Phantom Blade Zero - The Ultimate Preview! Top 13 Things You Should Know Before Playing – Transcript

00:00In the early 2020s, Chinese developers took the gaming world by storm, proving there's a massive global audience, hungry for rich, unique stories delivered through top-tier single-player cinematic experiences. While titles like Blacksmith Wukong helped open the floodgates, just a few years later, another global phenomenon is taking shape, with Phantom Blade Zero single-handedly reigniting a comparable level of hype.

00:24With a unique take on the Kung Fu genre, mixing traditional Chinese martial arts with heavy-steam punk elements, an unrestricted battle parkour, and an insanely addictive rock-infused soundtrack, it's no surprise big names like Sony and film's legend Donnie Yen were quick to offer their full backing, for only two weeks away from seeing how it all pans out, but until then I want to give you the ultimate preview of what Phantom Blade Zero actually is, and why it might be a game people talk about for years to come. And on that note, since many of you

00:53are likely even more hyped for launch, I'm doing a giveaway for a deluxe edition copy of Phantom Blade Zero. To enter, simply make sure that you're subscribed to the channel, leave a like and comment below this video. The winner will be randomly selected before launch and announced here on the channel. But what exactly is Phantom Blade Zero and how does it play? You probably even heard the words Wuxia or Chinese martial arts being thrown around, but the vision goes a lot deeper. This is a semi-open-world action RPG. Its style is

01:22rooted in Kung Fu punk, a reinterpretation of traditional kung fu, fused with unconventional elements such as steampunk, dark fantasy and body modifications. And although it borrows some elements from the soul genre, namely the interconnected gritty-style atmosphere, the combat itself plays much closer to a fast-paced combo-heavy action game. Unlike video games with restricted wall climbing, Phantom Blade Zero uses context-sensitive parkour and wall running

01:50tight strictly to combat environmental geometry. During active combat, running into specific pillars, bamboo stands or vertical walls allows you to run up to the surface, wall kick off and drop down with a heavy, diving aerial slash or reposition behind an enemy backline. Because cleared enemies stay dead, progression is also heavily reliant on discovery and there's even a permadeath mode with a direct tie-in to the main narrative. More on that in

02:17just a little bit. This design philosophy, however, ties directly to the IP's roots, which tracks back even further than 2017 to the studios early in the projects such as Rainblood. However, there was one pivotal moment that forever altered the game's trajectory, turning it into the major blockbuster we see today, and that was the reveal and subsequent massive global success of Blacksmith Wukong, that proved to Chinese studios that there was a

02:43global market still ready for premium, fully-fledged, triple-A single-player experiences hungry for new stories to be told. But now that we established what the game is, the question is what role do you fit in all of this? Well, in Phantom Blade Zero you play as Soul, an elite assassin serving a powerful and secretive organization known as the Order. The story kicks off with its patriarch being assassinated and you ending up taking the fall for it. During

03:10the massive manhunt that follows, Soul is fatally wounded. But by some miracle, your life is restored by the Flash sculptor, a mystic healer that manages to provide a temporary cure, but it all comes at a grave cost. You have exactly 66 days to live, hunt down the true conspirators, clear your name and find a permanent cure before the timer runs out. It's a story of betrayal, revenge and tragic heroism. Director Soulframe Liang explicitly mentioned

03:38that Soul is a classic Eastern tragic hero. Quiet, cold and condemned to perish, yet driven by an inner warmth to protect the weak along his path. His real enemies aren't just shadowy executioners either, but his own blood brother and his estranged father, forcing Soul to cut through his own family ties. Now the highlight of Phantom Blade Zero has been its very cinematic combat. At time, it almost looks like you're watching a movie rather than playing a video game. And that was indeed intentional, with a big emphasis

04:08on martial arts film choreography. What makes Phantom Blade Zero stand apart from other action RPGs isn't just its speed, it's how it handles momentum. Most games, in this style, reward patients, spacing and managing a stamina bar. Phantom Blade Zero does the opposite. Through its shachi system, every parry, stand switch and combo actually recharges your energy, forcing you to stay constantly aggressive. Rather than backing away to let stamina recover, landing, light attacks, pulling off precise parries

04:38or executing ghost steps behind an enemy recharges this resource. Even switching your main weapon mid-fight instantly refills the bar entirely, keeping momentum high. Mobs can also be engaged head-on or via calculated takedowns from the Shadow, it's even possible to perform dual chain assassinations from stealth.

04:56But because clearing areas will stay cleared, taking down groups of minor enemies before engaging with an area's elite boss actually makes stealth as a viable strategy mechanic. As games also confirm, there are at least 55 minimum weapons, including 30 primary and 25 secondary weapons known as Phantom Edges. And apparently it seems every single boss in the game will have one of them to drop. These aren't just copy-pasted weapons either,

05:21but are distinctively different play styles. Recently they revealed more of the Drunken Sword style for example and it's just as hectic as you would expect. It builds a lot towards being evasive and delivering unpredictable attacks. Even swordplay has shown lots of variations.

