However, it looks like it’s business as usual over at S-GAME, with director Qiwei Liang telling PC Gamer that the team “didn’t think” about the competition, but has focused its efforts on releasing a polished experience and is using the extra time to “fix more bugs, [and] do more optimizations” to avoid a “huge day one patch.”

“Many people may think we have some marketing strategy to move it from the overcrowded September, and some are very worried that it’s closer to November. We don’t think about any of this. We only think of the quality of the product itself. I don’t think competition can influence much the success of a work. Only the product itself matters. So I would say 99% of the decision [was about] development.”

It’s a bold approach, to be sure, but we’ve previously talked about how this one could be a strong contender amongst a sea of great releases this year thanks to a combat and traversal loop that’s high on style and substance. It’s indeed heartening to see a newer developer go this route without worrying how Rockstar’s reputation has preceded it enough to scare off a bunch of other studios, forcing them into a limited earlier release window for what could be very good games.

It’s equally nice to see the team focus on making their game as accessible to “as many players as possible”, with the studio looking to bring it to the Steam Deck despite the handheld’s Unreal Engine 5 woes. We’ll have to wait and see if the team’s courage is rewarded, but we’re almost certain it will keep us coming back for more when it finally launches in late October for the PC and PS5.

In a statement on Twitter, Liang said, “I want to offer my sincere apologies to all the players who have been following and supporting us. This was not an easy decision. More than anyone, we understand the expectations our players have placed on us. And precisely because of those expectations, we do not want to release Phantom Blade Zero knowing there is still an opportunity to take it one step further.”

Recounting the game’s reveal in 2023 to the offline demo in 2024 and the stunning showcase of the Lion Dance, Drunk Sword and Seven-Star Sword Formation, Liang notes how the title showcased a “clear leap forward” at every major turn. The team has spent the past several months “streamlining content” and focusing its efforts on “polishing the areas that matter most.”

“During this process, I saw one final opportunity for Phantom Blade Zero to make another meaningful leap forward. We have upgraded a number of character models and reworked many environments across the game, pushing them toward the highest standard we can currently achieve.”

Also, good news for those worried about ray tracing requirements. Liang notes that “additional effort” was spent on preserving “as much of this visual impact as possible even without relying on ray tracing.” “Of course, ray tracing will further enhance the visuals, but our priority is to make sure the core look, atmosphere, and intensity of Phantom Blade Zero come through at full force for as many players as possible.”

While he acknowledges that 50 days isn’t enough to address everything, it will ensure the developer can make several “clearly defined and genuinely important improvements.” Why not save some of these fixes for post-launch patches? Liang had considered this, but “for the players who choose to join us on day one, we believe they deserve the best version of Phantom Blade Zero we can deliver from the very beginning.”

Apologizing once more for the delay, he assured that there would be more to see this Summer. “I believe every extra day of waiting will be worth it.”

Phantom Blade Zero will be available for PS5 and PC, and while S-Game hasn’t ruled out an Xbox Series X/S version, it’s a 12-month timed exclusive for Sony’s platform. Thus far, we’ve heard a lot about the side content, how players’ decisions can have a “bigger macroscopic impact” on the story and even how real artists have hand-crafted everything, right down to the Xuan paper.

While we get glimpses of gameplay and some of the strange enemies that players will have to take on in Phantom Blade Zero, the “Special Teaser” is essentially just an announcement that a longer trailer will be released later in the summer. The studio also plans on kicking off pre-orders for the game at the same time.

S-Game had confirmed back in December 2025 that Phantom Blade Zero will be console exclusive to PS5 for at least 12 months. While Xbox Series X/S owners will miss out on the game for some time, PC players have nothing to worry about.

More recently, S-Game had revealed that Phantom Blade Zero doesn’t have an “honor system”. Rather, the studio has noted that there will be a few side quests in the game that will “influence the direction of the main story”. This will involve strangers that players can run into that “have their own stories”. Game director “Soulframe” Liang Qiwei has described the effects of these encounters as being like that of a butterfly’s wings flapping.

Aside from the 20 to 30 hour storyline, the hack and slash action adventure will see players encounter “strangers brought together by chance” who “have their own stories.” However, producer/director Soulframe Liang described these encounters as akin to the butterfly effect in their influence on the main quest. “Who you are depends on everything you do.”

Of course, he didn’t go into details on the decisions you’ll have to make, much less which could be considered honorable. Far be it from any decision to be the most straightforward. Regardless, helping these strangers could save the protagonist, Soul, from a grisly fate. We’ve seen similar approaches in games like Black Myth: Wukong, so it wouldn’t be surprising if this ultimately leads to the true ending.

Phantom Blade Zero launches on September 9th for PS5 and PC, with S-Game confirming it to be in the “intense, final stages of development.” It’s also worth noting that despite taking the advice of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer Sandfall Interactive to “cut things,” the amount of side content could drive playtimes up to 50 hours.

Furthermore, Liang said that players might experience only 30 percent of the game in their first playthrough. Beyond the side content, is there a possibility of new content in New Game Plus? Time will tell, so stay tuned for updates.

