One of the early highlights of the PlayStation Showcase 2023 was a new martial arts action adventure from Chinese developer S-Game called Phantom Blade Zero. The game follows a warrior with only 66 days left to live on a journey through a dark fantasy world reminiscent of that seen in this year’s Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty.
Unlike that game, Phantom Blade Zero looks to be more of a character action game, with fast-paced melee combat similar to Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The game takes place in what is being described as “Phantom World,” a universe where Chinese kung fu mashes up with steampunk, arts of the occult, and other random things that float the boat of S-Game founder an CEO Soulframe Liang.
The game contains a semi-open world with large hand-crafted maps, and if you make the effort to overcome challenges and defeat powerful enemies, you’ll be rewarded with “weapons, armor, artifacts, skills, and other ways to customize or progress your character.” One of the aims of the gameplay is to empower players to unleash powerful combos without mindless button-mashing. But speaking of cool combos, Kenji Tanigaki is the game’s action director, and he is “the fight choreography master behind many of the classic martial arts films that inspired us.”
Phantom Blade Zero is in the works for PlayStation 5.
