Phantom Blade Zero In-Depth Hands-On: The Most Exhilarating Action Experience Since Sekiro, and Two Unavoidable Flaws
After playing through more than six hours of the first chapter, IGN struck a notably rare tone in its assessment of S-GAME's Phantom Blade Zero - an overwhelmingly positive overall impression. This editor, who has seen it all, even stated outright that they have officially joined the ranks of those listing Phantom Blade Zero as their most anticipated game of 2026.
Yet beyond the glowing praise, this hands-on report also retains two clear-eyed criticisms: the frame rate drops are quite severe, and the story's appeal still falls just short. One is a matter of technology, the other of art - precisely the two shortcomings where action games most easily crash and burn.
So, the question is: this homegrown wuxia action game that has hardcore action players overseas collectively falling under its spell - where exactly does it excel? And where does it fall short?
The Verdict Upfront: Six Hours Through the First Leg of the Journey, and Praise Sets the Tone
Let's start with the bottom line. After more than six hours of nearly sprinting the entire way through the first leg of the adventure, the IGN editor departed in a state best described as "can't wait to play more." His list of most-anticipated games of 2026 now includes one more name from China.
Developed by S-GAME and helmed by producer Liang Qiwei, the game had already gone viral worldwide on the strength of its gameplay footage. But a showcase is one thing, and getting hands-on is another - and the answer delivered by this six-hour full play session was: it lives up to the hype.
The only reservation surfaced on the technical side. S-GAME made it explicitly clear that this preview build came from an early stage of the development cycle, with performance still far from fully optimized. The editor was gracious in passing this along:
"My overall experience with Phantom Blade Zero was overwhelmingly positive, and I will absolutely have a blast with this game. But if there's one area that gives me some pause, it's the game's technical performance."
Five Minutes to Dispel Every Doubt: Dark Wuxia with Off-the-Charts Style
To be honest, when the first gameplay footage trailers for Phantom Blade Zero dropped, this editor didn't immediately grasp the players' fervor. After all, in this day and age, action games of whirling blades and lone masters single-handedly facing down a thousand-strong army number no fewer than a dozen a year, and the "swordsman slays demons" formula has long since been worn into the ground.
But it took him only five minutes to realize just how spectacularly wrong he was.
The game's obsession with stylization seeps into every single shot: in one cutscene, the character played by Donnie Yen battles several assassins while steadily cradling an infant on his blade; the final form of one boss fight turns out to be the strikingly lifelike lion dance from a Chinatown Lunar New Year temple fair - grapple with it all the way to the end, and you can even claim its form as your own; and within the opening few minutes, the protagonist must choose one of several hearts offered up by a sinister, eerie specter to receive - announcing in the most direct way possible: this game is hardcore beyond imagination.
"In over six hours of play, there was hardly a single stretch longer than half an hour that went by without running into something new."
For a genre mired in cutthroat competition at its most extreme, this is an almost inconceivable density of creative output.
Combat Is the Undisputed Protagonist: Not a Single Second Without Feeling Like a Total Badass
If style is the dazzle of the first impression, then combat is the reason that dazzle never fades. The editor's own words pull no punches:
"I don't think there's a single second in Phantom Blade Zero where I feel like anything less than a complete badass."
So many standout moments emerged during the hands-on session that they could fill an article of their own: fending off pursuers from atop a speeding carriage, blocking incoming gunfire dead-on with the blade itself; shattering an enemy's posture gauge with a string of consecutive parries, then following up with an execution animation so brutal it borders on the aesthetic; and that downright absurd double flying kick - booting away two enemies flanking from left and right in the same instant, with the timing and impact feel both calibrated to perfection.
The soul of this system is the parry. The editor admits to being one of the picky ones when it comes to action games - a parry window off by even a hair, or the faintest, hard-to-name sense of wrongness in the attack feedback, and he'll drop the game in a heartbeat. Phantom Blade Zero, remarkably, gets almost all of these tiny details right: parrying three throwing knives that arrive in rapid succession, then chaining into a gorgeous aerial-tumbling combo, batting a formidable foe around like a punching bag - and crucially, this is something an ordinary player can reliably pull off too.
It has a rare kind of magic: it makes you believe that, in the entire world, only you could pull off moves like these.
Every Weapon Feels Tailor-Made for You
What keeps the sense of freshness alive is the game's sheer variety of melee weapons. The editor admits he isn't sure exactly how many weapons the game contains, nor whether every single one is as distinctive as those he personally got his hands on - but within the scope of the demo, at least, almost every weapon is extremely "bespoke," as if an entire set of moveset logic had been designed around it individually.
