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phantom blade zero release date ps5
phantom blade zero review
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phantom blade zero release date ps5
phantom blade zero review
phantom blade zero physical copy
phantom blade zero review embargo
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00:01Phantom Blade Zero has spent years looking almost too good to be true,
00:06especially coming from a studio that's best known for its mobile games.
00:10That's why it's just about the biggest compliment I can pay it that after 50 hours performing picture-perfect kung
00:16fu,
00:17it's exactly as fun to play as it looks.
00:20This effortlessly smooth action game has some of the most satisfying and well-tuned combat I've played in a long
00:27time.
00:27A surprising number of secrets to discover and quests to complete in each of its beautiful levels,
00:33and a never-ending supply of clever encounters full of unbelievably awesome moments.
00:39Its convoluted story and occasional performance issues may not live up to that incredible action,
00:45but it nails just about everything else.
00:47And there were only a handful of moments where I wasn't absolutely thrilled to be slicing my way through the
00:53ranks of the Wu Ling.
01:04Phantom Blade Zero plays like something straight out of a Wuja epic.
01:08As a metal-as-hell martial artist of mysterious origins, with only 66 days left alive to exact your revenge,
01:16you set out on an odyssey across the ruined lands of the Phantom World,
01:20facing off against all manner of beast and badass along the way.
01:23The story here isn't Phantom Blade Zero's strong suit, as it tries to do a bit too much,
01:29shoving in a whole bunch of mystical jargon, dozens of characters, and a needlessly complex timeline,
01:35very little of which ultimately pays off anyway.
01:38In the first couple hours alone, so much time is spent toggling back and forth between present day,
01:44several years ago, several months ago, and several days ago,
01:47that I was exhausted by all the exposition before I'd even faced my first real boss fight.
01:52That said, there are enough likable characters along the way, especially your unflappable hero named Sol,
01:58that I was usually able to forgive it for occasionally wasting my time with unnecessary flashbacks and lengthy explanations.
02:05I long to follow you into that world.
02:11Besides, you'll be spending most of your time exploring the world and squaring off against enemies big and small,
02:17and it's pretty clear that Phantom Blade Zero wants you to spend most of your attention on this part of
02:22the adventure.
02:23And that's a good thing too, because by God is it good.
02:27It only took a couple minutes for the precise parry and dodge mechanics to feel natural,
02:31and the nuanced but not overly complex system of weapons, combos, special abilities, and upgrades
02:38are rolled out at an extremely smart pace,
02:41all of which are easy enough to slip into like a tailored set of flowing woojah robes.
02:46I'm a complete snob when it comes to the feel and pacing of combat in these types of games,
02:51so the fact that this immediately felt like reuniting with an old friend made it instantly compelling,
02:56and it's one of those intangible things that's very hard to get right.
03:03Even more impressive is that not only does the combat feel good right away,
03:08it does so across dozens of weapons, each with their own unique moveset.
03:12This game doesn't just encourage you to change up your weapon loadout at regular intervals,
03:17it actually requires you to mix things up,
03:19since swapping your active melee weapon is one of the ways you can restore your posture meter with a single
03:24button press.
03:25And since many enemies, particularly bosses, can instantly drain your posture with certain attacks,
03:31you'll be swapping between different options with regularity,
03:34forcing you to commit multiple movesets and special abilities to memory.
03:39Conveniently, Phantom Blade Zero makes it extremely easy for you to reclaim and reallocate points invested in leveling up weapons,
03:46so there's rarely any reason to stick with a set loadout anyway,
03:50especially since you always seem to find the exact tool you need right before entering an area or encountering a
03:56boss where it would come in handy.
03:58For example, I noticed that I found a water cannon weapon only a few feet away from an area that
04:03led to a fire-based boss.
04:04Nice.
04:10Beyond that, you'll unlock a bunch of additional tools like grappling hooks and bows,
04:15which have utility both in combat encounters and outside of them,
04:19since you can use them to reach certain parts of the map or break through barriers that are otherwise impassable.
04:24There are also trinkets that offer interesting buffs, like a significant damage increase when you're at full health,
04:30and a skill tree with perks that let you do things like execute a dodge while in midair,
04:34or increase the number of healing items you can carry.
04:37There's a surprising amount of depth to the things you can upgrade,
04:40and the ways to customize exactly how your Woolan Warrior does its thing.
