At the last Playstation Showcase we were able to see this very beautiful software that was still a mystery. Today we know a little more and everything should be promising, be it in terms of gameplay or even art direction.
Phantom Blade Zero, an action role-playing game announced at the last PlayStation Showcase 2023, had already received quite a bit of attention for its production. It was nothing compared to the latest trailer released this morning. The Chinese developers of S-GAME have done everything to celebrate the transition to the Year of the Dragon in their country. There’s a great animated part as well as some gameplay, but most of all a great announcement at the end of the video!
Phantom Blade Zero playable before release
In fact, the final seconds of the trailer announce a demo that will be playable in the current year. This is an opportunity to see if these ultra-dynamic animations can also be felt with the controller in hand. Because yes, although the fights seem extremely rhythmic and the choreographies seem very successful, we don’t know to what extent they require the player’s intervention. In other words, you only need one button to trigger an entire pre-choreographed combo, or you need to have very good dexterity to pull off all the ultra-fast moves we see in the two trailers.
The developers don’t give a real answer to this question and even seem to fuel the confusion by talking about the animated scene: ” We think it’s pretty cool to mix old and new, but also simple and complicated, fast and slow. » In any case, the game is visually very energetic and the art direction is great, everything runs on Unreal Engine 5. The work done on the animation of the trailer clearly shows the know-how of the studio, which has already created other works of this little-known license that we should hear about again soon this year.
S-GAME has already released Phantom Blade: Executioners, a 2D action RPG available for mobile and PC. Just like in the Phantom Blade Zero trailers, we find a very dynamic gameplay with pre-choreographed attacks to adapt to the support. The game still requires high responsiveness and everything happens very quickly. We can expect the same gameplay style for the 3D opus. In any case, the answer will arrive very quickly at the same time as the demo. For those who want to explore the license with Phantom Blade: Executioners, the software is available for free on the App Store, Play Store, PlayStation 5 and Steam.