Stellar Blade: Analysis of Enemy Stun System and Explanation of Terminology

Impact Stagger and Hyper Armor

Level 1 Impact: The term “Impact” refers to the ability to interrupt enemies with a single attack in the game’s internal data for Soul-type games.

Damage Level, abbreviated as “dlv”.

Level 1 Impact/1dlv includes the protagonist’s regular attacks and most firearm bullets.

Normal Hyper Armor: Hyper Armor, abbreviated as “ha”, is present in all enemies except for minion-type enemies (as classified in the encyclopedia). It cannot be interrupted by a 1dlv attack.

Level 2 Impact: 2dlv attacks include resource-consuming moves, dash chains, counter chains, dodge chains, red blade, unupgraded beta and burst skills, high explosive rounds (shotgun rounds may also be level 2, not tested), and most skills from the Swift Core.

Launching Impact: Referred to as “sdl” (with the prefix “special” added due to no distinction in interrupt levels, only differing stagger animation).

Describes skills with launching effects, including three burst damage skills, upward kick and third stage of sword energy wave, grenades, 2nd level dodge and counter chains.

2dlv and sdlv can break through ha unless the enemy has “Super Hyper Armor/hha”.

Launching stagger can be overwritten by other staggers and resets recovery time. Achieving infinite floor friction with monsters in later stages of Sword Star is not difficult.

Super Hyper Armor: Abbreviated as “hha”, appears during enemy transition phases and certain moves; it does not depend on the light emitted before the move. The enemy’s red glow does not represent super hyper armor.

Super Hyper Armor (hha) disregards impact levels and is immune to launching.

Each monster’s super hyper armor moves differ, not summarized here, but most bosses have a few.

Staggered State: Similar to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Ghost of Tsushima, successfully performing precise blocks a certain number of times or hitting certain moves will stagger the enemy. The animation clearly shows the enemy’s attack being deflected, followed by a period of time where the enemy is in a state without hyper armor and is passive for a few seconds. Afterward, the stagger ends, the enemy retaliates, and attacks while recovering hyper armor. Unlike in Sekiro, there are no animations indicating the end of stagger.

The staggered state can be overwritten by other staggers, using high-impact skills quickly recovers bosses from stagger.

Compared to the above two games, achieving stagger in Sword Star is relatively simple and has higher rewards.

This is also the inherent difference in gameplay between Pinocchio and Sekiro, as precise defense in Pinocchio only results in minimal resilience and imbalanced damage. In many cases, precise defense wastes opportunities for damage output.

Armor Break Stagger (referred to as “empty armor”): Similar to durability in Dark Souls, when the armor gauge reaches zero, special effects appear, completely bypassing ha and entering a staggered state. While in empty armor, attacks deal significantly more damage, which is an optimal time for damage output.

Empty armor and stagger are separate; after stagger ends, the enemy can enter empty armor but will recover ha.

Daze Stagger: Daze takes priority over hyper armor and can be understood as a special form of forced stagger.

Blue Light and Purple Light Daze: Triggering the corresponding dodges will cause enemies to enter two types of daze states. Purple light exposes a weakpoint for shooting.

If the corresponding dodge is not triggered, perfect dodges and jumps can still avoid daze, but these two actions restore a large amount of burst gauge. Choosing how to proceed depends on personal preference.

Imbalance Daze: The balance system is similar to the posture bar in Sekiro. In later stages, it is referred to as imbalance gauge. When using precise defense/imbalance thunder/stomp burst/four-hit thrust to empty the balance bar, the enemy enters an imbalance state, bypassing ha.

Execution is possible during imbalance, and imbalance cannot be overwritten by other staggers. Some bosses will expose weakpoints for shooting.

Enemies are invulnerable during transition phases, so it is impossible to use imbalance to interrupt phase transitions.