Controversies regarding the communication around Stellar Blade and controversies aside, the PS5 exclusivity has been a huge success with players.
In any case, this is what we can see by browsing user ratings on various aggregation sites like Metacritic. Stellar Blade indeed displays the best average player reviews of all the games released so far in 2024. EVE thus holds its own against other big titles that are also very popular.
Stellar Blade meets the stars
The PS5 exclusive Stellar Blade seems to have pleasantly surprised everyone. If we knew everything about EVE, its main protagonist, the rest of the game had long remained a mystery. What the players have seen since April 26 seems to have pleased them a lot. On Metacritic in particular, we can see that the title Shift Up records an average user rating of 9.2/10, with almost 2000 reviews. Without pressure, the PS5 exclusivity thus stands for the moment as the best rated game of the year by players.
Stellar Blade thus beat huge names from the start of 2024 like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Helldivers 2 and Persona 3 Reload. These respectively display averages on Metacritic of 9.0 for approximately 3400 user reviews, 8.5 for 1600 reviews and 8.2 for 600 reviews. We find similar results on other sites like Opencritic.
EVE get up
Even if Stellar Blade probably owes some of this praise from players to the (too much?) plasticity of EVE, we can bet that this is not its only solid argument. The Angel also suffered from a somewhat extreme controversy surrounding an allegation of censorship. However, the title of Shift Up hid its game quite well otherwise. Its chemistry with NieR: Automata must have particularly spoken to fans of Yoko Taro in need. Its controlled gameplay, its sublime soundtrack and its cyberpunk/post-apo atmosphere also obviously pleased players a lot.
Whether this gives Shift Up ideas for developing a sequel or not, the mystery remains. The Korean studio in any case has another game in the works. This should not, however, be exclusive to the PS5, but would present many similarities with the setting of EVE’s adventures. Can this warm reception from the players influence their future project? Only the Matri-Arche can tell for the moment.