After defeating a certain optional secret boss, he obtained a massive two-handed longblade, whose cataclysmic damage carried him through a long stretch of subsequent encounters. Meanwhile, after another boss - a Drunken Fist grandmaster - was taken down, he "passed on" his drunken fist style to the protagonist: the body sways and staggers, the footwork drifts unpredictably, the longsword hovers before the character as if guided by sheer will, and can even be released from the hand and hurled as a ranged weapon.
The differences between these weapons are so vast that they demand a considerable time investment to re-adapt: with each one, you have to relearn its combos and re-grasp its strengths and weaknesses. And it is precisely this design that keeps you thoroughly engrossed, even as you cut down your hundredth grunt within half an hour.
Leveling, Skill Trees, and Exploration Density: What's Added Beyond Kung Fu Training
As an action game with a substantial RPG layer, Phantom Blade Zero is every bit as uncompromising when it comes to its progression systems. Weapons can be upgraded by investing materials, boosting their stats and traits, while the skill tree branches into multiple paths, complete with active skills and passive talents.
The design philosophy behind active skills is refreshingly pragmatic. For instance, players can cancel their own attack animations and instantly dodge to safety - this opens up a sliver of margin for error in high-risk combos, allowing for greedier offense and more decisive retreats. On the passive side, a wealth of bonuses that reshape the game's feel await discovery.
The surprises on the exploration front likewise exceeded expectations. Every level is packed with a considerable amount of optional content and secrets: side quest encounters, hidden bosses, and environmental details worth pausing for. The two-handed greatsword mentioned earlier comes from a secret boss fight that careless explorers would walk right past - this kind of "design that rewards curiosity" is exactly the charm of dense, handcrafted level design.
Two Flaws: One Is the Frame Rate, the Other Is the Story
To circle back to the line in the title: this hands-on preview concludes that Phantom Blade Zero currently has only two flaws.
The first is the frame rate. On a PC with specs that were far from weak, the editor still ran into multiple instances of quite noticeable - arguably severe - frame drops. S-GAME responded that this build was an early development build and does not represent final quality - which is, of course, a perfectly reasonable explanation, since performance issues in in-development builds are par for the course. But look at it from another angle: if even the PC build is like this, how can the experience for console players be guaranteed? The editor himself has likewise put a question mark over how the PS5 version will actually perform.
The second is the story. While the editor did concede that the plot "trends harder and darker than expected," the overall assessment suggests that the early narrative setup and presentation are not yet gripping enough to fully hold the player - for a story-driven dark wuxia action game, this is clearly an area S-GAME needs to focus on polishing during the remaining development window.
Fortunately, there is still time before release, and both issues are "fixable" rather than fatal. The real question is whether the priority given to these fixes - and how thoroughly they are completed - can keep pace with the 2026 release date.
Top Community Comments
This hands-on preview report has stirred up quite a few waves in the domestic player community, and the top-upvoted comments in the thread almost perfectly distill three typical mindsets among players today.
@Yumo Zhuosi: It's not like the Black Myth: Wukong era anymore. Players these days have no enthusiasm left for upgrading their rigs just to play one game - anyone buying a PC at these prices is a pure sucker.
This comment reflects a reality: the marginal enthusiasm for hardware upgrades is receding. When "buying a new PC for one specific game" shifts from a badge of honor to a burden, a developer's optimization prowess gets put under the microscope - which directly explains why, even against a backdrop of rave reviews, the frame rate issue still charges to center stage in the discussion.
@Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts-: The game hasn't even released yet, so why are there already a bunch of people who can't handle others pointing out its flaws? If the story really does have problems when the time comes, these will be the very same people flaming it the hardest. Back before Black Myth: Wukong released, plenty of people hyped up how brilliant Asura's story was - yet after release, the story turned out to be the single most controversial part.
This is an exceptionally clear-headed comment. Expectations are a double-edged sword: putting an unreleased title on a pedestal is, in essence, stockpiling potential energy for the eventual letdown. For Phantom Blade Zero, rational criticism isn't doomsaying - it's defusing landmines ahead of time.
@Summer Changsheng: I won't say anything about the length of the game, but if the optimization turns out to be trash, my titanium-alloy keyboard is no pushover.
This comment, sitting at the top of the list with 308 upvotes, is so blunt in its attitude that it's almost endearing: content volume is negotiable, but bad optimization is simply unacceptable. The player community's zero tolerance for frame rate issues is, in a sense, a conditioned stress response after being burned time and again by "optimization disasters" - the deeper the love, the harsher the reproach.
📌 One-Line Takeaway
Phantom Blade Zero has proven, with an action system that is the most fluid and satisfying since Sekiro, that it has earned a seat at the 2026 table; but whether it can truly live up to expectations depends on whether S-GAME can close the final two gaps - frame rate optimization and narrative tension - before release.