Key Preview Takeaways:

  • There are a ton of boss fights, and they’re fantastic so far.
  • If you like style, PBZ is oozing it.
  • Framerate hitches on a beefy PC are a yellow flag this close to launch.

I play so many sweaty action games that pit me against insanely difficult bosses and require the most tight reaction times imaginable that it actually takes quite a lot to get me to pay attention these days. I’ll admit that when I first saw the Phantom Blade Zero gameplay trailers, I didn’t immediately get the hype. After all, this sword-wielding parry-happy action game exists in an era where we get at least a dozen of these a year. It only took about five minutes with developer S-GAME’s Phantom Blade Zero to see how it sets itself apart, though, with the most smooth and satisfying action since Sekiro, a surprising number of things to do and secrets to find while exploring each level, and a story that seems like it’ll go harder than I expected it to. After over six hours bum-rushing my way through the first leg of the adventure, I left utterly champing at the bit to play more, and have now joined the ranks of those who count this among their most anticipated games of 2026.

The thing that immediately jumped out at me about this finely honed action game is just how much it effortlessly oozes style. One cutscene has a character played by Donny Yen balancing a baby on the edge of his blade while he fights off numerous attackers, one boss encounter involved me fighting (and eventually taking on the form of) one of those awesome dancing lions you see in Chinatown on Chinese New Year – even the first few minutes have your character choosing which heart he wants to receive from a creepy ghost monster guy just to make sure you know that the game you’re playing is metal as hell. It’s honestly pretty hard to make your action game with a cool swordmaster protagonist fighting off hordes of monsters stand apart from all the others given how common this trope is at this point, and yet I don’t think there was any point in my time playing where I went more than half an hour without running into something I hadn’t seen before. It’s incredibly impressive stuff!

That’s all without getting to the combat itself, which is without question the star of the show here. I don’t think there was even one second of Phantom Blade Zero where I didn’t feel like a complete badass. Some of the many examples I encountered include: riding atop a horse-drawn wagon while fighting off armed pursuers and blocking their gunfire with your sword, killing off enemies with absolutely brutal finishers after you’ve broken their guard meter with repeated parries, and keeping two enemies at bay on either side of you by executing an absurdly cool double kick at the same time.

This game has an incredible knack for making you feel like you’re the only person in the world who could have pulled something like that off.

This game has an incredible knack for making you feel like you’re the only person in the world who could have pulled something like that off, and a lot of that is in how smooth the parry mechanics and attack combos are. I surprised myself by how often I was able to do crazy things like parry three thrown daggers in quick succession, then follow it up with a series of attacks that sent me flipping through the air and spinning gracefully as I smacked around enemies like it was nothing, even though most were no slouches themselves. I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to action games, so if the parry windows aren’t just right, or the attacks don’t feel quite satisfying in some imperceptible way, I tend to become disenchanted really quickly. But Phantom Blade Zero gets so many of those tiny details just right, making it incredibly hard to put down.

Tools of the Trade

And if the core ways in which the combat feels satisfying are what pulled me in, then the fact that I was able to experience it all over again from a new framing thanks to the bevy of melee weapons was what held my interest. I don’t know how many weapons this thing has or if all of them are as unique as what I got my hands on in this section of the adventure, but just about every weapon of destruction I tried out felt extremely bespoke. I got one massive, two-handed blade by defeating an optional secret boss that carried me to victory through a ton of encounters thanks to its ability to deal an insane amount of damage, while another boss who was a drunken fighting master awarded me with his drunken fighting style after his defeat, which allowed me to bob and weave like a champ, moving unpredictably as I guided my blade telekinetically in front of me, even able to send it flying at the enemy as a ranged weapon. The differences between these kinds of weapons were so stark that it took a ton of time to adjust to each one, learning the combos available to me alongside the pros and cons of using each one as I went, and that went an incredibly long way to help keep my attention as I sliced through the 100th minion enemy in half an hour.

There’s also a surprising amount to upgrade as you master your kung fu skills, whether it’s enhancing weapons by investing materials in them to improve their stats and capabilities, or by investing in the various paths of the skill tree, which offer everything from active abilities like one that allows you to interrupt your own attacks to execute a quick dodge out of the way, to passive perks like one that restores your Sha-Chi (used to perform certain special actions) faster than normal. For an action game that’s mostly focused on pulling off sick kills, there’s a surprising amount of RPG that’s snuck its way into the mix here, and I’m all for it. It’s nice to have breaks from combat to do some good old fashioned buildcrafting, even if it didn’t seem to go all that deep from what I saw.