04:44And I spent much more time than I typically do in these kinds of games,
04:47just testing out different weapons and swapping my equipment around as a result.
04:51At the very least, it's worth doing so just to see the unique execution animations when you finish off trash
04:57enemies.
05:00You'll have plenty of time to try them all out as you get your steps in across Phantom Blade Zero's
05:06eight maps, too.
05:07Each one is filled with foes to take down, side quests to complete, chests to loot, and secrets to discover.
05:13A surprising amount of the places to go and people to meet are completely missable,
05:18including the entirety of a very cool questline that sees you getting trained by none other than Donnie Yen as
05:24the mysterious gold-masked man,
05:27which is actually one of Phantom Blade Zero's strongest subplots.
05:31No shame. No shadow. Yet it moves through all. That's the path to know.
05:38While most of the side quests are pretty straightforward missions to go somewhere and collect some stuff for a small
05:44reward,
05:45they gave me more reasons to spend time exploring every nook and cranny, which I was happy to do.
05:50And unlike lots of modern games filled with icons on the screen telling you exactly where to go and what
05:56to do,
05:57Phantom Blade Zero instead makes use of hand-drawn maps that only give you a vague idea of your location
06:02in relation to key landmarks,
06:05allowing you to explore and fill in the gaps on your own.
06:12If there's one thing that consistently mucks up this journey,
06:16it's that Phantom Blade Zero suffers from some pretty bad geometry.
06:20Soul gets caught on surfaces all the time, and even the tiniest bumps on the road can stop him dead
06:25in his tracks,
06:26which is pretty hilarious for a guy who can jump 40 feet in the air while doing 19 backflips.
06:31Not only that, there are invisible borders all over the place that make exploration janky at times,
06:37especially when platforming sections ask you to get to a specific ledge only for you to discover there's an invisible
06:42wall and you fall to your death.
06:44I died nearly 200 times over the course of my playthrough,
06:47and roughly half of those deaths were me falling into a pit or getting caught in the environment until I
06:53was able to get myself killed or reload my save file.
06:55In one case, I even lost about 20 minutes of progress when my supposed martial master couldn't escape some bushes.
07:05Oh, and enemies occasionally get stuck in the environment too, which just makes fights where it happens feel so lame.
07:14Your head is mine!
07:18Phantom Blade Zero's superpower, the magic trick it performs time and time again,
07:23is its way of making you feel like you're the only person in the world badass enough
07:28to withstand its utterly insane flurry of swords against godlike monsters like it's nothing.
07:34The truth is that the melee dance of combat encounters is just so finely tuned,
07:40with every attack telegraphed just enough to give you exactly the time you need to react,
07:45aided by an almost imperceptible musical rhythm that grants you a certain level of precognition for what's going to happen
07:52next.
07:52Once I synced up with its tempo, I started anticipating attacks before I consciously registered them,
07:59leading me to perfectly block some lightning quick attack I hadn't seen before.
08:03There's nothing specifically special about my reaction time or skill with action games.
08:08Rather, it's a testament to how incredibly well-balanced and smartly designed these unbelievably sick fights are.
08:15It's without question the thing Phantom Blade Zero does best,
08:18and it's an illusion I fell for repeatedly, from the opening sequence all the way to the final battle.
08:28Something I admire about Phantom Blade Zero's difficulty is how consistently it feels exactly right.
08:34Not too unforgiving, but it rarely lets you feel like you aren't in danger of getting your butt kicked.
08:40I'm typically someone who relishes a challenge from games like this,
08:44and so played Phantom Blade Zero on its hardest difficulty exclusively,
08:48but found myself beating just about every major boss fight in two or three tries,
08:52plus a good chunk that I cleared in one go.
08:54And I didn't mind that one bit.
08:56It meant that I rarely saw enough of a boss to know every tool in their murder belt,
09:01and refreshingly made me feel like the one to be feared rather than the other way around.
09:05It's pretty damn cool to enter a room and watch a ten-foot-tall badass with an eight-pack swing
09:11around a blade and think,
09:12oh man, this guy's totally screwed.
09:17Part of the way this Goldilocks level of difficulty is achieved is due to the interesting decision
09:22to not make you repeat phases of a boss fight that you've already cleared.
