Phantom Blade Zero Took 15 Years and a Fortune to Get Here
S-GAME's wuxia action game grew out of two obscure RPG-Maker titles from 2010 — its creator has been building toward it for over a decade.
Phantom Blade Zero may feel like it appeared out of nowhere, but its roots run deep. The Chinese studio S-GAME, led by CEO Qiwei "Soulframe" Liang, first shipped two turn-based RPGs — Rainblood and Rainblood: Town of Death — back in 2010 and 2011, built in RPG-Maker and sold mostly through fan sites after the first one reached the West via an approved fan translation. The series is over 15 years old, and the new big-budget action game is its long-delayed descendant.
The journey continued through 2013's Rain Blood Chronicles: Mirage, a Unity-powered 2D hack-and-slash that did reach Steam and consoles, and a run of China-exclusive mobile games. In May 2023, the big-budget 3D Phantom Blade Zero was finally announced — a leap in scale from everything that came before, made with hundreds of millions of dollars and featuring martial arts superstar Donnie Yen.
Combat built for speed, not turtling
After multiple demos and a multi-hour hands-on at Gamescom this year, the game's defining quality is clear: its free-flowing combat is purpose-built to capture the flow and speed of wuxia action rather than forcing the setting into a Souls-like mold. There are 30 primary weapons, each with its own moveset, plus 25 secondary weapons ranging from axes to slow-firing mini-cannons.
You can equip two primaries at once, swapping on the D-pad or weaving the second weapon into a combo with the left trigger — a high-damage stagger move that runs on a cooldown, so a well-timed swap to dual-blades is not always the right call.
A world inspired by Soulslike design
The combat feels distinctly un-Soulslike, but the world does not. S-GAME describes the interconnected map as "inspired by Soulslike map design," doubling back and reconnecting in ways reminiscent of the first Dark Souls. Instead of a detailed map screen, you navigate with hand-painted, ink-wash charts painted on Xuan paper and scanned into the game.
The Ming Dynasty setting is a world of decay and plague, punctuated by flashes of steampunk industrialization — and monstrous enemies corrupted by ramshackle machinery rather than the usual mystic rot.
A ticking clock — sometimes
The protagonist, Soul, has only a limited number of days to live, his heart pierced by a cursed blade. On most difficulties this countdown is purely narrative, but an extra-hard mode ties the plot into gameplay, counting down a day with every death. Story-wise, the game largely retells parts of the original Rainblood games, and the critic found the supporting cast thin — with one exception: Mó Yuan, portrayed by Donnie Yen, who also consulted on the game's action alongside stunt choreographer Kenji Tanigaki.
The verdict so far: Phantom Blade Zero is plenty promising — a striking escalation from its humble RPG-Maker origins — even if some of the original's soul may have been lost across the 15-year journey and the hundreds of millions of dollars it took to get here.