The recent port of the previously-PlayStation-exclusive Stellar Blade to Steam has been pretty much a universal positive for all involved parties. More people get to experience a pretty kickin’ action game, and the port was also very well optimized for PC, something I sincerely wish we saw more of.
More to the point, Stellar Blade is a very particular kind of action game, the likes of which you might not see in every entry in the genre. Eve’s adventures did quite well for themselves when the game first launched on PS5, and that’s because people generally enjoy a tight combination of character-action combat, light Souls elements, and… other things, let’s say.
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The only real downside to playing an exemplary game like Stellar Blade is that it tends to raise and alter your standards for such things, to the point that other games without overt similarities might not hit quite right.
Luckily, as good as it is, Stellar Blade is not in a vacuum. There are plenty of other action games to enjoy with similar degrees of punchy combat and reasonable levels of challenge.
9
Lies Of P
Perfect Guarding And Fabulous Hair
Some parts of Stellar Blade’s gameplay are likened to the Souls games, particularly the general difficulty level of combat and the fact you get your heals back at checkpoints.
If you’re looking to lean more into that gameplay style following Stellar Blade, a Soulslike is the obvious next step, but which one? If I had to pick a good starting point, it’d probably be Lies of P.
Lies of P is an action Soulslike where you play as a puppet lad with a downright fabulous head of hair and an awesome metal arm. It’s more overtly Souls than Stellar Blade, as you drop your currency when you die and enemies respawn when you rest, but the combat does have a similar flow to it.
Specifically, the core tenet in a fight is perfect blocking rather than dodging, and as you fight and block, you build up a meter that can be used for special weapon attacks, not unlike Eve’s Beta Gauge.
In case you want to bridge the gap between Stellar Blade and Soulslikes, Lies of P is an on-call carpenter. Or whoever you hire to build bridges.
8
Devil May Cry 5
A Modern Action Classic
When people try to quickly compartmentalize Stellar Blade’s overall gameplay vibe, the explanation you probably hear a lot is, “it’s like a Souls game with Devil May Cry combat.” Considering the direct name-drop there, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a Devil May Cry game would make a good follow-up.
Any of them are good choices (except 2, don’t play 2), but if you want something with a similar degree of production, go for Devil May Cry 5. What Devil May Cry 5 lacks in Stellar Blade’s open world and Souls-bordering intensity, it makes up for by doubling down on its core combat.
Devil May Cry is, after all, one of the quintessential character-action games, encouraging lengthy, high-flying combo strings with flashy moves and weaponry. While it’s a linear game, it crams a lot of variety into its action with multiple playable characters and a slew of unlockable skills and tricks.
If your favorite part of Stellar Blade is getting into a flow state and banging out combos rapid-fire, Devil May Cry 5 has plenty of that. Heck, the soundtrack gets better the better your combos get, and it’s already a pretty great soundtrack.
7
Bayonetta
Combat In Heels Never Looked So Easy
If someone asked you to name a game where you play as a female protagonist in a skintight suit with mad combat skills in heels, you’d probably say Stellar Blade if you played it recently. If it wasn’t Stellar Blade, though, there’s really only one other game that fits that admittedly very specific description: Bayonetta.
Bayonetta is a character-action game similar to Devil May Cry, and thus also similar to Stellar Blade’s combo-centric punch-ups. The difference compared to those two games is that Bayonetta is a little more fast-paced, high-flying, and high-impact.
There’s plenty of dodging, as well as countering if you’re into that, but more than anything else, it’s about turning the art of combat into a proper spectacle.
Many of Bayonetta’s combo strings result in sweeping, launching attacks, and often end with one of her signature Wicked Weaves, wherein a giant hairy fist flies out of a portal and hits an enemy like a freight train.
If you’re more into the combat of Stellar Blade than the difficulty of exploration, Bayonetta’s got a whole smorgasbord of dopamine hits on tap.
6
NieR: Automata
A Common Comparison
Back when Stellar Blade was first announced, many swiftly drew comparisons to NieR: Automata for their somewhat similar action gameplay and oddly-dressed android-centric premise.
You can’t deny there are some similarities, but it’s not a bad thing. What’s wrong with having two excellent action games about android girls swinging huge swords around? I can’t think of a downside.
Stellar Blade and NieR: Automata share a similar slightly-open world format, wherein you can freely explore, traverse ruined cities, and occasionally pick up quests from NPCs.
Compared to Stellar Blade’s combat, Automata’s is more about dodging than blocking, with Platinum reusing elements of its perfect dodge mechanics pioneered in Bayonetta. It’s also not as punishing as a game, though you do still lose all your stuff if you die twice in a row without making it back to where you ate it.
Gameplay aside, Stellar Blade and NieR: Automata have some similarities in tone and style. Both our protagonists, Eve and 2B, have similarly stoic dispositions, and are both in way over their heads in a post-apocalyptic, planet-spanning war against a seemingly indomitable opponent.
