Rooted in Wuxian storytelling and scale, built on an impressively detailed combat system, and wrapped in a bloody Chinese martial underground that’s a genuine joy to play in, Phantom Blade Zero is a feat. It joins an echelon of action pedigree that includes Sekiro, Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, and just about any other action game you hold in high regard. It hails from developer S-Game, which has dabbled in mobile and smaller-scale games, and I’m shocked by what it’s pulled off with its triple-A action inauguration. But make no mistake: though Phantom Blade Zero is this team’s first crack at a game like this, it is an incredibly confident, strong debut.
Protagonist Soul is a stoic martial arts master betrayed by the Order he’s sworn his life to; he dies and returns to life with only 66 days to live. That’s enough time to settle his debts, repay his betrayers, and end a villainous conspiracy to seize full power of the Wulin realm. This narrative is Phantom Blade Zero’s weakest link, but its premise adds enough mystery and tension to keep this Wuxian journey exciting through to its final, realm-shattering moments. Narrative bombshells drop not just through the game’s general fantasy-realism art direction, but also through anime scenes, opera puppet shows, animated brushstroke sequences, and more, highlighting Chinese culture and its integral place in Phantom Blade Zero.
The game features a staggering number of unique enemy types, and though the final hours get a bit repetitive, it’s admirable how long S-Game maintains such a high level of combat-oriented ecstasy. Soul’s access to weapons drives that exhilaration. Every weapon is wholly unique. Because the combat is combo-based, picking up a new weapon feels like unlocking a new character in a fighting game. Each has its own moveset and abilities, with later-game weapons featuring combo lists that look more at home in a Street Fighter menu. Add in the special, tide-turning weapons known as Phantom Edges, with limited charge-based uses, and there’s no shortage of permutations to delightfully experiment with.
Drawing on Chinese cinema, Phantom Blade Zero’s setpiece bosses boast a sense of awe and scale only the genre’s best typically offer. With virtually no repeat bosses, save for a few in separate trials, it’s impressive how many powerful figures I flayed, and how many delivered a unique fight. I also appreciate the checkpoints between boss phases, as they remove the frustrating repetition of replaying phase one again and again just to take another stab at the second phase I’m struggling with.
You’d be forgiven for assuming Phantom Blade Zero is a Soulslike, given its challenging bosses, interconnected world, and Phantom Bell checkpoints, this game’s equivalent of bonfires. It definitively isn’t, though. The challenge is much more surmountable; the game isn’t interested in making you die over and over, there are difficulty options, and you can equip accessories to make parries and dodges easier. World progression is materially different, too, as enemies don’t respawn after you kill them. It’s an interesting, perhaps blasphemous, choice for the genre, but it’s surprisingly effective, adding a sense of worldbuilding and tangible progression I didn’t know I wanted from my action games. Soul is on a mission to remove evil, and mechanically, I’m doing just that. Enemies don’t respawn incoherently just because I heal and save.
Environmental features weave in and out of each other, and the architectural design and layout of these regions lead to many subsequent “aha” moments. S-Game infuses search-action elements into this exploration through the aforementioned Phantom Edges, some of which double as tools to unlock surprising new areas in both new and previously visited biomes. As a result, backtracking and exploration remain fresh. A lot of it is optional, as are some of Phantom Blade Zero’s most rewarding elements, including its demanding “perfect” ending. Sadly, this renders other endings unsatisfying, with clear chunks intentionally missing.
Despite forays into the Uncanny Valley, Phantom Blade Zero is visually striking, and the action is brilliantly animated. It’s all set to genre-breaking music, too, with original metalcore songs, operatic choirs, 808s, and traditional Chinese instrumentation, creating a score as illustrious as the action it enhances.
Phantom Blade Zero is an astounding action achievement, almost unbelievably so for a game that is essentially a studio’s genre debut. It is one of the best action games I’ve ever played, one that recognizes the genre’s strengths and weaknesses and addresses both with fantastical Wuxian style. Though the action genre is always jam-packed with new releases, few are as special as Phantom Blade Zero.
