There are a lot of ultra-difficult action RPGs out there, so to stand out among the Wu-Kongs and Elden Rings requires something unique. For Phantom Blade Zero, I’m not sure what that is yet, even though I went hands-on with it in a boss-rush demo at the Tokyo Game Show.
The demo was similar to the one seen at Gamescom but added a few new weapons and an Extreme difficulty mode. I personally played on the Hard difficulty and watched a braver colleague than I play on Extreme. If you missed what Phantom Blade Zero was all about during its announcement, it’s a bloody, fast-paced action RPG with a darker atmosphere developed by S-GAME, a studio based out of China. They call it a Kungfupunk game, though I’m not quite sure what that means.
The demo featured three sections: a tutorial that taught me the basics, a small explorable area that ended in a boss fight, and then a difficult boss fight to wrap things up.
The crux of Phantom Blade Zero‘s combat is Ghost Steps, which can be activated on a perfect parry against a strong attack or a perfect dodge against an unblockable attack. This allows your dark-clad character to slow down time and flip behind the enemy, opening up a window to deal massive damage and break their stance gauge.
There’s a bunch of different weapons to try along with a handful of ranged weaponry as well.
After the tutorial, I went up against a boss called Tie Sha the Frenzy. This axe-weilding brute threw strong attack after strong attack at me, allowing me to flip behind him and make short work of him. Here, I got to use the regular sword and dual swords, swapping between them with the flick of the D-pad whenever I wanted, though it didn’t look like I could combine their movesets to extend combos. Regardless, I found the quicker dual swords much more potent than the slower regular sword – a recurring theme in the demo.
Next up was a small explorable area with a dozen or so regular enemies to take on. Unlike in other action RPGs, they had a bit of weight to them, requiring me to break their stance before I could deal significant damage unless I was able to Ghost Step behind them. Taking down Tie Sha with ease gave me too much confidence because, as you’d expect, multiple enemies made short work of me especially from range, as arrows stunned me and allowed the mob to tear me to shreds. This was the first of two deaths I experienced.
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They then threw me into a boss fight against an even bigger brute lovingly named Captain Cleave. As you’d expect, he stood a couple heads taller than my avatar and wielded a massive curved sword one-handed. Here, I had an even longer sword that my avatar wielded with two hands, creating a flowing fighting style with wide-arcs of blood upon connecting with Mr. Cleaver.
I found this fight a little more difficult as the weapon attacks were slower, meaning I had to wait to Ghost Step to get any real damage in. Once I did, though, it seemed like Captain Cleave was stun-locked for quite a while, allowing me to whittle down half his health in one go. I came away from that fight believing Phantom Blade Zero was a bit more forgiving of a game than its peers.
Finally, the demo threw me up against Huangxing, the Sunken Pillar of Kunlun, which you might’ve seen from trailers and the like as he wields a massive shield on a chain that rips off the protagonist’s head in gruesome fashion. This is exactly what happened to me, resulting in my second death.
Huangxing almost got me a second time as I had equipped what looked like Captain Cleave’s weapon, a powerful thing that I found far too slow for a boss fight. Switching weapons, I discovered I also had equipped a pair of chakram-like discs. These were by far the speediest weapons I used, and they were able to put Huangxing on the backfoot long enough for me to break his stance and slice down his health bar. At the end of a certain combo, I also found I could whip them from a distance, making them also the most satisfying weapons I used.
I came away certain that Phantom Blade Zero faces the same problem of many similar titles: slow, big weapons are generally worse than quick ones that let you maintain mobility. Furthermore, it seemed like it was a rather easy experience overall. In fact, when the staff came over to congratulate me for finishing the demo it felt rather patronizing.
On the other hand, I watched a colleague try the Extreme mode, and it looked like the bosses didn’t do anymore damage and health bars weren’t extended, but rather parry and dodge windows were much narrower. Furthermore, it definitely seemed like the bosses wouldn’t just take abuse like they did with me, recovering from Ghost Steps far quicker.
Speaking with the staff, they told me that Extreme mode wouldn’t be available until after you beat the game once. Take that as either a blessing or a curse, as depending on how good you are at these types of games, you may find your first playthrough far too easy.
Regardless, I’m looking forward to seeing if Phantom Blade Zero can set itself apart in an increasingly crowded genre and whether or not they can tune the difficulty but that’ll have to wait for the far future – fall of 2026, to be exact.
Phantom Blade Zero doesn’t have a release date.
Published: Sep 30, 2024 09:56 am