Phantom Blade Zero review: "A GOTY contender with combat that looks as good as it feels"

Phantom Blade Zero is not a Soulslike. This needs to be the first thing that I tell you, because you need to wipe away any such preconceptions in order to fully appreciate what it is (and is not) doing. The intricate combat and hostile land come instead from wuxia storytelling traditions, and a supernatural martial arts world that can be traced back to the director's first game Rainblood: Town of Death. While "very, very good" is not a genre, it's certainly an accurate description of this game.

Following the events of a prologue I'm not allowed to tell you about, our hero Soul is left with just 66 days to live. This doesn't mean a Dead Rising style time limit – in-game time only passes after specific story beats – but it does mean that anybody feeling particularly brave can opt for a hardcore difficulty that wipes your progress after 66 deaths. That could potentially mean losing dozens of hours of play, so if you opt for that, consider yourself warned.

Developer S-Game is keen to celebrate what it calls a "kungfupunk" aesthetic. It's an appropriate turn of phrase. As I explore the Phantom Realm, meeting new people and chopping them up, I find characters and locations that subtly fuse nature, supernatural horror, Chinese history and mythology, and a hint of the modern world. I fight faceless warriors wielding blades, phantoms playing pipas, deformed monstrosities that could never be mistaken for human, and much more. All this across locations including cliffs, a lake, fields, villages, caverns, and a lavish estate.

Phantom Hiddelston

Combat is at the heart of it all. And what combat! Every time I start a fight – which happens a lot – it's with a smile on my face. Every clash is a deadly dance between my opponent and I, and we both look like masters of the craft. Together, we weave graceful tapestries of blocks, swing, parries, lunges, dodges, and violently flamboyant strikes. Avoid button-bashing (which will usually see you punished anyway), and Phantom Blade Zero offers that rarest of things; combat that looks as good as it feels.

Visually, the combat owes much to S-Game's commitment to motion capture, including a number of martial artists. Hong Kong movie legend Donnie Yen (who you may know from the Ip Man series, or as Caine in John Wick: Chapter 4) is credited as Creative Consultant, and he even took part in some motion capture himself. It's not all relentless flailing, either, as enemies (particularly some of the tougher bosses) will sometimes size you up or wait for you to approach before striking.

Scraping away the impressive visual flourishes, I still manage to find one of the best combat systems I've come across in a long time. From the first few fights right up until the final boss, I sometimes catch myself thinking this just works so damn well. Yes there are parries, yes there are unblockable red-flash attacks, and yes weapons are upgradeable; but it doesn't quite feel like anything else in the best possible way. I block a series of attacks from a boss, yet can still get in a few hits of my own before they're finished. Failing a parry or a dodge, I'm punished ruthlessly. Next time, I just… stay out of range, then dive in with fists full of vengeance. Too often in other games, that's not even an option.

Then there are the weapons themselves, another stroke of genius. There are a total of 30 regular ones, most of which are entirely missable in the expansive world. Each and every one has some kind of unique trait, and gains even more as they level up (you equip two weapons at a time, switching between them instantly refilling the Sha-Chi depleted by blocking and strong attacks). An early one I stick with for over a dozen hours builds up bleed status in human enemies, while another comes with a jug of booze to induce Tipsy and Drunk states (don't drink and dice, kids). Some excel at breaking through shields, others can counter enemy attacks, and not a single one is a match for any other.

Then there are the many Phantom Edges to find and use, limited-use weapons that might do anything from strike enemies from a distance to temporarily summon minions to your side. A small number feed into the light brush of Metroidvania to the experience, in that they can (without cost) be used to traverse or open up new routes in the world. On rare occasions this will be compulsory to advance the story, but usually, it simply allows me to sate my curiosity for a previously inaccessible area.

Finding where to use my new blocker-cracking goodies is nice and simple, as relevant areas are marked on the map automatically; and turn a pleasant shade of green when you have the corresponding Phantom Edge. In fact, despite the often challenging combat, Phantom Blade Zero does a lot to smooth your progress. Save/respawn points are (usually) placed very generously, medicines are refilled each time you come back to life, and – this is a biggie, and may prove a point of contention for some – enemies almost never respawn. Like I said, it's important to remember that this isn't a Soulslike.

Although Phantom Blade Zero has a huge map with multiple regions, it doesn't quite feel right to call it open world. For one thing, it's tightly designed and tightly paced, with almost no wasted space. Whenever I uncover a new area or decide to wander off the obvious path, there's always something to find (usually including something, or several somethings, that want me dead).

The main story drives me forward, with no doing laps of the same area or regular backtracking to well-worn paths. Nonetheless, I find exploring irresistible, and make a habit of wandering down routes that lead away from my next objective. I'm regularly rewarded for doing so. There's some traditional "collect four X to increase your Y", and in addition to this, the more I explore the more weapon upgrade materials I find. I stumble on many hidden bosses this way, too, laying my hands on powerful weapons I would have otherwise missed. Curiosity is, quite literally, good for my Soul.

I find the combat fantastic, exploration compelling, and the storytelling… inconsistent. There's quite a lot of it. There's in-game dialogue, traditional cutscenes, and a few more experimental approaches that I heartily applaud. There are also seemingly hundreds of notes scattered about all over the place, which I'm less a fan of. I'm usually happy to read in-game text, but there are far too many bits and pieces here, especially for an action game. I quickly adopt a habit of picking them up and then instantly exiting the text screen.

Bloke Zero

The worst offenders, for me, are the Memory Flowers. These contain some of the most crucial story details and are, in addition, tied into HP increases and unlocking some of the more powerful character skills. Whenever I Interact with one, Soul stands perfectly still, staring down at a blue flower while voices play in his head for a few minutes. I have the option of skipping through lines at least, but I stubbornly refuse. Doesn't that kind of defeat the point?

The storytelling ranges from the great to the weak, and while it's mostly pretty straightforward, some of it goes over my head a bit. It's more of a minor annoyance than anything else though, and so it says something that this is my greatest criticism of the game. I do run into a few bugs – two boss fights see me getting stuck on the scenery, resulting in me taking unavoidable damage which makes me say very naughty words – but these are relatively small ones that can and, hopefully, will be patched out on or shortly after launch.

After 30-35 hours, I reach the final boss and – eventually – emerge victorious. Of course I do. Look at how much I've buffed up Soul and his weapons! After all that time, and a great deal of chasing down sidequests and digging out secrets, I am rewarded with what is very definitively the Bad Ending. It's abrupt, and unsatisfying on a few different levels. Nonetheless, I'm surprised to find that I'm not too bothered. There's so much of the map I have yet to explore – including an entire region – I immediately dive back in, eager to see what I'll find next.

One of the things I find is that some secret bosses crucial to the True Ending represent a stratospheric difficulty increase. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. I was doing so well up until then! But in the end, I decide I'm OK with it. After all, there's so much still to see and do, and I can't wait to see and do it.