Phantom Blade Zero has spent years wanting virtually too good to be true, particularly coming from a studio that is greatest recognized for its cellular video games. That’s why it is simply in regards to the greatest praise I pays it that after 50 hours performing picture-perfect kung fu, it is precisely as enjoyable to play because it appears to be like. This effortlessly easy motion recreation has a number of the most satisfying and well-tuned fight I’ve performed in a very long time, a stunning variety of secrets and techniques to find and quests to finish in every of its stunning ranges, and a neverending provide of intelligent encounters filled with unbelievably superior moments. Its convoluted story and occasional efficiency points might not stay as much as that unbelievable motion, however it nails nearly every thing else, and there have been solely a handful of moments the place I wasn’t completely thrilled to be slicing my means by means of the ranks of the Wulin.
Phantom Blade Zero performs like one thing straight out of a wuxia epic. As a metal-as-hell martial artist of mysterious origins with solely 66 days left alive to actual your revenge, you set out on an odyssey throughout the ruined lands of the Phantom World, going through off in opposition to all method of beast and badass alongside the way in which. The story right here isn’t Phantom Blade Zero’s sturdy swimsuit because it tries to do a bit an excessive amount of, shoving in an entire bunch of mystical jargon, dozens of characters, and a needlessly complicated timeline, little or no of which in the end pays off anyway. Within the first couple hours alone, a lot time is spent toggling forwards and backwards between current day, a number of years in the past, a number of months in the past, and several other days in the past that I used to be exhausted by all of the exposition earlier than I’d even confronted my first actual boss combat. That stated, there are sufficient likeable characters alongside the way in which, particularly your unflappable hero named Soul, that I used to be often capable of forgive it for sometimes losing my time with pointless flashbacks and prolonged explanations.
In addition to, you’ll be spending most of your time exploring the world and squaring off in opposition to enemies huge and small, and it’s fairly clear that Phantom Blade Zero desires you to spend most of your consideration on this a part of the journey. And that’s a superb factor, too, as a result of by God is it good. It solely took a pair minutes for the exact parry and dodge mechanics to really feel pure, and the nuanced however not-overly-complex system of weapons, combos, particular skills, and upgrades are rolled out at a particularly sensible tempo, all of that are straightforward sufficient to slide into like a tailor-made set of flowing wuxia robes. I’m an entire snob in the case of the texture and pacing of fight in these kinds of video games, so the truth that this instantly felt like reuniting with an outdated pal made it immediately compelling, and it’s a kind of intangible issues that’s very arduous to get proper.
Much more spectacular is that not solely does the fight really feel good instantly, it does so throughout dozens of weapons, every with their very own distinctive moveset. This recreation that doesn’t simply encourage you to alter up your weapon loadout at common intervals, it truly requires you to combine issues up since swapping your energetic melee weapon is without doubt one of the methods you’ll be able to restore your posture meter with a single button press. And since many enemies, significantly bosses, can immediately drain your posture with sure assaults, you’ll be swapping between totally different choices with regularity, forcing you to commit a number of movesets and particular skills to reminiscence. Conveniently, Phantom Blade Zero makes it extraordinarily straightforward so that you can reclaim and reallocate factors invested in leveling up weapons, so there’s not often any purpose to stay with a set loadout anyway – particularly because you all the time appear to search out the precise software you want proper earlier than coming into an space or encountering a boss the place it could come in useful. For instance, I seen that I discovered a water cannon weapon just a few ft away from an space that led to a fire-based boss. Good.
Past that, you’ll unlock a bunch of extra instruments like grappling hooks and bows, which have utility each in fight encounters and outdoors of them since you should use them to achieve sure elements of the map or break by means of obstacles which are in any other case impassable. There are additionally trinkets that provide attention-grabbing buffs, like a major injury enhance if you’re at full well being, and a ability tree with perks that allow you to do issues like execute a dodge whereas in mid-air or enhance the variety of therapeutic objects you’ll be able to carry. There’s a stunning quantity of depth to the issues you’ll be able to improve and the methods to customise precisely how your Wulin warrior does his factor, and I spent far more time than I sometimes do in these sorts of video games simply testing out totally different weapons and swapping my tools round because of this. On the very least, it’s price doing so simply to see the distinctive execution animations if you end off trash enemies.
You’ll have loads of time to attempt all of them out as you get your steps in throughout Phantom Blade Zero’s eight maps, too. Each is crammed with foes to take down, aspect quests to finish, chests to loot, and secrets and techniques to find. A stunning quantity of the locations to go and folks to satisfy are utterly missable, together with everything of a really cool questline that sees you getting educated by none aside from Donnie Yen because the mysterious gold-masked man (which is definitely one in every of PBZ’s strongest subplots). Whereas many of the aspect quests are fairly simple missions to go someplace and gather some stuff for a small reward, they gave me extra causes to spend time exploring each nook and cranny, which I used to be joyful to do. And in contrast to a lot of trendy video games crammed with icons on the display telling you precisely the place to go and what to do, Phantom Blade Zero as an alternative makes use of hand-drawn maps that solely offer you a imprecise thought of your location in relation to key landmarks, permitting you to discover and fill within the gaps by yourself.