In a new developer diary discussing Wuxia and its meaning in-game, he also touched on honor and how that could influence encounters with characters. “You will inevitably encounter strangers brought together by chance. These people have their own stories, and you are just a passerby in theirs. That is to say, in the process of helping others, it’s a bit like the butterfly effect.

“Flapping a wing. In your process of acting with honor, you might actually influence your own main quest, and your own story of love and vengeance.”

In short, if you follow Soul’s code of honor and do the right thing, it will have a “bigger, macroscopic impact.” “Who you are depends on everything you do,” said Liang. And who knows? These “seemingly unrelated events” may even alter the course of the former assassin’s future.

Of course, how all of this will connect remains to be seen, and whether it will eventually result in Soul surviving is another mystery. While the main story requires 20 to 30 hours, the side content bumps this to a potential 50 hours. Either way, you can expect a meaty adventure, all the same.

Phantom Blade Zero launches on September 9th for PS5 and PC. It’s currently in the “intense, final stages of development” with S-Game “pouring every available resource into pushing every aspect of the game to the absolute limit of our capabilities.” It also clarified that everything in the game, down to the maps, is hand-crafted by actual artists with no AI technology employed.

“Phantom Blade Zero is currently in the intense, final stages of development. With the time we have left, we are pouring every available resource into pushing every aspect of the game to the absolute limit of our capabilities. We are fully aware that a profound technological revolution is unfolding around us. However, to this day, every single piece of content in our game has been crafted by the hands of real artists. We will not use AI visual tech that could alter our artists’ original creative intent.

“Our character models are built upon 3D scans of our phenomenal cast, who also provided the facial capture performances. The voice acting in both Chinese and English has been meticulously refined by our dedicated actors and directors, complete with full lip-syncing for both languages. The prototypes for our weapons are drawn from the vast arsenal of traditional Chinese weaponry. Sometimes, to better understand how a weapon’s weight and length impact movement, we have master swordsmiths forge real replicas.”

The studio went on to note that it had hired more than twenty highly experienced martial artists to motion capture the game’s combat. Also, to ensure the “most authentic kung fu techniques,” it consulted “directly with the masters and inheritors of traditional martial arts schools. When we needed authentic swordplay, we invited sword masters from Mount Emei; when we needed lion dance choreography, we brought in lion dance masters from Guangdong.” Its efforts certainly paid off, judging by the release date trailer which highlighted a lion dancer-like boss.

To help create the world for Phantom Blade Zero, the developers visited “many stunning locations across China, from ancestral halls in Fujian to ancient towns in Zhejiang, and even old steel factories in Beijing.”

Even the in-game guiding maps aren’t AI-generated. In fact, S-Game has confirmed that they aren’t even digital paintings. Rather, they are hand-drawn, using Chinese brushes and Xuan paper (crafted from rice straw and Tara Wing-Celtis or Blue Sandalwood bark, and often employed for calligraphy and painting). What’s more, the developer even roped in “young artists from the Chinese Painting department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA)” to draw them.

“We firmly believe that human artistry is not merely a means for creating value; it is the value itself,” it explained. “S-Game didn’t just hire a group of developers to make a game; rather, in our pursuit of continuously building an exceptional, passionate team, we decided to make a game that everyone here could be deeply proud of.”

Phantom Blade Zero is currently in development for PC and PS5, and is slated to be console-exclusive to Sony’s platform for at least a full year. It launches on September 9th and while an Xbox Series X/S version isn’t confirmed, it hasn’t been ruled out entirely either.

All three of these games got trailers showing off how they would make use of Nvidia’s RTX and DLSS 4 features. Resident Evil Requiem, for instance, will be capable of running at over 200 frames per second with path tracing enabled thanks to Multi Frame Generation. Phantom Blade Zero will similarly launch with all of these features available on day one of its September 9 release, and 007: First Light will be able to make use of these features to get improved visual details while still maintaining high and steady frame rates.

Similar videos have also been released for Active Matter, DEFECT, and Screamer, which you can check out below. These videos showcase gameplay making use of features like path tracing and ray-traced global illumination with high frame rates thanks to the use of DLSS 4 and technology like Multi Frame Generation. All of these showcases were recorded with the games in question running at 4K.

A number of developers from IO Interactive, including franchise art director Rasmus Poulsen, principal engineer and development manager Henrik Schlichter, and the studio’s CTO Ulas Karademir spoke about how 007: First Light will make use of these features.

“The primary tech that we are developing together with Nvidia is all the DLSS features, especially of DLSS4,” said Schlichter. “Everything from Multi Frame Generation to Super Resolution is incredibly useful and something that we have integrated very very closely into the game. We’ve made a new volumetric smoke system that really tries to push the limits of how we can represent smoke and fog and explosions in the game. And this is something that’s not been done anywhere before.”

“Having software and hardware working together and getting the best out of it while using these techniques really helps us to push the limits,” said Karademir. “To give us the freedom that our designers can really go beyond the limitations of the hardware.”

Phantom Blade Zero creator “Soulframe” Liang also spoke about some of the PC-exclusive features that will be available in the action title, thanks to the collaboration between developer S-Game and Nvidia.

