Highlights

  • Stellar Blade's visuals on the PS5 are stunning, but EVE's distracting hair physics can hinder gameplay flow.
  • Combat in Stellar Blade is solid, but EVE's hair details can be more of a hindrance than a unique feature.
  • EVE's customizable hair in the game may help, but the decision to make her hair so intricate remains questionable.

Stellar Blade is already one of 2024's most impressive games visually, taking full advantage of the PS5's hardware to enhance the gorgeous world design and character details. While Stellar Blade boasts solid combat and exploration gameplay, its visuals are what really set it apart from other games in its genre. However, these visuals have a downside in one major area, as the hair physics on EVE can often be distracting in the heat of battle, which leads the game to end up sacrificing fluid combat in favor of visual style.

As an action RPG with Soulslike elements to its gameplay, Stellar Blade places heavy emphasis on its solid combat mechanics to make battles feel impactful and challenging. In most regards, the game does a great job of prioritizing the combat experience first and leaving the visuals as set dressing to enhance Stellar Blade's gameplay. However, EVE's hair physics, while impressive, can end up being more of a distraction than a unique detail and calls into question the reasoning behind this part of her character design.

EVE wearing glasses in Stellar Blade
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How Stellar Blade Uses an Unlikely Feature to Develop EVE’s Character

Along with any character development she receives during Stellar Blade's main story, EVE is further developed through an unexpected feature.

Stellar Blade’s Impressive Visuals Can Also be Detrimental to its Gameplay

A lot of the discussion surrounding Stellar Blade has centered on protagonist EVE and her design, with some fans going as far as to create a petition to undo Stellar Blade's alleged censorship of her model with its day-one patch. However, not enough discussion has been had about EVE's hair and its physics, which shows that a clear level of detail was put into crafting its realistic movement. Hair is often one of the most difficult parts of a character's model for designers to nail, and the natural look and movement of EVE's hair in Stellar Blade is one of the best examples of successful hair physics in recent games.

The Cons of EVE’s Realistic Hair Physics

stellar blade eve crouch

However, there is a reason why protagonists from other Soulslike games don't have such long, flowing hair with an intricate physics system. It can be difficult to focus on the battle at hand and manage the precise timing needed to pull off a parry in Stellar Blade when the movement of EVE's hair is distracting the player from the enemy's movements. As a result, it feels like EVE's hair is one detail that could have been toned down for the sake of improving the overall combat of Stellar Blade.

For players who are struggling to manage EVE's hair, there is an option hidden in the game's setting to reduce the length of her ponytail that can help make her hair movement a bit less distracting.

Although EVE's default hairstyle is the most distracting, players do have the option to change her hair once they reach a certain point in the game. Once players unlock access to Gwen's Salon in Xion, they can change EVE's hairstyle to better suit their preference, though doing so still retains her default ponytail. As such, this customization doesn't go far enough to reduce her hair's long, intrusive nature and mostly involves changing EVE's bangs and hair color.

While this hair customization option is nice, the question of why the developers decided to make EVE's hair so long and detailed in the first place still remains. Her hair is a great way to show off Stellar Blade's physics engine, which would normally complement an action-packed game like this. However, it was an odd choice to make a part of the protagonist that the player always sees move during combat in ways that disrupt the player's attention, and EVE could ultimately have still been a successfully designed character by following the example of protagonists in games like Bayonetta 2 and Nier: Automata.