If there’s one factor that persistently mucks up this journey, it’s that Phantom Blade Zero suffers from some fairly dangerous geometry. Soul will get caught on surfaces on a regular basis, and even the tiniest bumps within the street can cease him useless in his tracks, which is fairly hilarious for a man who can soar 40 ft within the air whereas doing 19 backflips. Not solely that, there are invisible borders in all places that make exploration janky at occasions, particularly when platforming sections ask you to get to a selected ledge, solely so that you can uncover there’s an invisible wall and also you fall to your demise. I died almost 200 occasions over the course of my playthrough, and roughly half of these deaths have been me falling right into a pit or getting caught within the atmosphere till I used to be capable of get myself killed or reload my save file. In a single case, I even misplaced about 20 minutes of progress when my supposed martial grasp couldn’t escape from some bushes. Oh, and enemies sometimes get caught within the atmosphere too, which simply makes fights the place it occurs really feel so lame.
Regardless of that, Phantom Blade Zero’s superpower – the magic trick it performs time and time once more – is its means of constructing you’re feeling such as you’re the one particular person on the earth badass sufficient to face up to its completely insane flurry of swords in opposition to godlike monsters prefer it’s nothing. The reality is that the melee dance of fight encounters is simply so finely tuned, with each assault telegraphed simply sufficient to provide you precisely the time that you must react, aided by an virtually imperceptible musical rhythm that grants you a sure degree of precognition for what’s going to occur subsequent. As soon as I synced up with its tempo, I began anticipating assaults earlier than I consciously registered them, main me to completely block some lightning-quick assault I hadn’t seen earlier than. There’s nothing particularly particular about my response time or ability with motion video games – relatively it is a testomony to how extremely well-balanced and well designed these unbelievably sick fights are. It’s with out query the factor Phantom Blade Zero does greatest, and it’s an phantasm I fell for repeatedly, from the opening sequence all the way in which to the ultimate battle.
One thing I love about Phantom Blade Zero’s problem is how persistently it feels precisely proper – not too unforgiving, however it not often allows you to really feel such as you aren’t in peril of getting your butt kicked. I’m sometimes somebody who relishes a problem from video games like this and so performed Phantom Blade Zero on its hardest problem solely, however discovered myself beating nearly each main boss combat in two or three tries, plus a superb chunk that I cleared in a single go – and I didn’t thoughts that one bit! It meant that I not often noticed sufficient of a boss to know each software of their homicide belt, and refreshingly made me really feel just like the one to be feared relatively than the opposite means round. It’s fairly rattling cool to enter a room and watch a 10-foot-tall badass with an eight-pack swing round a blade and suppose, “oh, man. This man’s completely screwed.”
A part of the way in which this Goldilocks degree of problem is achieved is because of the attention-grabbing choice to not make you repeat phases of a boss combat that you simply’ve already cleared. If you happen to get by means of a primary part that simply makes the dangerous man mad after which get killed after he turns into an much more hulked-out psycho, you’ll decide again up on the high of that second part. I’ve been recognized to get aggravated at having to replay the primary part of a boss combat a dozen occasions simply to get one other run on the more difficult half, to the purpose the place multi-phase boss fights basically can get on my nerves today. By eradicating this annoyance totally, it removed lots of potential friction with a few of these encounters
It additionally permits for extra freedom in how these encounters are designed, like moments the place a boss makes use of a low cost transfer that one-shots you immediately if you happen to get hit by it. Usually, together with insta-kill strikes like that could be a good option to ship me right into a rage, however as a result of my progress was virtually by no means set again far sufficient to trouble getting mad about, I felt much more lenient towards that type of factor. I imply, let’s face it, that loopy assault the place you get impaled on a large spear, then set on fireplace and smashed face-first into the ground most likely ought to kill you instantly, so it’s fairly neat that Phantom Blade Zero discovered a option to make a devastating second like that thrilling relatively than irritating.
It’s additionally extremely spectacular that all through the 50 hours it took me to achieve credit, as I fought dozens and dozens of bosses, I used to be regularly shocked by the artistic enemies it threw at me. Positive, there’s the occasional big-guy-with-a-big-axe or dude-with-sword-you-swear-you-fought-already, however these are by far the exception, not the rule. At one level I discovered myself sporting a lion dancer masks, leaping round on poles to gather heads of lettuce to energy up my fireplace blast, and in one other part I fought a posse of warriors who labored collectively as one unit to throw preposterously intricate assaults my means – the principle risk to my life there was getting caught with my guard down as a result of I used to be too busy cackling. The boss fights are so persistently attention-grabbing, memorable, and quite a few that I felt completely compelled to hunt out every one in every of them, which led me to show this primary playthrough right into a full-on completionist run to keep away from FOMO.
Once I previewed Phantom Blade Zero a little bit over a month in the past, one in every of my main considerations was how it could carry out, and fortunately the model I performed for this evaluate had a much more constant efficiency. The framerate was a lot steadier, with just a few occasions I can recall ever noticing points throughout fight. That stated, there’s one map particularly the place the framerate was persistently fairly horrible, particularly on part of the map the place one thing appears to not be working proper. This seems like the kind of factor that would fairly simply be recognized and stuck, so I’d be shocked if a patch doesn’t arrive at or shortly after launch, however it’s price shouting out since I think there are different lingering points hiding about.