05:37One set of twin blades for example was shown where one of them were thrown outwards to deal damage and range, working in tandem with the sword still kept in hand. Large arsenal also means some options are better adapted for different situations. If you're fighting a large boss with particularly high defenses, a regular old sword may simply not cut it. And more impactful options may do the job just quicker. Equally there are many AoE Phantom Edges like cannons,

06:03dragon breath and other attachments or body modifications that can fit unique scenarios. This brings us to the Game World, the wool lane. Phantom Blade Zero also presents a hybrid game world, not quite open world but not a linear either. It's filled with hidden enemies, side quests, secret treasures and crucial story clues worth to explore. They call it the wool lane or the martial underworld, reimagined through the lens of steampunk. The wool lane is

06:31Phantom Blade Zero's representation of a corrupted, lawless, underbelly of the Phantom World, an underground society of martial artists, clans, assassins and wanderers who live by their own code outside of government law. This is entirely made out of 8 district regions spanning bandit-infested valleys, villages, abandoned machine ruins and fog-drenched swamps, controlled by rival cabals, shadowy organizations and rogue warlords. Every single one of these

06:598 regions is represented through authentic, hand-painted Chinese inkwash maps, and all of them connect into one seamless world. Traversing them is also done via both fast traveling, provided by the bells we get to unlock, once interacted with, these now serve as a fast travel point from almost anywhere on the map, but also via special means of transportation.

07:19For example, we've seen some of the maps are on a scale comparable to open-world games, including the sequences where we have to use a high-speed vessel to traverse a very large lake in one of the more industrial maps revealed so far. And some of these regional maps may only offer a rough sense of direction instead of being more detailed, leaving a lot of room for exploration and uncovering of hidden secrets from our part. Luckily, the maps display how much each region has been discovered so far, at least percentage-wise.

07:49And that's going to be our segue into the boss fights of Phantom Blade Zero. There are a minimum of 55 boss battles, with a lot of them actually being hidden, were only accessible through special means, but all of them seem to drop a unique Phantom Edge. With a very important detail to know, and that is, both enemies you defeat and the bosses that you take down, staying permanently dead once beaten. Meaning, map resources will be finite, and you cannot

08:15just grind your way and get levels or mats by just defeating trash mobs over and over again to brute-force a hard encounter. Instead, if you ever get stuck, you're incentivized to respect your gear, upgrades to a different weapon, and adjust your combat tactics. The design philosophy here is that every battle feels unique, and they want players to keep moving forward and exploring new areas, rather than repeatedly farming the same spots.

08:39That doesn't mean, however, that you'll never see the same bosses ever again. The game is confirmed to feature a rematch mode, called Lee Woo Lin. In this game mode, you get to re-fight the bosses you previously defeated, to learn more about their attack patterns, but there are some unlockables here too. Namely, it features exclusive unlocks and even hidden boss variants that are worth pursuing. Boss fights also unfold like high-stakes duels. Instead of chipping away at massive health pools, the game provides

09:07focus via the Sha-Chi bar. Both you and the enemy have an HP as well as a Poise bar. Basic attacks don't deal high direct damage if a boss is guarding. Instead, you have to use heavy combos and weapon arts to shred their Sha-Chi. Once a boss's Sha-Chi hits zero, their posture breaks, opening them up for high damage finishers, called executions.

09:30Two indicators also show the type of attacks they direct at you and how to react against them. The blue flash attacks, which are the ones that can be blocked, will consume some of your Sha-Chi, unless you perform perfect parries right before the impact is about to hit you.

09:45This in turn will negate all the damage and instead drain the boss's Sha-Chi, even letting you trigger a ghost step behind the boss for a devastating backstab combo. Red flash attacks on the other hand are unblockable and instead must be reacted to with a precision dodge, which can similarly trigger a ghost step into a back angle punish.

10:07Bosses oftentimes also feature multi-phase escalation. Good news is that once you enter one of the new boss phases, oftentimes, if you fail, you get to resume from the current phase, rather than starting from the very beginning. It's a game with a low barrier of entry to feel powerful but with a high ceiling when it comes to becoming the true master of the sword.

10:28Which also brings us to another mechanic you may find important, and that is pre-respect. The game's philosophy is that no weapon should feel weak and there's a heavy emphasis on experimentation. Virtually every option in your arsenal can be upgraded and all materials consumed in the process can easily be recovered and reinvested into new gear.

10:49That's because every weapon features its own upgrade path, where additional investment unlocks distinct new forms and techniques. Some of them shown were quite built defining too. For example, for the ring weapons, they featured the seamless Death Ring upgrade.

11:04Its very first level already unlocked a way to charge and throw a more powerful version of this attack with L2 plus triangle, but the second and third levels then provided completely new abilities, even a phantom step mechanic. Simply leveling a weapon here seems to be the main way to keeping them relevant for higher grade enemies as you progress in the main story and level up, and it will cost various resources, such as metals and parts that we can get by exploring completing missions and also likely from enemies.

11:32However, if at any point we want to switch to something different, let's say you maybe got bored of the same weapon or in the longer feels quite as effective, there's something called reforging talisman that lets you fully reset all the levels and recover all of the invested resources so you can immediately boost new gear instead. I think that's actually a really great way to incentivize testing out different builds. Weapons aren't the only ones

11:58featuring unlockable mechanics, because Soul himself also features a skill tree with multiple lines. Much of it will be split into three main lines dealing with combat skills, defensive utilities and phantom edge boosting. These are more or less going to not be flat stat bonuses, but instead will offer completely new mechanics and play styles. Although some of them were blurred, we can make out some of the details over here. For example, fluid control