Welcome back to my end of the woods, where I review the latest cutting edge PC games by running them on a now 9-year old PC build. The latest subject that will be talked about is the newly released port of Stellar Blade, one of last year’s most graphically impressive PS5 games. Now that it’s out for the personal computer, you’re probably asking yourself how it runs on what could otherwise be considered an old machine, right? Not how shiny it looks on the latest GPU, the max amount of frames you can get, that sort of thing… no, no, of course not.
Well, I’m glad to report that Stellar Blade runs pretty darn well on my setup, which consists of a (look at another post for details ‘cause I don’t remember them off the top of my head) which has since been upgraded with a 3060 RTX Phoenix GPU three-or-so years ago. At ‘ultra’ graphics setting, 1080p resolution, the game is buttery-smooth, easy to control, and looks better than I remember playing in 2024 on my PlayStation 5.
Now, this remains the same Stellar Blade, so my opinions remain, so if you’d like to know more, check out my original review. To sum it up, yeah, it’s got A LOT of fan service material, needless closeups and excessive bodily proportions, but underneath all of that there’s a really good action game with incredibly rewarding combat, some smart and creative mechanics, and a beautiful world to explore.
It’s also worth noting, and this is something I did not touch upon in my review: this is one of the few games that bothers to match lip synching to languages other than English and whatever its secondary track is. As a native Portuguese speaker, it’s so good to see characters flapping their mouths in tandem to what’s being said, and if you think that’s something to be expected and taken for granted, well, you’re spoiled for being used to being the primary market 99.99% of the time.
Now, for the technical stuff, what’s new to PC players with this port. Let’s start with ultrawide monitor support, which includes 21:9 and 32:9 aspect ratios, which should make it ridiculously harder on your neck to scan that wide of a screen, but still, all jokes aside, Stellar Blade is quite a looker of a game, so it must be insane to play it this way. Speaking of ways to play, there’s also the option to unlock the framerate, which should help with getting combos off more easily as more frames means more responsive controls and fluidity while playing.
If you happen to have a DualSense hooked up to your PC, you’ll be able to use its haptic features, and let me tell you, they work darn well, and while not as revolutionary as Returnal’s – let’s be honest, what is – they feel really good in Stellar Blade, especially so when you’re fashionably and stylishly slicing through abominations. Same goes for the adaptive triggers, which help give an extra heft to the fighting, which along with the haptics make a good case for playing this with Sony’s controller on PC no doubt about it.
Regardless of some of the more questionable presentational choices made by the developers, there’s no denying that Stellar Blade is still one hell of an action game that’s absolutely worth playing, even more so on PC. It looks absolutely stunning and it’s very well optimized, so much so that someone like me, with a less than ideal machine, is able to run it incredibly smoothly. If you have a better PC, hell, don’t think twice about picking it up, my dude.
