Stellar Blade wears its inspirations on its sleeve. As a blend of Nier and Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi games, even this truncated means of comparison is highly accurate given what is displayed during Stellar Blade’s opening hour or so, as unveiled in its official demo. Combat is an obvious highlight in this demo, particularly in its boss challenge mode that teases a wealth of mechanics players will indulge in later in the story campaign, and yet it was also a great glimpse into how emphatic Stellar Blade is about casual exploration, let alone how leisurely and refreshing these moments can be.

While incredibly linear, Stellar Blade avoids being on rails thanks to cramming optional loot in each tight environment. This at least provides the sensation of not being funneled squarely toward the next cutscene because players can take a brief detour for a locked chest that requires a combination they may have found earlier. Stellar Blade isn’t so tough in its demo’s two difficulty options that players will be begging for another camp, either, but camps are its inspired ‘bonfires’ and behave as such. That said, camps are meant to be far more engaging than traditional bonfires and Stellar Blade already seems to be milking them for all they’re worth in surprising ways.

Related

PS5 Exclusive Stellar Blade Will Be Missing a Popular Feature at Launch

The upcoming PlayStation 5 exclusive action game Stellar Blade is going to be a missing a popular feature at launch.

Star Wars Jedi’s Meditation Points Serve a Simple Purpose

Star Wars Jedi’s meditation points are serviceable at best, allowing Cal Kestis to peruse unlockable skills and recover health and Force meter. Like the Souls games’ bonfires before them, these meditation points aren’t intended to be anything fancy or for players to spend a ton of time there.

Instead, discovering one after a long and treacherous trek is meant to evoke relief as players activate these checkpoints before picking up and departing shortly after. Interestingly, Stellar Blade’s demo insinuates that while stretches of a level won’t be hardly as arduous as those in a traditional Soulslike, players will also have much more they can do at any given camp than a lowly bonfire or meditation point would permit.

Stellar Blade’s Camps Turn Bonfires into Cozy Retreats

Stellar Blade’s camps are unmistakably reminiscent of ‘bonfires’ in any Soulslike game. However, Stellar Blade’s amalgamation of Soulslike features is most akin to how Star Wars Jedi implements them, with one of its most obvious inspirations being Beta and Body Cores, which increase max Beta Energy and max HP and therefore resemble Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’s Force and Life Essence.

Likewise, Stellar Blade has skill trees like Star Wars Jedi does. But it’s in camps where Stellar Blade not only takes inspiration from Star Wars Jedi’s meditation points but also elevates them greatly by way of additional features and a genuine sense of rest that players can enjoy. In this regard, Stellar Blade’s camps behave more like a rejuvenating respite rather than a sparse checkpoint system. There are a bunch of intriguing features players can interact with at camps:

• Resting on a chair, which effectively replenishes health, respawns Stellar Blade’s Naytibas in the area, and retrieves stored items.
• Purchasing skills from a kiosk terminal.
• Purchasing consumables at a vending machine.
• Perusing tracks on a record player, not unlike how players can listen to records in Lies of P.

But that’s not all. There are also supply camps, which are even more involved. Supply camps include everything available in regular camps, as well as the following exclusive features:

• Fast traveling to other camps via a payphone.
• Accessing personal upgrades such as an attack power enhancement, a tumbler enhancement, or a gear socket expansion at a repair console.

Even more features might be present at different camps or points in the game, though these are what were shown to be available during the demo for Stellar Blade that was released recently and carries over players’ progression to the full launch at the end of this month.

Stellar Blade’s Rest Flashbacks Make for a Brilliant Storytelling Device

Camps are doubly exciting because more often than not it appears as if cutscenes will trigger when resting. These cutscenes help flesh out the narrative more with interactions between Eve and Adam—who’s there via a drone companion accompanying Eve in gameplay—or even flashbacks to when Tachy was brutally slain in Stellar Blade’s tutorial prologue and how Adam rescued Eve.

The story trickling in little by little this way would be fascinating as lapses are filled in incrementally, and it’ll be interesting to see how camps develop and evolve from the demo’s portion of gameplay moving forward into the rest of the game. Cutscenes triggered by resting at a ‘bonfire’ aren’t new to Soulslike games, nor is it new to meditation points in Star Wars Jedi’s installments, but it seems like that’ll be a regular occurrence players can rely on.

If Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s sequel could somehow expand on its meditation points to incorporate even an iota of the cozy leisure that Stellar Blade delivers in its camps it could go a long way. In particular, such an upgrade would be perfect for when Cal is always traveling with a companion like BD-1. Either way, Cal deserves to rest his eyes or truly reflect on his Master’s teachings in legitimate comfort rather than an illuminated meditation circle glyph discovered randomly on the ground.

Stellar Blade

Stellar Blade is an action-RPG developed by Shift Up and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The game follows protagonist Eve as she attempts to save a devastated Earth from invaders called Naytiba.

Platform(s)

PS5

Released

April 26, 2024

Developer(s)

Shift Up

Publisher(s)

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Genre(s)

Action RPG