This review covers Phantom Blade Zero.

Background: the premise of Soul, The Order, and 66 remaining days

Phantom Blade Zero places the player in the Wulin, a wuxia-flavoured martial underworld where violent ne'er-do-wells make life difficult for ordinary people trying to live their own lives. The player controls Soul, a warrior and outcast member of an organization called The Order. The review says it remains unclear what The Order stands for in terms of values, while adding that the organization likely originally meant well.

The game's narrative framework includes betrayal, a protagonist with limited days to live, a revenge mission, and malevolent entities from another world. The review also states that the prologue cannot be discussed, and that some visual storytelling elements were likewise restricted from review coverage. Because of those limits, the available story summary remains broad.

One difficulty setting makes the time limit literal. Phantom Blade Zero offers four difficulty settings, including an intense extra-hard mode in which each death removes one day from Soul's remaining 66 days.

The world is introduced with a dizzying number of character names, bloodlines, cults, and feuding sects. Lore is often delivered through reams of text in collectible scrolls scattered across the Wulin. Many characters speak in platitudes, truisms, and declarations of values that are hard to connect with the underlying story. The reviewer's advice is to let the dense narrative wash over the player and gradually pick up the main plot points. The storytelling does include visual treats, even using a traditional Chinese art form, but the review says it cannot praise those moments in full because they were restricted from review discussion.

Spoiler warning: The following summary uses only the broad story facts permitted in the source review and does not describe the restricted prologue.

Early hours: kung fu staging and FromSoftware-style systems

The strongest early evidence for the game is its combat. In one memorable encounter, the player slowly raises a sword in a shaded valley, parries the first enemy's rush, performs a slow-motion somersault to land behind the attacker, and then uses the next enemy, the first enemy's horse, and a chain of attacks to turn the fight into a cinematic sequence. That encounter captures the game at its peak: free-flowing, surprising, and inspired by the creative choreography of the best kung fu films.

Beyond combat, the reviewer describes the game as extraordinarily beautiful, with jaw-dropping landscapes and hugely ambitious combat encounters. The wish expressed in the review is that this level of fluidity could hold across every part of the epic tale.

The review sees FromSoftware's influence in many aspects of the game. Bell checkpoints appear throughout the world, and multi-stage bosses can include one-shot attacks. Boss strategy is summarized by color: dodge red attacks and parry blue attacks. Correctly doing this is described as the most effective way to break a boss's guard and enter a punishment phase, where heavy-hitting moves can finally land. The reviewer compares that rhythm to a high-octane version of Sekiro. If a player does not enjoy a dodge-and-parry centered style, the review suggests Phantom Blade Zero may not be the right fit.

Development: sha-chi, two weapons, and generous defensive windows

The review suggests that the label Soulslite may fit Phantom Blade Zero better than a standard Soulslike comparison, because several adjustments allow much faster combat than many Soulslike games permit. There is no traditional stamina bar. Instead, the game uses a resource called sha-chi, which depletes when the player blocks or parries enemy attacks and when heavy attacks are used. This design lets players use quick attacks, sprints, and dodges without spending stamina.

The two-weapon system is tied closely to this resource. If sha-chi runs low while using one weapon, the player can swap to the other and receive a fresh sha-chi bar, though a slight cooldown prevents total abuse of the mechanic. This is useful for landing heavy hits and for preventing guard breaks, which occur when sha-chi runs low.

The parry and dodge windows feel generous, which matters because enemy attacks arrive with speed. The player can cancel nearly any move to perform a last-minute parry, reducing the common problem of being locked into an attack just as a boss raises a large strike. Another mercy feature appears in boss fights: if the player dies during the second phase, the fight can restart at the beginning of that second phase with a full set of resources.

Health upgrades come from collecting dozens of blue memory flowers. The skill tree is described as fairly straightforward, offering steady upgrades rather than radically different playstyles. Further customization comes from selecting two types of medicine, each with slightly different benefits, and using a host of accessories to boost specific stats or skills.

Weapons: flashy tools for group combat and boss guard breaks

Weapons are central to the review's praise. One sword requires the player to drink booze, then lets the weapon fly through the air to attack enemies at range. The reviewer calls this an enjoyably silly moveset that may not be the most effective build, but is still fun. Later weapons include pole-like swords that charge through enemies, twin swords that rotate in orbit around the player, and a weapon that can summon flowers from the ground to drain an opponent's sha-chi.

