If Blood Rain is what brought you to Stellar Blade, the machine you own decides the rest

You probably saw the trailer. On June 5, 2026, at Summer Game Fest, Shift Up showed three and a half minutes of Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, a sequel with a new protagonist named Evie and a combat style built around gauntlets instead of a sword. Since then the original game’s name has been turning up again in feeds and search bars. It came out on PS5 in 2024 and on PC in 2025, so most of the people who were going to play it already have. This is about what is left for someone opening it for the first time, as of August 22, 2026.

The Trailer That Put the Name Back in Circulation

Stellar Blade is an action adventure from Shift Up, a Seoul studio best known before this for the mobile collection game Goddess of Victory: Nikke. This was its first full-price console release. It launched April 26, 2024 as a PS5 exclusive, published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, and arrived on PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store on June 11, 2025, where the Steam listing names PlayStation Publishing LLC as publisher. By the developer’s own figures the PS5 version passed one million copies in its first two months, the total crossed three million in June 2025 with the PC version selling a million in three days, and the Steam launch peaked above 190,000 concurrent players, the highest ever for a single-player game Sony has published on PC.

Two announcements pulled the original back into view. In May 2026 Shift Up told investors it would publish the sequel itself rather than through Sony, which it describes as a first-party service model, and a Korean studio self-publishing a console title at this scale is rare enough to be news in its own right. Then on June 9, 2026 a Nintendo Direct announced a Switch 2 port of the original. Shift Up’s second-quarter report in August placed that port in the second half of 2026 and said it has not slipped. There is still no date.

From Eidos 7 to Xion, One Perfect Parry at a Time

The setting is an Earth overrun by creatures called Naytibas, abandoned by a humanity that fled to an orbital colony. You play Eve, a member of the 7th Airborne Squad sent back down, who joins Adam, a survivor on the surface, and Lily, a survivor of an earlier squad, to defend Xion, the last human city, and find out what the Naytibas actually are.

The first hour is effectively a tutorial. The squad is wiped out almost on landing, and Eve fights alone through the ruined city of Eidos 7 learning the basics. Combat here is about timing rather than button mashing. Block on the beat and you get a perfect parry; dodge on the beat and you get a perfect dodge. Those build the meters that feed the heavy Beta and Burst skills. Death sends you back to the last camp, as in a soulslike, but you lose no experience, and a Story difficulty exists for anyone who wants the narrative without the reflex test.

Around the three-hour mark you reach Xion. It is the hub, and from here the structure becomes one of taking requests from residents and heading out. Five hours or so in, the first large area opens, the Wasteland, which plays less like an open world than a big exploration zone. Fishing, collectibles, hidden crates and the Nano Suit costume hunt all unlock through this stretch. By hour ten you are perhaps a third of the way through, past the first few major bosses. One run of the story takes roughly twenty-five hours, the ending branches, and New Game Plus was available at launch, so the game is built with a second pass in mind.

What “No Gacha” Actually Covers

The pricing is uncomplicated. You buy it once. The PS5 standard edition launched at $69.99 in the US, the Steam version is $59.99, and the PlayStation Store lists a Complete Edition with the DLC at $89.99. The only paid add-on of note is the NieR: Automata collaboration DLC from November 20, 2024. The photo mode, four free costumes and a no-ponytail hairstyle arrived the same day as a free update, the Boss Challenge mode on May 24, 2024 was free, the PC version shipped with 25 new costumes and a new boss fight, and the 1.4.0 update on September 24, 2025 added three free epilogues set after one of the endings.

So money is not the argument around this game. The argument is elsewhere. Eve’s body proportions and the revealing costume designs were controversial before release and remain the first thing many people bring up when the game is recommended. Most outfits are optional and some are modest, but the default design is a matter of taste and that is simply true. The other recurring criticism is the story, which many players found thin next to the combat and the visuals. The epilogue update reads as an attempt to fill some of that in.

On PC the minimum spec is a GTX 1060 6 GB with 16 GB of RAM and 75 GB of storage; recommended is an RTX 2060 SUPER. DLSS 4, FSR 3, an unlocked frame rate and 21:9 and 32:9 ultrawide are supported, and the Steam release does not require a PSN account. That last point is part of why the Steam reviews were strong from day one.

Two Years After the PC Port, and the Switch 2 Question

Nothing new has been confirmed for the original in 2026. The last patch notes posted to Steam are 1.4.1 from September 30, 2025, and the last post of any kind is a Steam Awards nomination notice from November 2025. Shift Up’s second-quarter figures put Stellar Blade revenue at 8.83 billion won, down 31.6 percent from the previous quarter, a normal curve for a two-year-old single-player game.

Who it suits: anyone who liked the timing-based combat of Sekiro or Bayonetta and has no objection to dressing up a character and photographing her. Who it does not: anyone who plays for the story first, or anyone the character design makes uncomfortable.

The purchase decision comes down to the hardware you already own: the Complete Edition with the DLC included on PS5, the $59.99 base game on Steam, and a wait for the Switch 2 version in the second half of the year if you have neither. Leave the NieR DLC for the moment you finish a first run and start New Game Plus.