With several hands-on previews and impressions dropping for S-Game’s Phantom Blade Zero, excitement is through the roof for the Wuxia action RPG. But as much as it resembles the Souls-likes and Sekiro-likes of yore, it won’t feature a common tenet of the genre: Respawning enemies.
During a roundtable interview with 4Gamer, director Qiwei “Soulframe” Liang revealed that the team wanted “everything in the game to be valuable. I don’t want them to experience the same content over and over. Another reason is to focus on advancing the story and on this world itself.”
He also noted that meeting a new enemy is one of the “biggest surprises” in combat. Obviously, facing that same foe again and again would dull the excitement, even if Qiwei acknowledges that it can lengthen the experience. “Many games use the design to revive enemies, sometimes to repeatedly gather materials or to earn something. But we have considerable confidence in the volume and quality of this work. That’s why we always want players to experience something new.”
Of course, Phantom Blade Zero sets itself apart from Souls-likes in other ways, including the lack of a stamina bar. Instead, it’s all about Sha-Chi, built through light attacks and perfect dodges and consumed with heavy attacks or abilities.
Blocking depletes it, but perfectly timed deflects don’t. This creates an intriguing dance with opponents, as you build up to hard-hitting abilities and strikes while avoiding and/or negating attacks.
Phantom Blade Zero is out October 29th on PS5 and PC. It crossed three million wishlists last month and is seemingly poised for success with pre-orders far exceeding expectations within the first week of going live. Stay tuned for more details before then and check out its novel approach to permadeath, also known as 66 Days Mode.