Each weapon has unique combinations that are gradually unlocked by finding upgrade materials around the world. Quest items allow soul tempering, which unlocks a weapon's most powerful latent abilities and can transform an underpowered weapon into something viable, including the drunken sword example the reviewer highlights.

Secondary weapons, known as phantom edges, are intended as additional battle tools for problems such as high boss guards or unblockable attacks. The reviewer experimented constantly with weapons and was able to fine-tune separate loadouts: one for dealing with large numbers of enemies and another for breaking boss guards. This allowed a real combat rhythm and a clear sense of the order in which moves should be used to maximize damage.

Upgrade costs also change over time. Early in the game, weapons can be upgraded and downgraded freely without losing materials, allowing players to test them. At higher levels, reverting a weapon costs tokens, which the reviewer says might encourage hoarding behavior, though the amount of tokens given is described as pretty generous.

Regular enemies: the flow state arrives, and new executions keep appearing

Against ordinary enemies, the combat reaches the kung fu flow the game promises. The player can move between enemies, parry their blows, lower their guards, and open them up for executions. The review says the game is generous with these finishers: hitting a quick-time event at the right time can eliminate two enemies at once.

The animation supply seems large, and the reviewer notes that Soul will often use an enemy's own weapon against them. New execution moves were still being discovered 30 hours into the game. This makes combat constantly surprising, adds variety to encounters, and encourages aggression to unlock deadly finishers.

On pathfinder difficulty, normal enemies feel well balanced. The player can maintain flow, but it is still possible to fail by charging in without the right loadout or without prioritizing ranged enemies first.

Boss fights: sponginess and unclear counterplay weaken the same systems

The review's main criticism comes from bosses. Against boss enemies, weapons that felt powerful against regular enemies become weak. A very high proportion of bosses felt spongy, especially on pathfinder mode, but even when lowered to wayfarer, the difficulty setting described as the fun rampage through the game mode. During punishment phases, successful parries or dodges produced only a very minor reduction to a boss's sha-chi, giving the player a sinking feeling that the fight would be long and repetitive.

The reviewer argues that low damage in a Soulslike game should normally signal a need to experiment with the build or try different weapons to find the key to a boss fight, but Phantom Blade Zero does not communicate those keys well.

One early obligatory boss fight features an enemy with a spiked shield. Attacking that enemy causes bleeding, making it obvious that the shield must be broken and that a secondary weapon should be used. However, the axe phantom edge produced very little reaction, causing the reviewer to walk through the world thinking something had been missed. The solution was simply to keep spamming the move or use a charged version, but the game does not encourage charged phantom edge moves because their windups are long and often not viable during fast-paced combat.

Another example involves a phantom edge that shoots water and is specifically described as effective against fire types. Against a fire-type enemy, it did nothing, leaving the reviewer unrewarded for testing different phantom edges. The review says boss sponginess was most damaging in the early to mid game, when build options are limited, making many battles feel artificially lengthy.

Latest progress: a 67GB update arrives two days before the embargo

Two days before the review embargo was due to lift, developer S-Game released a 67GB update. The update targeted performance and bugs, along with boss, enemy, ability, and weapon stats. S-Game told reviewers that the changes aim to make the difficulty curve feel smoother, both in boss fights and as players progress through each area.

The review notes that this timing did not allow enough time to replay the entire game and retest every concern. Review screenshots are credited to S-Game and Eurogamer. The source page also points to a YouTube trailer showing the game in action and notes that some embedded content requires targeting cookies.

Current stage: a promising combat game waiting on a full post-patch assessment

Phantom Blade Zero currently sits between two states. It has a world, protagonist, and combat framework built around Soul, The Order, Wulin, sha-chi, two weapons, phantom edges, and a 66-day pressure point. It also has a striking early combat identity, generous boss-phase recovery, dozens of memory flowers supporting health growth, and weapon systems that can feel extraordinary against regular enemies.

Yet the same review describes boss fights that can feel spongy, unclear counterplay for specific enemies, and narrative delivery crowded with names, scrolls, and restricted elements. The 67GB update is the latest fact in the timeline: it arrived two days before the embargo and changed performance, bugs, and core combat and boss statistics. Until a full replay can test those changes, the game's current stage is best described as a high-potential kung fu action game whose combat identity is already clear, but whose difficulty tuning and boss communication still need verification after a late, large-scale patch.