Summary
Stellar Bladeis, first and foremost, an action game, giving you plenty of creatures to hack and slash your way through. Yet if you only looked at the enemies you encounter throughout the game, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this is a horror title.
Each creature is strikingly different to each other, making the game feel unique not only during boss fights, but as you traverse the world as well. With so many enemies to face, some of them are so grotesque that, in a way, you’re doing them a favor by slicing them into pieces.
8Beholder
A Gruesome Introduction
When you first start your adventure through Stellar Blade’s campaign, you’ll only be facing small Creepers that are easy to dispatch. You’ll quickly encounter the true horrors of this game after taking a few steps forward, as a Beholder does short work out of one of your companions.
Granted, they aren’t the hardest enemies to fight, but they set the tone of the types of creatures you’ll be finding in the game. As much as EVE might be eye candy for some players, these creatures are lookers for an entirely different reason.
7Brute
You Don’t Have To Face It Alone
There are plenty of small enemies in Stellar Blade, but most of the most challenging fights are against massive creatures, who often look like they could crush EVE’s small frame with a light touch. The fight against the Brute emphasizes that, since it comes out from a massive explosion, leaping gleefully into the chance of destroying you.
Fortunately, Tachy is still with you for this fight, so the difficulty spike isn’t so big. Another plus of having Tachy around is the unique kill animation once you take this foe down, since it involves both her and EVE slicing down the Brute to finish it off.
6Abaddon
The Gaping Naytiba
Abaddon serves as thefirst proper fight to test your mettle, and as such, it needs to look intimidating. Yet its visual characteristics make it stand out from the likes of Brute or many others, not only for the strange mouth that seems to be running across its chest, but also for the two blades it holds that seem to be also part of its anatomy.
With Abaddon’s design being so similar to the Gaping Dragon from Dark Souls, it is likely that it is a reference to it rather than a coincidence.
Another area where Abaddon is unique is in its attacks, since they rely heavily on the elements, specifically the electrical currents from the storms. While the Naytibas have evolved to use all kinds of things as weapons, using the weather against you is not something you see every day.
5Mutated Hydra
Not What They Seem
The Mutated Hydra combines many elements to make it a nightmare to deal with, so in groups of enemies, it is in your best interest to target it first. This is due to how slippery it can be, thanks to its ability to fly and turn invisible.
As you fight the Mutated Hydra, you might think that it is just a hovering starfish, but there is a torso behind that star. Next time you face them, try to take a good look at them as they hover idly, and you’ll see the body controlling the star-like legs.
4Gigas
Conceptually, Gigas are not all that different from Brutes, even if their movesets are different. They serve the same idea of a giant, massive creature with powerful arms, but not onlydo you have to face Gigas alone, his head design looks like something straight out of Silent Hill.
Biologically speaking, that head makes no sense, since it has rows of teeth that run around the circular frame as if it were a chainsaw. Other Naytibas also have saw-like teeth, but few are so in your face about it, like Gigas, whose distracting head can make you lose your footing at a critical moment of the fight.
3Stalker
Making You Their Prey
Everything about the Stalker seems like a direct reference to Resident Evil 2’s Licker enemies, from the way it attacks to their inability to see. Even your first encounter with a Stalker follows the Licker formula, the creature crawling through the ceiling before falling down to strike.
In the Stalker’s Data Bank entry, it clarifies that Stalkers can’t see. That would mean that most other Naytibas have the ability to see, even though most of them lack any form of eyeballs.
The Stalker also marks a nice change of pace, since after a few gigantic enemies, you’re likely after a smaller, speedier foe to spice things up.Don’t let your guard down, however, since the Stalker might not be able to see you, but it can still find you.
2Juggernaut
He’s Made Of Lesser Enemies
The excellence of the enemy design in Stellar Blade is that, no matter how complex their bodies might be, their moveset is still easy to understand. Even so, sometimes you want an enemy that, at a glance, you understand what they are all about, and the Juggernaut is someone easy to understand: he wants tocrush you with his hammer.
Yet the best part about the Juggernaut is that, if you’ve been paying attention, you can notice that he’s made of other, smaller enemies. The Skullings are small tentacled creatures that control corpses, and in the case of the Juggernaut, several of them joined forces to create this formidable foe.
1Karakuri
Grows Smarter By Eating Robots
Fought in the Orbital Elevator, the Karakuri used to be robots that served humans as a luxury service, likely looking like Geishas from Japan. Yet once the Naytiba infestation began, the Orbital Elevator was hit like everywhere else, but a certain Naytiba started hunting the Karakuri robots and making them part of its flesh.
Your fight against this Karakuri nightmare will put you to the test similarly to the fight against Maelstrom does. While before you had to rely on your droid alone, now you’ll have to fight completely devoid of it, so if you thought the shotgun mode was going to carry you, think again.
