Stellar Blade will receive New Game Plus and free skins as DLC

After game director Kim Hyung-tae announced New Game Plus would be coming “very soon” to Stellar Blade, various reviews have confirmed its availability from launch. YouTuber FightinCowboy revealed this on Twitter, and IGN also updated their review to confirm the arrival of New Game Plus in a new patch.

Prior to release, all indications were that Stellar Blade would be an unusually technically polished current-gen launch, with the game’s demo leaving many impressed. But, of course, demos aren’t always indicative of the final game, with devs sometimes taking a thin slice of gameplay and give it more polish than the rest of the game. Well, the review embargo for Stellar Blade has arrived, and it seems it’s not only a good time in terms of action (check out Wccftech’s positive review here) but according to the tech heads at Digital Foundry, the full game is every bit as technically sound as the demo. You can check out Digital Foundry’s full video analysis below, provided you have around 20 minutes to spare, or you can scroll down for our rundown of the salient points.

An executive of Electronic Arts Japan has criticised the Japanese video game ratings board for allowing upcoming action game Stellar Blade to be released uncensored while EA's own Dead Space was banned in the country.

Stellar Blade will be uncensored in all regions, it’s been announced.

Stellar Blade developer Shift Up quite clearly took a lot of inspiration from PS4 great NieR: Automata during the making of its soon-to-be-released PS5 exclusive, but in the case of Automata director Yoko Taro, he thinks that the student has already become the master. In an interview with IGN Japan (via Eurogamer), Taro says Stellar Blade «is a really amazing game. I'd say that it's much better than NieR: Automata.»

Nier Automata's director believes Japanese game developers have had difficulty implementing "Western systems" because it was hard for them to move away from Japanese-made game engines.

A highly ambitious Dragon's Dogma 2 mod is attempting to make the RPG far more challenging on New Game Plus mode.

Stellar Blade developer Shift Up, previously known for the likes of Goddess of Victory: Nikke, has repeatedly discussed the challenges of shifting to a more ambitious, current-gen action RPG, especially in a mobile-dominated market like South Korea's. In a new making-of documentary from PlayStation, some of the studio's heads explain in more detail that "many people felt we were out of our mind" for pursuing this project and platform. 

During the inaugural Triple-i Initiative showcase, with titles like The Rogue Prince of Persia and Slay the Spire 2 announced, Pocketpair revealed the first teaser for Palworld’s Arena update. It will add PvP to the title, allowing players to fight each other with teams of three Pals. However, the team’s version of the teaser indicated that it would launch in Summer 2024, which was a mistake.

Shift Up has asked players to “go easy” on the Stellar Blade demo, which is proving to be a hit with players.

The highly successful indie survival game V Rising is exiting early access on May 8, so Swedish developer Stunlock Studios has released new information on what players will find in version 1.0.

Mixing style, action, and fearsome monsters is a familiar formula for success in action games. However, with its first PlayStation title, Stellar Blade, developer Shift Up is adding a lot of unique flair to the equation. A large point of this distinction comes from its creature design, which quickly became a focal element of the upcoming action-adventure experience.