Who’s the Boss?

Boss fights can make or break a game like Phantom Blade Zero, so it’s a good thing that just about every one I played was an absolute banger. While most of the early fights were pretty bog standard stuff, like a hooded man throwing chained blades at me, or a big burly monstrosity swinging an ax the size of a grown man, it wasn’t long before some more interesting and original ideas took center stage. In one fight I perfected a dance of death against a snake lady who swooped through the air in a barrage of hilariously convoluted strikes, which put my fast reaction times and ability to read enemy movements to the test. On the other hand, the duel against the lion dancers wasn’t as chaotic, since most of the attacks were slower and fairly telegraphed, but the difficulty lied in having to come up with creative ways to get around the lion mask’s nigh-impenetrable armor, which I eventually learned the trick to throwing this fiery foe off its balance that I won’t spoil here. I’d really like to give more specific examples here, except developer S-GAME has asked me to not mention some of the cool bosses I fought so as not to spoil too many of them, so you’ll just have to take my word that there’s some pretty neat stuff in there.

Speaking of boss fights, much has been made of Donnie Yen’s role in Phantom Blade Zero as the mysterious Mó Yuan, and with good reason – this guy is freaking Ip Man, after all! The dude somehow managed to be the coolest guy in a Star Wars movie for crying out loud!. While I definitely won’t go into details on the way his character weaves his way into the story or the nature of these fights, I’ll say that I was pretty surprised by how this component of the adventure takes shape. Facing this obviously formidable foe didn’t go down the way I thought it would, and running into him multiple times over the course of my playtime was definitely a highlight, and featured some of the downright coolest animations I’ve seen in an action game in a very long time.

Densely Packed

When you’re not laying the smack down with your fists of fury against beefy bosses, you’ll be fighting across levels that have a surprising amount of secrets to discover, side quests to complete, and completely missable areas to explore. In the course of my demo, I found weapons and gadgets that others at the preview event reported not encountering at all, discovered one of the coolest bosses from my session that was entirely optional, and ran into hidden regions filled with loot to claim, like a creepy underground fortress that I’d missed until I did a bunch of backtracking. Phantom Blade Zero’s interesting aesthetic, which mixes industrial design with traditional wuxia elements, makes for some pretty interesting and unique areas, like one that featured a massive factory of some kind nestled into the center of a quiet village in the mountains. The sidequests I completed were mostly short errands to travel to different parts of the map and kill things or collect items, so largely busywork that fleshed out a bit of story with a side character while exposing you to a few more combat encounters with some scrub minions. But it also gave me more reasons to stop and smell the roses, explore areas I might have otherwise missed, and generally give me additional stuff to do in a world I was enjoying being in.

One area I didn’t get enough exposure to for me to form an opinion on just yet is the story. The premise is pretty straightforward, with the protagonist only having 66 days to live who sets out on a quest to cure himself before it’s too late and get revenge against his enemies – pretty normal stuff for this genre. And while I saw the opening cutscenes and a few bits and pieces of the story in the early hours, it was mostly setup stuff that I’d describe as good enough but not especially interesting. I didn’t really get to see many of the big story beats develop beyond the first act’s setup, though, so it remains to be seen if there will be payoff. I can at least say that all the stuff I learned about Donnie Yen’s character and his relationship to the protagonist made me think that maybe the story could deliver, but it’s still anyone’s guess.

Last Hurdle

Clearly, my time with Phantom Blade Zero was overwhelmingly positive, and they certainly won me over as someone who will definitely be playing this game, but if there’s one area I’m a bit nervous about it’s technical performance. Obviously the build I played wasn’t final, and S-GAME told me that most of their focus in the remaining weeks leading up to launch is mostly around optimization, but it’s worth shouting out that I experienced infrequent but fairly severe framerate drops throughout the course of my demo. I was playing on a decently powerful PC, so am particularly curious how this one will look and run on PS5, which is the only console PBZ is debuting on at the end of this month. In any case, it’s something I’ll be keeping an eye on closer to launch, because awesome games coming out the gates with unfortunate technical hiccups is disappointingly common these days.c

After half a day playing Phantom Blade Zero, it’s gone from mostly not on my radar to to the top of my wishlist this fall, and I truly cannot wait to dive back in later this month to see if it can deliver beyond those first handful of hours. At least for now, though, just about everything I’ve seen and played has made me more convinced that this is going to be one of the coolest action games of 2026.

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