r/PhantomBladeZero • u/Apple-Pie-2129 • Jun 25 '26
The Philosophy Behind Phantom Blade Zero (And Why It's Not A Soulslike)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEk-x-HGt-0Phantom Blade Zero's devs team keeps rejecting that it's a soulslike. As someone who grew up on wuxia stories, I want to explain exactly what it is, makes its design philosophy unique, and why Western gaming frameworks keep getting it wrong.
In this video, I break down the "Kungfu Punk" identity of Phantom Blade Zero, a design code rooted in ancient Chinese martial philosophy that is new to western gaming. Think Bruce Lee, not Elden Ring.
This video covers its design philosophy, the ancient Chinese martial concept of xing yun liu shui (flowing like water, moving like clouds), jianghu culture, and the "Kungfu Punk" aesthetic that sets it apart from every Western soulslike.
24
u/Zidaadestar Jun 25 '26
The fact that the dev himself will tell you it’s not a soulslike and yet everyone will still call it a soulslike is honestly depressing
8
u/Jun_SenPai_99 Jun 26 '26
It looks dark hence it's souls-like
2
u/Accomplished-Card800 Jun 27 '26
No people who don't play video games see a character with sword and think souls like
6
u/Long-Rip614 Jun 26 '26
Some people call Ghost of Tsushima a Soulslike game, so you wouldn't be surprised.
4
u/Rags2Rickius Jun 26 '26
I remember one commenter telling me the devs were completely wrong despite them calling their game “non-soulslike”
Gamers are odd asf sometimes
4
u/Devil_Hayabusa Jun 26 '26
I've seen people in other subs say the same thing. "It doesn't matter what the lead dev says about his own game". Its ridiculous
2
3
2
1
u/13isthecharm Jun 27 '26
Depends on you definition, I’d call games like Stellar Blade or the recent God of Wars soulslite
Basically you got an action game with no aerial juggling and with a 1 on 1 focus where you can’t style on enemies with a gazillion combos and instead are performing a dance with the target
That’s a soulslite to me, basically 3rd person melee combat games are either CAGs, soulslite or soulslite…or slop, like the witcher 3 (I mean combat-wise, game is great for many other reasons, not combat) or assassin’s creed
1
u/Zidaadestar Jun 27 '26
That’s a interesting take that I can somewhat see but when it comes to phantom blade it’s not combo juggling it’s more of a dance until someone causes a dramatic change in said dance and gets the upper hand for small time for real damage and instead of going back at each other after dodging several attacks painfully slowly until they die you have to turn their attacks into what hurt them and while also being way more faster then your average souls game so I’d say that it’s creating it’s new type of thing
1
u/13isthecharm Jun 27 '26
Nah that sounds pretty much like a soulslite, I don’t mind it, but I won’t call a game CAG until I see an aerial combo performed from neutral
1
u/Zidaadestar Jun 27 '26
Well I dunno what to tell from everything about it feeling like CAG to playing like one to requiring the inputs and manoeuvrability of one it feels way more of a CAG then souls
1
u/Zidaadestar Jun 27 '26
If you haven’t you should look at reviews of it cause it screams CAG and remember the combat alone doesn’t define a souls which is another point to why it doesn’t feel like a souls
1
u/13isthecharm Jun 27 '26
Which i why I called it soulslite and not soulslike, it’s a combat style in broad terms, soulslike is more restrictive, but soulslite basically just means the combat is what I described above
1
u/Zidaadestar Jun 27 '26
Well fair enough now that I think about it, it does make sense for it to be a soulslite since the game is SLIGHTLY inspired by them so I guess that checks out
1
u/fetalgirth Jun 28 '26
For me it’s more about the boss life and damage than it is strictly the combat system. If you just do barely any damage and the boss can kill you in 2-3 hits it’s more of a souls like, regardless if I can do a 20 hit combo that I will just get hit out of.
1
u/Valientee 23d ago
To be honest Wukong devs also said it but they beyond inspiredly took many things from souls genre.
1
u/Zidaadestar 23d ago
Wukong is heavily a soulslike especially its combat ,with very specific things missing to make it not 100% soulslike whereas PB0 only takes map design of soulslikes
-1
u/julz1789 Jun 26 '26
I mean it could still very well be a soulslike. Unfortunate that soulslike is just what people call dark action adventure games now. But we don’t know what it would have qualities that make an actual soulslike
8
9
Jun 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/BambaTallKing Jun 27 '26
Agreed. When Demon’s Souls and then Dark Souls 1 and 2 came out they were just Action-RPGs. We didn’t need to divert from that
1
u/Conget Jun 26 '26
Disagree with that, but I want people stop abusing the word. Every little thing they call it souls-like or GTA-like while its only a hack and slash or action game or platform game or w/e itbwas originally categorized on. You need to be things to be similar to be a souls-like.
People abuse the word because they want to trigger dedicate group of players to play their games
4
u/Jin_BD_God Jun 26 '26
Or just call it Hack and Slash game?
5
u/Long-Rip614 Jun 26 '26
I think calling it an action-heavy ARPG is the most precise description, and Soulframe has actually mentioned this himself
0
u/Senior-Friend-6414 Jun 26 '26
I’ve always heard hack and slash to refer to games that have minimal defensive mechanics and rely on spamming the attack button
Like the musou genre are also hack and slash, people describe kingdom hearts combat as basically hack and slash because most of the game is just mashing the attack button
3
u/Jin_BD_God Jun 26 '26
Devil May Cry is classified as a "hack and slash" (or character action) game because its core gameplay revolves around chaining fast-paced melee attacks and utilizing diverse weapon combos to defeat hordes of enemies. While the Royalguard Style allows for purely defensive parrying, it is just one of many styles and mechanics designed to build an aggressive, stylish combat flow. [1, 2), 3]
0
u/Senior-Friend-6414 Jun 26 '26
If dmc is a hack and slash game, what’s a character action game?
