Since first being unveiled in 2023, and getting to get our hands on it back at Summer Game Fest in 2024, Phantom Blade 0 has been one of our most anticipated games. Last month at Summer Game Fest, we got to see the team at S-Game and got to spend an hour playing through the game. Getting to spend a more significant amount of time with the game compared to what we did a couple years back, really showcased how far the game has come and that it is something special in the making.
The demo we got to play had us going through a pretty big area of the game. The area we went through was pretty linear, but still provided a good amount of exploration. The area kinda reminded me of Nioh level design with tons of splitting paths, but with a fixed destination that you end up at.One part even caused me to get lost for a little bit. What really caught my eye while exploring, was how artistic the map was. The game itself is a realistic looking game, but the map is a very artistic hand drawn rendition of the area that looks absolutely beautiful.
Where the game really shined is the combat. Combat is fluid and feels extremely good, active, and fun to string together moves. While Phantom Blade 0 isn’t a Soulslike, the combat is still a very hardcore style of action combat. Regular enemies can easily overwhelm you when you are taking on multiple of them at once. To counteract that, you have the ability to dodge, block, and parry incoming attacks with each being better depending on the type of incoming attack. There were even times while playing that the member of the team said I shouldn’t try to keep taking on a group of enemies I died to a few times. When you do die, you don’t lose anything so you just continue on your path. Also, any enemies you do take out do not respawn when you come back. Thus, you don’t have to spend time taking out the same enemies over and over again after you die. During our demo, we got to have two boss encounters. The first was a more brutish type boss that felt like a miniboss. However, the demo culminated in a boss fight with one of the bosses we saw in a trailer around this time last year. This boss fight felt on a completely different level than the other boss and we needed to master our defensive and offensive abilities to take the boss out.
Overall, Phantom Blade 0 feels like it is going to be something special. You can see the effort and dedication that the team at S-Game is putting into the game, and, with their own focused State of Play later this summer, we’re not the only ones to think so. For those eagerly awaiting the game, you’ll only have to wait a few more months as Phantom Blade 0 is set to release on October 29, 2026 on PlayStation 5 ans PC.