow.
Story and Presentation
The character designs are unmistakably Kim Hyung-tae: glossy bodysuits, long hair, and that tall, exaggerated silhouette he leans into. It’s polished, and it’s very much his style.
The setup also wears its inspirations openly. From the alien drop and the early deaths to the ruined concrete jungles, it echoes NieR: Automata in tone and staging. That familiarity isn’t a problem by itself, but the demo’s direction lacks punch. The opening space battle feels oddly flat, and the early deaths are staged so abruptly that the emotional momentum fizzles. The rescuer’s sequence plays out like a slideshow, and when the title hits, it doesn’t land with much weight.
Given the marketing talk about a “breathtaking visual feast” and an emotional narrative, I’m hoping the full game can elevate the story beats beyond what the demo shows.
Combat Feel
On a pure mechanical level, the combat is sharp. Light and heavy inputs chain into a solid variety of combos, and the follow-ups after dodges and parries feel snappy. If you want to be flashy, the system lets you do it.
The oddity is how the core loop pays out. Perfect parries (the game’s version of a deflect) don’t lead to frequent, high-impact punishments. Bosses rarely offer parry windows, and it takes eight or nine perfect deflects to trigger a finisher, so you might see it once per fight. Instead, most of the damage comes from spamming skills via the BE gauge. It feels backwards for a game that otherwise looks like it wants you to master timing.
Regular enemies make that imbalance even clearer. Skills hit so hard that I didn’t perform a single finisher on basic foes in the demo. If a combo deletes a target, why wait for their slow windup?
The demo only offers four skills, and upgrades mostly add one extra hit to a chain. The result is either pick a favorite and loop it, or just mash through the slots. It reads a bit like a mobile-game rhythm.
Two more skill boards are locked, so maybe the final game will shake this up. Still, the underlying incentives look set.
Enemy design is another weak point. The demo’s foes are all similar biomech creatures with tentacle-based attacks. The art direction is consistent, but not varied, and it makes learning timing harder than it should be.
There’s also a three-color system for unblockable attacks: yellow means dodge any direction, blue means dodge forward, purple means dodge backward. In fast combat, that extra mental step feels fussy, and the camera and effects don’t always help.
Level Design and Systems
The demo’s level is mostly a straight line with occasional side nooks that hold a chest or a pickup. That would be fine if readability were better, but the environment is so noisy that climbable walls and interactive points blend in. I found myself spamming the scan skill just to keep moving.
I also found the chest system overly cumbersome. You have to locate a corpse, pick up a note with a code, then return to the chest and input a Greek-letter password. It’s not difficult, just busywork.
Closing Thoughts
From this demo, Stellar Blade hits the surface-level expectations: striking character design, smooth animation, and combat that feels good in your hands. The problems show up in the incentive structure and encounter design. Skills overwhelm the parry system, enemy visuals are repetitive, and the dodge-color mechanic adds friction without much payoff. The level layout is simple, and even simple interactions are hidden behind noisy visuals or unnecessary steps.
If this were a smaller, budget-priced release, I could probably forgive a lot in exchange for the style. But at full price, I need more than slick presentation. Right now, I’m not convinced that “style alone” is enough.