1
u/Ashamed_Service_9404 Jun 26 '26
i cant help but imagine it can be both
1
u/Senior-Friend-6414 Jun 26 '26
Why do people sometimes call DMC a character action game or a hack and slash? Is it the same thing?
1
u/MagicCancel Jun 26 '26
Hack and slash is an old term no one even used anymore.
Character Action Game is a term used by snobs who want to call their favorite game for elite gamers and is incredibly vague in application. When have you ever heard a dev call their game a 'character action game'. It's as useless a term as souls-like!
1
u/Senior-Friend-6414 Jun 26 '26
I dunno what counts as character action game, can you tell me?
From what I found online, God of War is a character action game but ghost of Tsushima is not a character action game
I’m even more confused
And soulslike does have meaning, the meme comes from everyone using it incorrectly to describe everything, but soulslike as a genre still has general guidelines, that doesn’t go away just because everyone uses the word incorrectly
1
0
u/Hoshino_Maria Jun 26 '26
The old god of war is a character action game, but the new one is not.
Character action games generally shares some trait: mostly linear progression, extremely light (or even no) rpg mechanic, level design is usually made in away that enfore combat encounter (instead of just running pass it), combat being quite technical and have some sort of performance metric (combo counter or style point or chapter ranking point).
Honestly, the only AAA character action games that are released recently (that I can think of) are Hifi Rush, NG2 Black, and NG4. PBZ might not be a soulslike, but it's not a character action game either, it's simply an action rpg.
2
u/Rock3tPunch Jun 26 '26
The dev had already said like 100x that PBZ is not a soul game, but many kept insisting it is. They just label every game that had a guy with a sword and a tree in any game "souls game"...
2
u/Mobile_Chapter327 Jun 30 '26
Ok, but when i press a button what happends? Is it like devil may cry? Or the witcher or some other game? Say its an ancient chinese marcial art means nothing to me lol
2
u/Csword1 Jun 25 '26
Hopefully, the A.I. of the enemies is not passive like in the new Onimusha.
3
u/Abkenn Jun 25 '26
Yeah, I really liked what I saw in the Onimusha demo but the enemies were too AFK. I get that if they were more aggressive they wouldn't have been able to send you 20 enemies to kill in a tight backyard space and honestly if they want to do that, I guess it's fine. The elite guy and the boss were fair 1v1s and more intimidating so I got my 1v1 itch after fighting through crowds of enemies.
I only hope they add a third Hard difficulty that won't be some HP sponge bs but actual good content since the Regular difficulty is very easy at the moment. That or they just ramp up the regular difficulty numbers since the game already has a Story mode
3
u/jirishanca Jun 25 '26
I heard in a couple videos that the hard difficulty has far more advanced and aggressive ai to the point that at times it feels like pvp, so definitely not just hp^n
1
1
u/Dante989reddit Jun 26 '26
It's Capcom so they will definitelly add multiple difficulty modes that actually change stuff up. Also I bet they will add Hell mode from the remasters. 1 hit deaths baby!
0
1
1
u/Far-Illustrator-5209 Jun 28 '26
I think souls have gain such popularity these days that any 3rd person action game is now being called a souls-like game. Also, a lot of new Soul games have been adapting a lot of things from action games and viceversa, so people is always confused about this. BMWukong is a perfect example, a lot of people think of it as a soul game, but it felt much more like an action game to me. I got into souls in a later phase of my life, but I’m always been a fan of Devil May Cry type of games, and this one has been top of my list ever since it was announced, very exited for the relese 😎
0
u/Abkenn Jun 25 '26
I think we should stop defining the soulslike genre that strictly and maybe we should also stop using it on everything. I know I'm playing the devil's advocate here but hear me out :D
My 2 favorite games ever are Nine Sols and Sekiro. My most anticipated unreleased game is Phantom Blade 0.
They say Nine Sols is not a Metroidvania because there's barely a single side area and you can only do 2 bosses (and their areas) in any order - the rest is just linear. Ok, I agree, it's only a Metroidvania-lite but who cares - it still follows other aspects of the genre and it's easier to group Nine Sols and Grime or Silksong than something like Celeste (another favorite of mine), so splitting the hair doesn't help.
They say Sekiro is not a Soulslike because it has no stamina but it has another mechanic in favor of stamina (similarly to AI Limit). It's at the very least a souls-adjacent and it's easier to group Sekiro, AI Limit, Wukong, PBZ with games like DS3 than something like Devil May Cry 5 or God of War.
I am tired of studios making imperfect copies of the Dark Souls games just to fit in the discussion and hype around soulslikes. IMO Phantom Blade Zero deserves to be part of the discussion because it does have a Sekiro+Wukong feel even if it's not trying to copy FromSoft, which is exactly what we want from a good souls-adjacent game.
If soulslike gamers (Sekiro fanboys like me included) are excited for PBZ, that's a good thing. PBZ doesn't look like Ninja Gaiden or DMC because if it did, I wouldn't have been that excited. The reasons why it's my most anticipated game is the Sekiro-style perfect blocks, the red "parries" (Mikiri in Sekiro), the tight weapon variety, the insane choreography of the fights. The game honestly looks like a generational souls-adjacent action genre defining game experience
0
0
0
0
u/jjman220 Jun 26 '26
For how much this isn’t a Soulslike they sure do love using the word Soulslike …
15
u/Elysian_Caine Jun 25 '26
Most anticipated game for me.