09:26If you get through a first phase that just makes the bad guy mad,
09:29and then get killed after he turns into an even more hooked-out psycho,
09:32you'll pick back up at the top of that second phase.
09:38I've been known to get annoyed at having to replay the first phase of a boss fight a dozen times
09:43just to get to another run at the more challenging part,
09:46to the point where multi-phase boss fights in general can get on my nerves these days.
09:50By removing this annoyance entirely, it got rid of a potential friction with some of these encounters.
09:56It also allows for more freedom in how these encounters are designed,
09:59like moments where a boss uses a cheap move that one-shots you instantly if you get hit by it.
10:04Normally, including insta-kill moves like that is a good way to send me into a rage,
10:09but because my progress was almost never set back far enough to bother getting mad about,
10:13I felt a lot more lenient toward that kind of thing.
10:16I mean, let's face it, that crazy attack where you get impaled on a giant spear,
10:20then set on fire and smashed face-first into the floor probably should kill you right away,
10:25so it's pretty neat that Phantom Blades Zero found a way to make a devastating moment like that exciting rather
10:31than irritating.
10:32Nowhere to run!
10:39It's also incredibly impressive that throughout the 50 hours it took me to reach credits,
10:44as I fought dozens and dozens of bosses, I was continually surprised by the creative enemies it threw at me.
10:51Sure, there's the occasional big guy with a big axe or dude with a sword you swear you fought already,
10:57but these are by far the exception, not the rule.
11:02At one point I found myself wearing a lion dancer mask,
11:06jumping around on poles to collect heads of lettuce to power up my fire blast.
11:10And in another section, I fought a posse of warriors who worked together as one unit
11:15to throw preposterously intricate attacks my way.
11:18The main threat to my life there was getting caught with my guard down because I was too busy cackling.
11:24The boss fights are so consistently interesting, memorable, and numerous
11:28that I felt utterly compelled to seek out each and every one of them,
11:32which led me to turn this first playthrough into a full-on completionist run just to avoid FOMO.
11:40When I previewed Phantom Blades Zero a little over a month ago,
11:43one of my primary concerns was how it would perform.
11:47And thankfully, the version I played for this review had a far more consistent performance.
11:52The framerate was much steadier, with only a few times I can recall ever noticing issues during combat.
11:58That said, there's one map in particular where the framerate was consistently pretty terrible,
12:04specifically on a part of the map where something seems to not be working right.
12:08This feels like the type of thing that could pretty easily be identified and fixed,
12:13so I'd be surprised if a patch doesn't arrive at or shortly after launch.
12:17But it's worth shouting out, since I suspect there are other lingering issues hiding about.
12:28Phantom Blades Zero is one of the best action games I've played in a long time,
12:33with standout combat that never came close to feeling old across 50 hours of playing.
12:38It all takes place in a sharp, unique world that I adored spending time in,
12:42despite the fact that just about everyone and everything in it wanted me dead.
12:46Its tale of betrayal and revenge mostly plays it extremely safe,
12:50and some unfortunate invisible barriers and technical hiccups can cause minor frustrations.
12:55But the overwhelming majority of my time with this stunning, incredibly well-tuned adventure was downright awesome.
13:05Reviews director Tom Marks here with Travis Northup, a reviewer of Phantom Blades Zero,
13:08to talk a little bit more about his tastes in the genre.
13:11Because Travis, you've reviewed action games for us before,
13:13but you also review a lot of things from farming sims all the way up to Souls-likes and all
13:18that jazz and everything in between.
13:19So I want to get a taste of your tastes, you know?
13:22Like, what do you like in this genre?
13:25What are some of your favorite action games?
13:27What do you gravitate towards in terms of speed, play style, all that stuff?
13:32Yeah, so the action games have a special place in my heart, because as you know,
13:36I spend a lot of my time playing like really challenging games where you're kind of always on your back
13:41foot getting your butt kicked.
13:42And the cool thing about an action game is that it's the exact opposite of that.
13:45A good action game is you feeling like you're the final boss and you walk into a room and you're
13:50just like,
13:51Oh, bro, you are so toast. Like you don't even know what I'm about to unleash on you.
13:55And so it can be pretty cathartic when you spend a lot of your time, you know, getting your butt
14:00kicked.
