Phantom Blade Zero hands-on: An extraordinary game with unbelievable combat that I can’t get enough of

We have had a considerable number of high-profile game releases this year, but none so far have had as much hype behind them as Phantom Blade Zero. The source of all that hype was a 2023 trailer highlighting its fluid kung-fu-derived sword combat. Considering that, at the time of writing this piece, there are over 700,000 concurrent players on Steam alone, on a weekday no less, I think it’s safe to say that the hype has converted into gamers actually showing up for the game. I have sunk around 10 hours into this game today, and so far, it has been nothing short of an absolute masterclass in action combat.

A world that pulls you in from the start

As soon as you are in the game, the first thing that hits you is how good it looks. Phantom Blade Zero has some of the best graphics I’ve seen in any genre. The art style is timeless, and the fidelity is cutting-edge. Few games, in my experience, have pulled off both this well. It also offers a level similar to what Ghost of Tsushima delivered.

There isn’t a single HUD element on screen while you explore, and only the bare minimum shows up in combat. Nothing stands between you and the world S-GAME has built, letting its environment and atmosphere pull you in before you’ve even drawn your sword.

You play as Soul, an elite assassin for a secretive group called “The Order”. He looks every bit the wandering swordsman, with a wide hat and dark, layered clothes. As for his story, I’ve barely scratched the surface, so it’s hard to say where it’s going. The opening segment of the game jumps back and forth a lot between timelines and events, and I’ve never been a big fan of that.

The memories you see near the crane bells are separate from this criticism. It’s the exposition at the very start that bothered me. As the game has progressed, that’s happened less and less, and I’m happy with it so far.

The sound design is just as impressive as the visuals. I can’t get enough of blades slashing through bodies, swords clashing, and sickles cutting through the air at lightning speed. The audio feedback, especially while parrying and blocking, audibly convinces you of the lethality of those strikes, while also conveying how strong Soul actually is to shrug those strikes with a flick of his blade.

The combat is everything the trailers promised

The real reason anyone is here, though, is the combat promised in the 2023 reveal. The free-flowing combat, where the player traded blows, blocked, parried, and dodged in an elegant yet deadly dance of martial arts, honestly looked too good to be true. Most games rely on QTEs and scripted events to pull off action like that.

After nearly 10 hours, I can say with 100% confidence that it’s every bit as good as it looked. It genuinely boggles my mind that a studio known for mobile games has managed to create, in its first AAA title, the best combat system I’ve ever experienced. Quick attacks and chained combos make you feel like an absolute kung fu master!

It backs up its combat with a massive arsenal of weapons. I already have five primary weapons, four Phantom Edges, and three accessories. Phantom Edges are powerful weapons you earn by beating bosses, and they help with more than just combat, like movement techniques and other ways of interacting with the world. 

The accessories empower both abilities and weapons. Each weapon plays differently in reach, stamina, power, poise break, and attack speed. Some enemy types are easier to kill with certain weapons, though most seem viable.

The progression feels rewarding, and it feeds the game’s rising pace.

Coming from playing many soulslikes, one mechanic I love in this game is the ability to refund weapon upgrades whenever you want to invest in something that seems like a better fit. Unlike Souls titles, there is no locking or penalty, and you can do it as many times as you like. The skill tree adds to that. I’m still early on, but I’m already more powerful, chaining longer combos and applying status effects that weren’t part of my kit at the start. The progression feels rewarding, and it feeds the game’s rising pace.

Boss fights that keep getting better

All of this gets put to the test in the boss fights. I’ve beaten five bosses so far, including The Hunt, Sixfold Scythe, and each one has played out completely differently so far. You start with a big man with a sword who only uses basic attacks. Next comes an even bigger giant with an axe who throws out combos and area attacks with his whole body.

The Hunt fights with sickles hooked to the ends of long chains and uses distance as a barrier to defend himself. His fight has been the most entertaining so far, but none of them left me thinking “meh, that was just okay.” The boss design has been on point, and it only seems to be getting better.

Every attempt felt different in pace and style.

Then you really get into the weeds. Hua, Deadly Betrothed, uses summons, stun attacks, and stamina-draining area attacks, and she teleports right next to you just as she’s about to swing. After my first failed attempt to defeat her, the boss completely changed her approach. On my second attempt, the boss heavily leaned on unblockable attacks that had done the most damage to me in the previous encounter, and she barely used the moves I’d been parrying.

The game’s adaptive AI appears to read your spacing, timing, and habits to decide how and when to strike, so every attempt felt different in pace and style. That said, this only appears to be on the Hellwalker difficulty, which I was playing, and the 66 days difficulty, which can only be unlocked by defeating the game.

Phantom Blade Zero isn’t as difficult as some of the soulslikes already out there, and it isn’t trying to punish you at every turn. Parry and dodge timings are forgiving during the early fights, but the windows get increasingly tighter as you progress. That doesn’t mean the combat is easy. On hellwalker difficulty, many bosses have one-shot attacks or moves that eat up to 75% of your health. Most also have massive health pools that take time to chip through.

Performance-wise, the game has its good and bad sides

I’ll admit I went in nervous about the performance. S-GAME asked players to reserve over 300GB to preload their 140GB game and recommended rolling back Nvidia drivers to avoid performance issues. It also took me around 15-20 minutes to load shaders, with my fans screaming as my Ryzen 7 9800X3D was working at 100% load across all threads.

Several early-access reviews also flagged bugs, but I haven’t encountered any so far. Performance has been excellent, with not a single crash on max settings with ray tracing enabled. The 5GB launch update seems to have addressed some of the early-access complaints. I’ve hit zero glitches, stutters, collision traps, or geometry issues.

On my PC with a ZOTAC GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16GB, AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and 32GB of DDR5-6000 RAM, I am getting around 75 to 80 FPS at 1440p resolution. So for my final thoughts on my first 10 hours of gameplay, Phantom Blade Zero is everything its 2023 reveal promised. If the rest of the game keeps this pace, we might have a serious game of the year contender on our hands.

Phantom Blade Zero is available on PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.