5
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
We All Live In A Parry World
One of the primary components of Stellar Blade’s core combat loop is strong parrying. It’s not just about blocking attacks, it’s about fending them off and countering.
Parrying is often considered a vital component of any game that considers itself a Soulslike, and out of all the Soulslikes, the one that did the best job with parrying was Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
Unlike in the main Dark Souls games, where dodge rolling does most of the work for you, Sekiro lives and dies by the parry.
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Games like Sekiro and Sifu have parrying and counter mechanics that strike the perfect balance between entertainment and skill.
In order to do any lasting damage, you need to get right up in your opponent’s face and deliver consistent attacks, and the only way to keep up the pressure is learning enemy tells to know which of your multiple types of parries to use.
While Stellar Blade’s combat isn’t exactly easy, it’s definitely more forgiving than Sekiro’s parrying marathon. If you want more of that kind of gameplay after playing Stellar Blade, though, Sekiro is where you’ll find it, guaranteed.
More Machines, More Swordplay
Speaking of parrying, there’s more than one way to enjoy parrying in an action game. The way games like Sekiro and Stellar Blade do it, wherein it’s just one step in an elaborate sword-to-sword dance is great, but another way I personally enjoy parrying is with a completely one-sided beatdown.
Or, in the case of the parrying mechanics in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, a slashdown. Parrying is a big part of Revengeance’s combat equation, though it works a little differently compared to most similar games.
You need to kind of tap your stick and guard button in the opposite direction of an incoming attack to impact it, and then that leads into a full parry. It’s got a bit of a learning curve to it, but hey, so does Stellar Blade’s parry.
What’s more, whenever you pull off a successful parry in Revengeance, you get to go into Raiden’s Blade Mode and freely chop your opponents up into hundreds of little giblet bits. It never stops being fun to see just how many parts you can chop a dude into, and the game even keeps track of your slicing record for you.
3
Black Myth: Wukong
A Similar Kind Of Kind-Of-Soulslike
Perhaps you’re not looking to get into the full Soulslike scene, but you’re also craving more than just straight-up action combat.
It might be a little hard to find another game that meets Stellar Blade’s particular middleground of kind-of-a-Soulslike-but-not-really, but there is definitely one candidate, and a pretty good one at that. For a similar flavor of action gameplay with a difficult tinge, try Black Myth: Wukong.
Black Myth: Wukong’s gameplay actually bears a surprising degree of similarity to Stellar Blade’s. The maps are similarly large and encourage exploration, combat is based heavily around parrying and secondary abilities, and there are a lot of little upgrades and abilities you can learn to turn things in your favor.
The obvious difference in Black Myth is that you’re playing a humanoid monkey man and battling against bizarrely-proportioned beasties straight out of Chinese myth.
Though, I suppose there’s not really that much difference between weird mythological beasties and weird biological beasties like Stellar Blade’s Naytiba if you think about it.
2
Lollipop Chainsaw
You Know What You’re Here For
There’s no reason to sugarcoat this, so let’s just put it on the table: a statistically significant portion of people who have played Stellar Blade did so, at least partially because Eve is an attractive character in a tight outfit.
There’s no shame in it, we all know what we’re about. If you’re still hankering for action games with a degree of posteriors present, you might just enjoy Lollipop Chainsaw.
Lollipop Chainsaw, originally released in 2012 and remastered for modern platforms in 2024, is a delightfully ridiculous romp created by notorious auteur game designer Goichi Suda.
In this game, you play as Juliet, a high school cheerleader who moonlights as an exterminator of the undead with her bedazzled chainsaw. It is a game that does not take itself seriously in the slightest, admittedly in opposition to Stellar Blade’s tone, but the combat has similar degrees of impact and punchiness to compete.
Additionally, you can unlock a variety of outfits for Juliet to wear during gameplay using tokens earned from consecutive zombie beheadings. The game knows what you’re here for, and my evidence for that is that there’s an achievement for trying to angle the camera up Juliet’s skirt.
1
God Of War (2018)
One Axe Does It All
Something you see in various action games is a large arsenal of weaponry for your protagonist to employ. Stellar Blade is an exception to this, as the only weapon you use is Eve’s Blade, supplemented by various upgrades and pieces of supplemental equipment.
Suppose you prefer to build your playstyle around a single, consistent weapon, then the 2018 God of War is largely accommodating of that.
For the vast majority of God of War, your lone weapon is Kratos’ Leviathan Axe. Despite this being his primary armament, though, he’s not limited at all in combat applications; you just learn to use it in different ways, like with Eve’s Blade.
With different upgrades, axe builds, and equipment setups, your playstyle can shift subtly based on your needs and preferred playstyle.
It’s also worth noting that Kratos wears a lot of different outfits in this game as he obtains new armor sets. There’s nearly as many as the outfits Eve wears, and most of them show the same amount of skin, if not more! Food for thought.
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