14:00And then you hop into a game like this and you're just like, Oh man, I can't wait to unleash
14:05this insane combo on you.
14:08And, you know, studying like different weapons and the ways that you can interact with their effects and all that
14:13fun stuff.
14:14So that's why that's what I love about this genre is that it's just a pure power fantasy.
14:19And that's not to say that this game is easy or not challenging. It's just, it's the difference.
14:26Like you said, the power fantasy versus having to cut fight back, right?
14:30Exactly.
14:31Come from below and fight up. You are, you are strong and fighting down.
14:36Yeah. And this game, it has a couple superpowers, but one of its superpowers is that like you walk into
14:42a room and no matter how badass your opponent is,
14:44the entire time you're just like, dude, you're screwed. Like I got you. I know.
14:48I know like how this is going to go. Cause I'm just the coolest warrior who's ever existed.
14:53Um, and also the, the, to your point with the, it is not a super easy game, but it's also
14:58not really a hard game.
14:59It's like a extremely fairly balanced game where they do certain things.
15:04Like one I talked about in the review, they, they don't make you repeat phases of boss fight.
15:09So if you beat the first phase and then die, you start on the second phase.
15:12And it's like little choices like that, that actually have a huge impact because it means you're not like spending
15:17a ton of time in every encounter,
15:19like perfectly learning the moves. You can kind of like worst case scenario is like you're dying halfway through, restarting
15:25halfway through,
15:26and then beating it on your second run. Like, it's kind of like that.
15:29What's a good point of comparison. We try not to over compare in our reviews because, you know, these games
15:33stand on their own.
15:34They shouldn't live or die by what has come before or what other people are doing.
15:39But this is sort of an interesting one to me because I, I, when I saw some of the early
15:43trailers,
15:44thought it was going to be more soulsy, you know, in that vibe of the slower pace and the, the,
15:50the more conservative action.
15:51Um, and that doesn't sound like exactly what it is, but it's also not, you know, going the hard,
15:57the other direction of like DMC or Bayonetta stuff where you're going insane and doing combo meter stuff either.
16:02It's not full stylish action.
16:04Yeah. It's somewhere in between those two, but I would say that it's closer to a DMC.
16:09Uh, if you had to pick one of those two, because you're certainly, there's, there's a lot,
16:13plenty of times where you're not really able to get on the attack because everybody's got like perfect guards and
16:18stuff like that.
16:18But like enemies are coming at you insanely fast.
16:22They're swinging at you like 30 times in three seconds.
16:24And so you're able to get to that point where you go on the offensive a lot sooner.
16:29And the game is just faster in general.
16:31So I would put it a recent example that I think it comes somewhat close to is Onimusha way of
16:38the sword.
16:38And then, um, it's, it's closer.
16:41If you were going to compare it to a souls like game, it's, it's definitely closest to Sekiro,
16:45which is a game I really loved that is a little bit more, uh, offensive.
16:50Although it, it, it certainly has, you know, the thing where you have to master perfect parries.
16:54And this game does too.
16:55Like you basically have to be able to parry to some extent this game.
16:58Uh, although even that rule isn't true because there's weapons that get around that where they actually remove the parry
17:03mechanic altogether.
17:04This game is very cool is what I'm saying.
17:06Uh, but, uh, they, uh, they, yeah, it's definitely a more like fast pace.
17:11Like you can just like tank through enemies and you're definitely not like approaching a group of mob enemies and
17:16being like,
17:16all right, I'm going to wait for you guys to attack me. It's like, no, I'm jumping in.
17:19I'm pulling off some crazy stunt flipping in the air, slicing like three dudes in half at once.
17:24And, uh, it, it is, it is kind of a pure power fantasy once you really get good at it.
17:29And, and that's, uh, it's quite different than, um, than something that's more soulsy.
17:34So, well, Travis, thank you so much for talking with us a little bit more about your tastes in the
17:38genre and Phantom Blade in general.
17:40Uh, if you want another action game review from Travis, his last one was Valor Mortis,
17:43which is a very, very different kind of action game, but, uh, another interesting one there.
17:48And then for a different type of action game as well, our, we just reviewed Dragon's Dogmas 2's Dark Arisen
17:54DLC.
17:54So you can check that out and for everything else, stick with IGN.
17:58And, uh, we'll see you next time.
18:00Bye-bye.