Fan service is a beautiful thing. The mere notion of giving an audience exactly what they want is simple, yet wholly effective in drawing attention to a game, regardless of its quality.
And while most titles of this nature offer nothing more than a visual treat, with no substantial accompanying gameplay systems to back it up, Shift Up’s 2024 hack-and-slash jaunt Stellar Blade goes above and beyond. Alongside glorious fan service in the form of gorgeous character designs and eye-popping cosmetics to collect, its slick visuals are held together by a solid gameplay and combat foundation, becoming a testament to what a game can achieve when a studio understands its target audience.
Since its release in April 2024, the game has seen constant post-launch support, not only fixing many of the gameplay issues listed in our review, but also a multitude of bonus free and paid content like a New Game+ mode, additional costumes, seasonal events, and crossovers with other IPs like PlatinumGames’ 2017 action hit Nier Automata.
Now that Stellar Blade is available on PC, those who were unable to play it on the first day of release due to PlayStation 5 launch exclusivity can finally hop on the hype train, joining a whole new player base in experiencing Eve’s adventure the definitive way, complete with a suite of PC-specific features and improvements.
Even on the base PS5, the performance of Stellar Blade was, well… stellar upon launch. The game had no problems hitting the coveted 60 frames per second (fps) on Performance Mode, even offering three different graphics modes, a feature not often seen on the platform: Performance Mode, which ran at 1440p upscaled to 4K at a practically locked 60fps; Balanced Mode, which ran at a dynamic 1080p to 1440p with temporal reconstruction up to 4K for cleaner image fidelity and also mostly stuck to 60fps; and a Quality Mode which targeted a native 4K image at a locked 30fps.
The PC port removes these frame rate limitations, unlocking the game’s maximum potential with possible frame rates well above 60fps, which is extremely important considering the timing-based nature of its combat. With the added fluidity, perfect parries and dodges are now much easier to pull off than before, making combat more satisfying as a result.
To further improve performance, Stellar Blade also includes support for modern AI-assisted upscaling tools, such as NVIDIA DLSS 4 and AMD FSR 3, for ramping up performance with the least impact on visual quality. Frame generation technologies are also supported, such as NVIDIA’s latest multi-frame generation, which boosts frame rates even further on GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards.
On a gaming laptop powered by an RTX 5070 Ti mobile GPU, Stellar Blade achieved an average frame rate of between 180 and 200fps on maximum graphical settings, including DLSS 4 on Quality and with Multi-Frame generation turned on – an impressive feat for a laptop graphics card.
Even without all the performance bells and whistles, the game’s optimisation remains impressive. When tested on a lower-end Intel Arc A750 GPU (comparable to an RTX 4060) with an Intel Core i5-12400F processor, the game managed to maintain a mostly locked 60fps at a 3440×1440-pixel widescreen resolution with all settings at High, only dropping to the mid-50s during intensive cutscenes.
Apart from performance, Stellar Blade’s PC port also includes various features exclusive to the platform, such as the 21:9 and 32:9 ultrawide and super ultrawide aspect ratios, alongside additional 4K background textures. Controller users can expect full support for the PlayStation DualSense controller’s haptic feedback and adaptive trigger features, with the ability to fully customise key layouts for gamepads, keyboards and mice for added flexibility.
Additionally, a host of new content has been added across PC and PS5, including a new boss fight with Mann, the leader of the Sentinels, 25 additional Nano Suits, as well as Simplified Chinese and Japanese voiceovers with matching facial animations. A new paid crossover DLC with Goddess of Victory: Nikke has also been released for both platforms, bringing new game-inspired costumes and bonus missions featuring Nikke’s cover-shooting mechanics.
With the PC release of Stellar Blade, there’s no better time to hop in and witness Eve’s journey for both newcomers and returning players. For more, check out our gameplay video above showcasing 45 minutes of the game running on an RTX 4090 gaming rig at max settings at an ultra-wide 3440×1440 resolution.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
