Topic: Phantom Blade Zero

One of the few exciting announcements at the last Playstation Showcase was Phantom Blade Zero… no idea how it’ll all pan out but the trailer looked pretty awesome:

Well I just found a 2D Phantom Blade game - Phantom Blade: Executioners on PSN going for the grand sum of… absolutely nothing… free! It looks to have reviewed pretty well - 4.25/5 and has a platinum (ultra rare).

Just thought I’d let everyone know as while I was aware that there was a 2D mobile game in the series, I didn’t know it was available for zilch on PlayStation.

I noticed, downloaded and started that free beat em up game a while ago but found the tutoria levels so confusing that I decided not to continue with it! Too many systems in operation for what looked like a simple side scroller so be warned...

I didn't bother to add to the ratings though. I have noticed a lot of the ratings on the store seem over inflated in my opinion and think it maybe because the only people who are rating the games are the players who enjoy them.

So I’ve been pretty hyped for Phantom Blade Zero and while there’s always been a degree of trepidation due to the inexperienced dev team, the fact that Phantom Blade and Lies of P turned out so well… and Black Myth Wukong looks to be going that way too; has meant that I’ve been a bit more comfortable getting excited.

Luke Stephen’s got to play it at SGF though and while his take is ultimately a positive one, it is serving to reset my expectations a little, which is never a bad thing:

@colonelkilgore I watched that IGN video showing the devs playing the demo and I came away fairly excited. As I said in the article comments, I have to temper any excitement with the caveat that a parry mechanic might ruin it for me, but outside of that I really loved the crazy kinetic and acrobatic flow of the game. I’m also worried about the comb-stacking since I’m not good at that either, but I was happy to see that he felt it was easy to perform. My issue with combos (as I’m rediscovering now with Sifu) is the timing element of them. So pressing ‘down, X, X, triangle, triangle, X’ is hard enough to remember, but my main struggle is getting the timing of the button presses correct. Some games are more forgiving than others but in most games I’m prone to do the button combos too fast or too slow and it breaks your combo and then your character just stands there open for attack whilst you try to reset your timing. It’s a companion problem to my struggle with parrying — that being the small window of timing. In the case of parrying however, you get hit and lose health if you miss the window, so risk is high. In the case of combos, you often will just not land all the hits, or abort an animation flow and leave the character open.

Ultimately that’s what dampened my excitement for Stellar Blade (the fact the action was dependent on defensive parry timing) and why I didn’t jump into that day 1. So I’m a little worried that PB0 will be similar in that regard, but watching this video has me hopeful that it’s not too difficult to get the timing down. I didn’t fine with FF16, which had a little of that actiony-combo stringing of moves and specials but this looks way more complex.

@colonelkilgore Black Myth I am certainly interested in, although for me I have seen enough of the game. Were the reports of it being mainly a boss rush experience wide of the mark?

I'll have to check out the gameplay trailer for Phantom Blade Zero. Much like @Th3solution I'm not too keen on fast combo based combat like in the Devil May Cry (plus with those games it chucks grades of your combat at every opportunity which does my head in).

But I did like what I played in the Stelar Blade demo and Sekiro is one of my favourite combat systems that I can think off.

@Th3solution yeah we share an aversion to parries as you know… but I will alter my modus-operandi if that is the only method which is effective. It took me a while to change my thinking on Sekiro… and even on Nioh 2 (which more about simply blocking than parrying… but I naturally just wanna dodge for some reason). It seems to be the direction that a lot of the games that appeal to me is going though, so I’m just gonna have to bit the bullet and reprogram my reactions. I haven’t seen the IGN vid but will deffo check it out.

@JohnnyShoulder so I never used to rate Character-action games either (and I still hate that genre name) but they have grown on me over time. I think the issue I always had with them is that just completing the game on Normal difficulty would seem a bit easy, requiring no skill but the ability to bash the attach button. Since trying to plat them though, I’ve actually had to learn the layers of the combat systems to complete them on the harder settings and achieve S rank scores. Obvs that wouldn’t appeal to you as you don’t chase platinums but it’s opened my eyes to a genre I used to overlook.

There appears to be a sub-section of (potentially) younger gamers on reddit who appear to be bored with the Soulslikes genre and presumably didn't grow up playing the og Souls games or the King's Field games that preceded them and undeniably influenced them - anyway, this new generation of gamers might reflect a potential market trend whereby developers cease marketing their games as/making their games to be Soulslikes. Phantom Blade Zero, according to the developers, allegedly won't be a Soulslike, but will be more influenced by Devil May Cry etc. ,to support what you said, @JohnnyShoulder, but they have also said they have taken some influence from Soulslikes, apparently. Although when asked directly if it will be a Soulslike, to reiterate, they said no.

So, to sum up, I have the feeling the PB0 will be the last, definitive word in Soulslike gaming before the whole thing starts to 'jump the shark' if it hasn't already ,with some Soulslike games of questionable quality, which I won't mention on here, for fear of offending people on here who may love them, but I do have the feeling that Phantom Blade Zero may be the last quality Soulslike game to be released, when it eventually releases.

@BlAcK_SwOrDsMaN I think the term gets handed out far too often anyway, so will kinda glad to see the back of it, or just not used to label something that even smells like what went before.

@BlAcK_SwOrDsMaN I don’t expect to consider this anything like a souls tbh… maybe I’ll coin a new term for it - a souls-different. From what I gather, it won’t have any of the souls-like pillars (bonfires, corpse-run, xp-is-currency-and-also-xp-at-the-same-time, labyrinthine-level design etc. it will have epic boss fights from what I’ve seen of the various gameplay vids but a great boss does not a souls-like make.

It’s also meant to be incredibly easy… which, while I hate to use difficulty when ascribing the souls-like term, it is something that seems to go hand-in-hand. All signs point to this being character-action tbh.

@colonelkilgore “Souls-adjacent”?

@Th3solution yeah that is a fair bit better than mine in all honesty, we’ll go with that one. 😁

Off topic though, let’s try and come up with a better name than Character-action for the Devil May Cry’s and Platinum games out there. It’s honestly been playing on my mind for years at this point. There has to be something that fits the bills better than what we’ve got. 🤷‍♂️

@colonelkilgore Hmmm… I’ve seen a variety of descriptors and I usually go with “Third person action combat” or “third person stealth-action” if it’s more like Ghost of Tsushima with the hybrid combat. As opposed to “Third person tactical combat” which is more the Souls type of combat. But that can be confusing with the actual “tactical RPGs” which are completely different, so it’s probably too confusing to borrow the “tactical” term, even if that’s the difference between the reactionary combo stringing and quick reflex button mashing of a DMC versus the precision timing and strategic attacks, defense, and dodging of a Souls game.

It’s like the way they describe these as “action-adventure” games, which seems like an apt descriptor until you realize what an “adventure” game is and they two are worlds apart in gameplay, so how can they both be an “adventure” game? 😅

So basically, I think I’ve raised more questions than solved, colonel. Sorry. Let me think on it.

@Th3solution yeah it’s a tough one alright, I’ve been trying to think of a better term on-and-off for years without anything really sticking. I was thinking that either style or ranked could be used to differentiate i]them from the usual action-adventure games. So like Stylised Action Game or Ranked Action Game. Actually, if we could come up with an appropriate word beginning with W, it could be Stylised W… Action Game, and shortened to SWAG which would seem very appropriate.

@colonelkilgore “wangle” or “whirl” are about the only words I can muster than seem even remotely related. Or “warrior” But none of those feel right. 😂

@Th3solution hahaha fair play I hadn’t thought oh them two 🤣

This is sounding more promising every time I hear something new: