Phantom Blade Zero – a new console and PC game – unlocks on PS5 and PC on October 29th at 10:00 am Manila and Beijing time (7:00 pm PT on October 28th). Pre-loading has been open since 10:00 am Manila on October 27th, S-Game announced on Steam.
S-Game is a Chinese studio, and its founder, Soulframe Liang, made the series’ first game by himself in RPG Maker in 2010. That game, Rainblood: Town of Death, grew into the Phantom Blade series, mostly phone games that never left China.
Zero is a wuxia action game in Unreal Engine 5, and Liang calls it the spiritual rebirth of the original Rainblood. You play Soul, a warrior framed for murdering his master and left with 66 days to live. Donnie Yen, the game’s creative consultant since 2023, also plays Mó Yuan through facial and motion capture.
On PC, the game takes about 145GB and has to sit on an SSD, and S-Game asks for at least 300GB free for the pre-load. Running it asks less than storing it, fortunately: NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1660 or AMD’s Radeon RX 5500 XT gets you 1080p at 30fps, and an RTX 3060 Ti or RX 6700 XT gets 1440p at 60fps, both with upscaling on.
S-Game’s delay was partly about the visuals. Liang’s letter announcing the move from September 9th says the team upgraded character models, reworked environments and worked to keep the game’s look intact even without ray tracing.
On PS5, it’s PS5 Pro Enhanced, and the DualSense’s adaptive triggers pull taut like a drawn bowstring and push back as a cannon charges.
On Steam’s Philippine store, it’s Php 2,799 (about $44), or Php 3,499 (about $55) for the Digital Deluxe Edition. In the US, Steam and the PlayStation Store list $59.99 (about Php 3,840) and $69.99 (about Php 4,480).
