Phantom Blade Zero review

I've been counting down the days until the launch of Phantom Blade Zero since its May 2023 PlayStation Showcase trailer left me completely enamored. Back then, the lightning-fast swordplay looked too good to be true. More than three years later, I'm happy to report the final game isn't a lie. Developer S-Game actually pulled it off, delivering a 20 to 30-hour martial arts campaign that looks and plays great on the PlayStation 5.

You play as Soul, an assassin framed for murder and left with 66 days to live. The story itself is fine, though the plot gets a bit hard to follow, making it tough to invest in Soul as a main character. The game is all about running out of time, making sacrifices, and how greed ruins people. Still, the Chinese voice acting is fantastic, which makes sense coming from a Chinese studio. The English dub, on the other hand, is a bit awkward, but not terrible by any means. I’d recommend sticking with the intended Chinese voice-overs with English subs for the more immersive experience.

Your first stop should be the controller settings. Out of the box, the default layout feels bizarre if you've played any other modern action RPG, like Elden Ring. Mapping dodge to R1 makes zero sense when muscle memory has probably trained you to use R1 for light attacks, R2 for heavy attacks, and Circle to dodge. You do get alternate presets that thankfully map to what I just mentioned, but unfortunately there’s no custom remapping.

Even with comfortable controls, the combat takes some time to click. You shouldn't walk in expecting a slow RPG or a mindless button-masher. It plays like a high-speed mix of Sekiro and Devil May Cry, where you string together flashy combos while managing a posture-style bar called Sha-Chi for blocks and heavy attacks. If you don't learn the defensive rhythm early, the whole system feels awkward and clunky.

That learning curve becomes evident when you move from standard enemies to bosses. Slicing through normal mobs feels like a cakewalk, making the jump to boss fights a massive difficulty spike. The game throws a huge roster of bosses at you, each with a distinct moveset. Some play out like mini-bosses despite putting a named health bar across the center of your screen, while the major fights act as brutal skill checks. These battles feel like brutal martial arts duels where you constantly deflect rapid weapon combos and dodge flashy kung-fu moves.

To survive them, you have to parry blue-flash attacks to shred the enemy's posture gauge and perfect-dodge red-flash attacks to slip behind them for big counter damage. Even on the easiest difficulty, Wayfarer, swinging your sword without deflecting or perfect dodging turns every boss into a damage sponge. Once that defensive rhythm clicks, though, the boss battles easily become the best part of the game.

Beating the first phase of a multi-phase boss and dying in the second checkpoints you right at phase two. I appreciate not repeating phase one just to practice the second half, but that checkpoint also feels sort of mandatory. Going through both phases in one go sometimes feels nearly impossible unless you play flawlessly, especially on Hellwalker difficulty. Your Healing Gourd only holds three charges for much of the early game, and bosses will feel long and drawn out until you master their timings.

Character progression is pretty straightforward. Defeating enemies drops Remnant Dust, which you spend alongside solvents to upgrade weapons and unlock skill tree nodes. With 30 primary weapons and 25 secondary Phantom Edges to collect, there's plenty of room to experiment with builds. You carry two main weapons at once, and swapping between them mid-combo instantly refills your Sha-Chi bar, although there’s a short cooldown so you can’t just spam it.

My favorite early-game setup paired the Scarlet Wraithblade from the bride boss with a fast single-handed sword called Jagged Steel. The Scarlet Wraithblade's two-handed combos plant exploding red flowers across the ground, while Jagged Steel rapidly stacks bleed buildup to trigger Blood Loss damage. I’ll leave the later game weapon combos for you to discover yourself.

Exploration features semi-linear stages with branching side paths rather than an open world, borrowing from Metroidvanias by gating shortcuts behind your Phantom Edges. You'll often spot a chained gate or a wide ravine you can't cross until you grab the right boss weapon, like a heavy axe to smash barriers or a hookshot to grapple across gaps. Side quests and collectibles are standard RPG fare that raise your max health or Sha-Chi and add some lore, though they don't do anything revolutionary. My main gripe with exploration is how often you hit invisible walls on low cliffs that look like obvious drop-down shortcuts.

Although I'm a fan of Soulslikes, Phantom Blade Zero isn't a Soulslike, and you shouldn't treat it like one. Not everything needs to be a Soulslike, and that's something people need to understand. When you die, you don't drop any resources, enemies don't respawn after you kill them, and there's basically no death penalty unless you're playing the unlockable 66 Days mode, which wipes your save after 66 deaths.

While non-respawning enemies mean you can't farm currency when you're stuck on a boss, you can reset your upgraded weapons at any Bell to refund 100% of your Remnant Dust and materials. It's free up to level 10 and only costs one or two Reforge Talisman(s) after that, so swapping into a counter-build is painless. Replay value also holds up well thanks to New Game Plus and difficulty settings that tighten your parry and dodge windows while making enemy AI more aggressive instead of just bloating health bars.

I also love the kung-fu punk aesthetic. The way the developers blend traditional Chinese architecture with mechanical prosthetics while weaving classic Chinese instruments into metal beats is just badass. It's something we don't see a lot of these days, and after this game's success, I hope more studios explore similar genres and aesthetics.

On a base PlayStation 5, the 134 GB install runs smoothly. Between the 30 fps Quality Mode, 40 fps Balanced Mode, and 60 fps Performance Mode, Performance Mode is the obvious pick for a fast parry game like this, holding a steady frame rate at around 1080p so your timings never feel bad. S-Game also nailed the DualSense support with sharp haptics, adaptive triggers, and ambient speaker audio. When you walk through water, you can hear tiny droplets splashing right out of the controller.

Joe Morgan

While I’m in agreement with Henry’s coverage with regard to the content of the game and its systems, I thought it might be worthwhile to offer my experience as a PC player. For the record, I’m running on somewhat older hardware. I have an NVIDIA RTX 2080. Still, with updated drivers, I was able to play 4K/60 on High graphics settings. There are a few caveats to this: First, I didn’t use any ray tracing. Turning it on crashed my game since the NVIDIA RTX 2080 struggled to keep up. Second, I turned my Super Resolution Method to DLSS and set it to Performance Mode, targeting 60 FPS. Then, I set the Super Resolution Output Scale to Auto. The game makes use of some great features from DLSS 4.5 and Path Tracing, and while I know that would be an incredible upgrade, Phantom Blade Zero still looked and played beautifully on my dated hardware.