“The very good thing for PC gamers is they have different ways to experience the game,” said Liang. “I think RTX and DLSS 4 are the main features that enhance our game a lot. The rain is one of our core environmental features, so having a convincing presentation of anything in the rain is important, and we count on ray tracing systems for this. It’s difficult to maintain the frame rate while you have the frame rate while you have top notch graphics. So DLSS 4 and other Nvidia technologies support us to get stable frame rates while getting the best graphics.”

007: First Light was originally slated for release in February. Last month, however, IO Interactive announced that it is pushing back the title’s release to May 27 instead. The earliest of these releases is going to be Resident Evil Requiem, which is coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on February 27. DEFECT and Active Matter will be coming out later this year, while Screamer is coming out relatively earlier; on March 26.

Liang got this advice from the studio right after The Game Awards 2025, where the developer had walked away with many awards, including Game of the Year, for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. “Pressure is good,” Liang said. “I talked with the team behind Expedition 33, they had a lot of trophies last night.” As for approaching Sandfall Interactive for advice, he said, “One of the most important and interesting things [Sandfall Interactive] told us was that for the last nine months, the most important thing is to delete things. To cut things [from the game] and to polish the rest.”

He went on to refer to this as being “a good idea,” and that “I will take that advice.”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 director Guillaume Broche had spoken about keeping the scope of the game narrow, and how it helped development as well as in garnering a positive critical reception on launch. He spoke about this when he was asked back in October how development on the game would have been affected if the studio had unlimited resources.

“I don’t think we would have wanted to radically add unnecessary content or change the overall scope of our game though – I think part of the reason some fans enjoyed their time with our game was how we tried to respect the players’ time by not artificially padding out the game time excessively,” said Broche. “In some ways, having a limited budget and resources is helpful to narrow down the scope of a title and distil the vision to the core elements that make it great, and maybe having unlimited scope and budget would’ve made it a less engaging game for our players. It’s hard to know!”

The studio’s COO François Meurisse and publisher Kepler Interactive’s portfolio director Matthew Handrahan had also spoken about how the lack of padding in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 helped to make it a successful release.

“One of the things that’s great about Expedition 33 is it really respects the player’s time,” said Hadrahan. “It gives them plenty to do, and it gives them plenty of satisfaction, but it isn’t arbitrarily 500 hours of gameplay. It’s impactful because it’s scoped correctly. […] It doesn’t have any sense of bloat or extraneous things that are put there just to make it larger and larger and larger.”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S earlier this month. Check out our review for more details. In the meantime, also check out the release date trailer for Phantom Blade Zero, which is coming to PC and PS5 on September 9. Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series X/S players will unfortunately have to wait for at least 12 months after release to play the upcoming game, however.

It does mention a PC release, however, which means that Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2 players who have been waiting for Phantom Blade Zero will have to wait for, at minimum, another full year before they can play the title on their preferred platform. “Also available on PC. Not available on other consoles until at least 12 months after release date.”

Alongside this note, the trailer also gave us a look at some of the new weapons available in Phantom Blade Zero, including massive spears and hook swords. It also showcased some of the boss fights, along with the protagonist taking on the Drunken Fist style of combat.

Game director “Soulframe” Liang had previously spoken quite a bit about Phantom Blade Zero, including the fact that the fighting game genre served as one of the core inspirations behind the upcoming title’s boss fights, especially when players pick higher difficulty options. “In normal difficulty, he has some of the Soulslike elements to him: he has fixed combos, and if you fight him enough times, you’ll figure out his combos,” said Liang about one of the bosses.

“But in extreme difficulty, it’s a completely different direction,” he said, saying that the game designers “tried to borrow a concept from fighting games and incorporate it into his AI.” In Hellwalker difficulty, the boss can “analyze the situation he’s in and whether it’s to his advantage or disadvantage.”

Combat director Qianli Ma has also spoken about the game’s combat system, and how it was designed to put players into a “flow” state that makes them “want to dance”. This, Ma noted, came down to the fact that Phantom Blade Zero features fast-paced combat with the developers making sure to reduce input latency as much as possible.

“This allows players to pull off awesome, fast-paced combat without having to worry about missing inputs, entering into a “dance”-like flow state. “If you want to beat it in a mediocre, not-as-beautiful way, it’s pretty achievable,” Ma explained. “But if you want to do it in a very beautiful manner, that’s the difficult aspect.”

Ma’s description of the combat in this regard makes it difficult not to draw comparisons with titles like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, where the core challenge of the game comes from making sure you’re being as stylish as possible rather than using basic-but-effective combos.

Alongside showcasing some new weapons, like a massive spear and hook swords, the trailer highlights new bosses, like a massive ogre-like creature. Though they’re wielding some heavy chained objects, the player can turn them against his foe. Even more notable is the ability to combine the Drunken Fist with flying swords, and it’s as exaggerated as it is stunning.

Phantom Blade Zero was first announced in 2023, promising a “kung fu punk” take on the hack-and-slash action-adventure genre (which S-Game has clarified is not a Souls-like). As assassin Soul, players embark on a John Wick-like quest for vengeance. The main story takes about 20 to 30 hours to finish, though there’s plenty of side content and replay value.