The Stellar Blade demo is here - for real this time - and on top of offering satisfying parrying and dicing for action game fans, it's also turned out to deliver rock-solid technical performance that'll satisfy you no matter which side of the resolution versus frame rate divide you fall on.
That's according to analysis from Digital Foundry, with the outlet reporting that "on a tech level, Stellar Blade has a lot of quality on show to celebrate here, not least its bombastic in-engine cutscenes." The only real counts against the game's visuals are its occasionally low-res background textures and its use of screen-space reflections rather than offering fancier ray tracing options on higher-spec display modes.
But it's those very modes are where Stellar Blade shines. The default balanced mode is the one DF seems to recommend, as it offers a clean, reconstructed 4K image and a 60 FPS target that it largely manages to hit. You'll find some points where the game dips to the 50 FPS range, but a VRR-capable display will smooth those blips right out, and the dips aren't prolonged enough to cause much frustration in any case.
If you demand a true 60 FPS, the performance mode drops the resolution to 1440p and seems to offer a rock-solid lock on that target frame rate. The 30 FPS resolution mode is similarly solid, taking the resolution up to a native 4K with some tiny, tiny drops in image quality to maintain the frame rate target in busy scenes.
The Stellar Blade demo was good enough to encourage one 12DOVE writer to beat the boss over 20 times, so hey, clearly it's doing something right. While the discourse around Stellar Blade has largely focused on the main character's design, it does seem that the game's also poised to be, you know, worth playing, too.
