Stellar Blade Doesn't Understand What Made Nier Automata A Masterpiece

Stellar Blade is incredibly cool. Shift Up’s character action game is a breath of fresh air in the modern gaming landscape with its sexy and stylish protagonist and a focus on intense action and over-the-top visuals having me smitten ever since its first trailer. It represents fresh and exciting ideas in a space overwhelmed by the same tired old thing, making it all the more surprising that Sony is publishing it as a second-party PS5 exclusive.

But despite it standing out in the blockbuster landscape of 2024, that doesn’t mean parts of it aren’t achingly familiar. It is taking obvious cues from games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta in its combat, while the exploration and movement is framed in a way that is achingly similar to Nier: Automata. In fact, many of its core tenets take liberally from Platinum’s masterpiece.

After playing the demo earlier this week, I can’t help comparing it to 2B’s nihilistic bender in the remnants of a destroyed earth. Stellar Blade isn’t a sequel to a secret ending of a so-so PS2 game nobody played, but it does begin with an army of sexually provocative androids dropping onto an unknown planet, with the majority of them wiped out by unknown forces in the process.

Eve is the last one standing at the end of it all, saved by her allies seconds before a strange creature is about to take her life. Once this explosive introduction is over, you are given a rollercoaster ride of exposition about this generic ruined place and given control once again, this time with a pod-like flying machine at your side.

The stage that follows is incredibly reminiscent of the ruined city you first step foot in once Automata’s opening battle sequence is done and dusted. That also ends with two primary characters meeting their death at the hands of machines before being resurrected, waking up on a space station orbiting the Earth with new bodies and memories, perpetuating a sad cycle of conflict the androids are forced to participate in again and again.

Only time will tell whether Stellar Blade aims to explore similar themes, but from the demo alone, it seems to nail the aesthetic but fails to inspire confidence on the narrative side of things. If anything, it feels like a wonderfully executed but ultimately pale imitator.

I felt this identity really sink in as I reached the first save point, which is depicted as a chair, vending machine, and music player which allow Eve to take a load off while purchasing an item or two and upgrading her skills. Melancholic piano makes you feel at home, all while making sure you know that this aura of comfort is forever fleeting. Everything surrounding you is ruined, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t beauty to be found in hoping for salvation.

Automata spends hours building up to this point, allowing you to grow close to characters and sympathise with their plight, and through multiple endings, you finally begin to see the things they are fighting for and the broken fragments of humanity they must piece together following the absence of their creators. Stellar Blade tries to instil these feelings into you in mere seconds with a mixture of imagery and music that doesn’t earn its place, regardless of the atmosphere it manages to conjure up as you walk through its ruined, rain-drenched streets.

It’s a shame, because when Stellar Blade isn’t pulling so liberally from other games during the demo, it’s excellent. The combat is fierce and challenging, depending on accurate parry animations and nuanced movement, while the scale and size of its world also has me keen to explore further in the full game, but at every turn it still feels like it’s made up of different parts from other experiences, instead of striving for its own identity.

Even now, I don’t really know what that’s supposed to be. It’s sexy, slick, and clearly has stellar production values, but if that’s enough to rise above the games it so clearly imitates in the full game remains to be seen.

Comparisons have also been made to Nier: Automata and its depiction of female characters, particularly in how 2B’s attractive qualities are used as a means of empowerment, and many of the androids are depicted in this way because the humans who created them were striving for titillation, putting those attributes above survivability in a post-apocalyptic setting.

Director Yoko Taro also admitted that he liked beautiful women, which better allowed their presence to bleed into the narrative as an emotionally compelling factor. We saw the very same with Nier Replicant and Drakengard, and I hope Stellar Blade is able to implement similar ideas without becoming a blatant copycat. It has the potential to, and characters like Eve deserve a place within modern video games where they aren’t held up as some protest to western values, all trying to stem any form of attraction out of video games. It’s okay to like sexy women, just please don’t make it weird.

There isn’t a problem with Stellar Blade looking to Nier: Automata for inspiration. It’s one of my favourite games and not nearly enough modern blockbusters have learned from it. But you need to go further than being a cover band, you need to do your own thing and try and push what it achieved forward instead of clumsily trying to live up to its brilliance. Ever since its reveal, Stellar Blade hasn’t convinced me it’s capable of this, but I hope it can prove me wrong.