Oh, that’s why the Stellar Blade devs were terrified by demo players: one fan’s spent “about 60 hours” maxing Eve’s skill tree before the action RPG is even out

Turns out Shift Up has a good reason to be concerned

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

Earlier this month, theStellar Blade devs said they were a bit “scared” by diehard fans who’d already poured dozens of hours into the demo. After seeing one player who spent 60 hours grinding through the demo’s limited content to max out Eve’s skill tree before we could even release ourStellar Blade review, I think I understand why.

That player is hardwarecheese, who recently posted a picture of a nearly complete Stellar Blade skill tree toRedditunder the title “almost maxed out!” In the post, hardwarecheese wrote “I am excited to transfer over all my data to the full game and experience it for the first time with alot of the moves unlocked from the jump!”

The responses to that thread are about what you’d expect, running the gamut from impressed by the dedication to wondering why anybody would spend this much time on a seemingly pointless exercise. The Stellar Blade demo is meaty relative to what you’d expect, but it’s still a limited chunk of the game’s content, which means hardwarecheese had to spend a whole lot of time grinding the same level over and over again.

All told, hardwarecheesehas spent"about 60 hours" in the demo. “I do a loop back to the save point at the ladder before the parking garage,” theyexplain, adding that the goal here is to “get super comfortable with all the moves combos and variations!” In another comment, hardwarecheesesaysthat “My personal goal was to learn how to use combos along with perfect parry to always recharge beta so the game flow would be entertaining but effective.”

That grinding is set to transfer to the full game when it launches later this week, as saved progress from the demo does carry over. I’m not sure there’s any game I’d be willing to spend two-and-a-half full days repeating the same level over and over in, but hey, who am I to tell someone that they’re enjoying a game too much?

Stellar Blade’s “uncensored” Japan release sparks controversy as EA exec complains his 2023 game was banned over similar gore.

Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter

Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He’s been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

Marvel’s Wolverine reportedly loses its creative director to Xbox’s Perfect Dark as Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart leads step up to fill the void

Ubisoft is tackling “dynamics behind the polarized comments” facing games like Assassin’s Creed Shadows with a “player-centric and gameplay-first” approach

Monster Hunter Wilds unable to connect to server error and fixes