Is Phantom Blade Zero souls like?

Is Phantom Blade Zero a soulslike? What the developers say

In June 2025 the game’s official X account posted a developer’s letter from Liang. As quoted by Insider Gaming, it says: “When Phantom Blade Zero was first announced, people thought it was a ‘Soulslike.’ Later, after we released some combat demo, people noticed that the pace was clearly much faster than Soulslike titles—it must be a ‘hack and slash’ game like Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden”. Push Square quotes the reason for the first impression: “interconnected maps, hidden secrets, and those sigh-of-relief checkpoints.”

He has said the same in interviews, each time naming what the game takes from soulslikes and what it leaves out:

• To RPG Site, December 2025: the team is “merging archetypes together”: on one side soulslikes, from which “We borrow some part of the, like, level designs and some art style”; on the other, “hack-and-slash classics, like Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, or Metal Gear Rising”. On level design: “we want to call the game a ‘Soulslite’.”
• To Inverse, August 2025: “We extracted that multilayered map design and hidden objects in the corners, and side stories – all these are good. But we got rid of the overintricate map that can make players get lost, or the difficulty.”
• To PC Gamer, August 2025: “Nowadays there are too many Souls games,” with the aim of a new subgenre, “a kung fu action game.”
• To Gamersky, July 2024, in Chinese: the game puts the fast combat of traditional action games inside soulslike-style hand-built levels, with a simplified soulslike map of loops and locked doors and a faster pace. Asked whether it would make players suffer, he answered firmly that it would not (our translation).

Is it a soulslike? What previews say

Writers who played it mostly agree with the developer, with one or two caveats.

What does it borrow from soulslikes?

Bells as checkpoints. IGN rang “a small bell suspended from a short wooden stand”; it revealed part of the map and “also functions as a respawn area and fast travel point, similar to a bonfire from Dark Souls.” Game Rant adds that at these bells “players can regain health and upgrade Soul's abilities via a packed skill tree.”

Connected levels. Game Rant describes regions “filled with branching paths that are connected via unlockable shortcuts”, and says S-GAME “has openly stated” that the level design is “heavily inspired by Soulslikes”.

Learnable bosses on normal difficulty. Of the boss Huangxing, Liang told PC Gamer magazine: “In normal difficulty, he has some of the Souls-like elements to him: he has fixed combos, and if you fight him enough times, you'll figure out his combos.”

What is different from a soulslike?

Side by side with the genre’s usual habits, as Wikipedia’s Soulslike article describes them:

Soulslike column: Wikipedia, Soulslike and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, read 20 October 2026. Phantom Blade Zero column:

• No XP. “There is no XP”, so “there are no ‘souls’ to pick back up or risk losing when you die”. You get stronger through weapons and items.
• Defeated enemies stay dead. After respawning at a bell, IGN found that “everyone I’ve defeated remains dead”. PC Gamer adds that they “apparently will respawn if you leave a zone entirely”.
• No stamina bar in the usual sense. Light attacks and dodges do not drain the Sha-Chi meter; heavy attacks and blocking do.
• A wider parry window. PC Gamer: “The timing's easier to land than a Sekiro parry even on the harder ‘Hellwalker’ difficulty”.
• Boss checkpoints. “two-phase bosses don't force you to repeat the first phase if you fall during the second.”
• Difficulty modes. Four, described below.

Is Phantom Blade Zero hard?

Hard enough to kill previewers often, but not built around suffering. IGN: “even at the default setting that I played at, Phantom Blade 0 is hard, and I loved that about it. It never felt cheap; it just demanded more from me.”

PC Gamer’s writer found that “Even Hellwalker doesn't feel as hard as, say, Nioh”. Combat director Qianli Ma told him: “If you want to beat it in a mediocre, not-as-beautiful way, it's pretty achievable. But if you want to do it in a very beautiful manner, that's the difficult aspect.”

DualShockers calls the game “hard” but not “overly punitive”, with one complaint: “almost every boss demands the exact same core execution: mastering parry timing.”

After finishing the game on Hellwalker, the hardest setting open on a first playthrough, Fextralife’s reviewer found the opposite problem: the curve “gets easier and easier as you progress”, and he beat the last 10 to 12 bosses, the final one included, on the first try. His reasons are the rules themselves: enemies do not respawn, resting at a bell does not bring them back, a boss keeps the phases you have already cleared, and death costs nothing.

Chinese previews say the same. Gamersky found the timing window for the special attacks not as strict as feared, and a Zhihu Games writer’s six-hour preview, reposted on gcores reports Liang stressing that the combat is not meant to test depth and execution ceilings but to show a visual style never seen before, with the controls kept at a moderate level (our translations).

Phantom Blade Zero difficulty modes

The State of Play deep dive of August 2026 shows the difficulty menu with four entries, in this order: WAYFARER, PATHBREAKER, HELLWALKER, 66 DAYS. The narration introduces them as “difficulty options as distinct ways to experience the story.”

The menu writes “66 DAYS” and counts “66 lives”; the PlayStation Blog and the narration write “Sixty-Six Days” and speak of time. The full rules of that mode, and the story’s sixty-six days, are on Is there a 66-day time limit?

Does Phantom Blade Zero have an easy mode?

Yes: Wayfarer is the story-first mode, “A gentler path through the Wulin”. Whether you can switch to it in the middle of a playthrough is not stated in any source we read.

Earlier and differing accounts

The menu text settles how 66 Days unlocks: after completing Pathbreaker or Hellwalker.

The line-up itself has changed over time. Push Square, reporting Liang’s June 2025 letter, says that demo build had three options: “the balanced Gamechanger, the easier Wayfarer, and the super hard Hellwalker”, and that Hellwalker would be “only unlocked in New Game+ in the full release”. GamingBolt, in August 2026, writes that you are “meant to tackle Hellwalker first” before Sixty-Six Days, and in a bracket that “it’s also available after completing the game on Pathbreaker difficulty”. Whether Hellwalker itself is open from the start in the finished game is still not settled.

See the frame-by-frame breakdown: the difficulty menu in the State of Play deep dive.

Difficulty settings and trophies

On a first playthrough you choose from three settings: Wayfarer, Pathbreaker and Hellwalker. Hellwalker is open from the start: launch reviewers played their first run on it. 66 Days opens only after you finish the game on Pathbreaker or Hellwalker.

The director said it himself on Bilibili in September 2026: “All achievements in Phantom Blade Zero can be obtained in the first three difficulty levels,” and “Even if you play entirely as a ‘Wayfarer,’ you can still unlock all achievements within a single playthrough.” The first full trophy guide, published on launch day, agrees: the setting does not affect any trophy.

So pick the setting for the fight you want, not for the trophies. Reviewers who finished on Hellwalker found its difficulty uneven, with peaks and valleys, and one beat most of the late bosses on the first try; what each review said is on the reviews page, and the full trophy list is on the trophies page.

What happens when you die in Phantom Blade Zero?

• You wake at the last bell you rang.
• DualShockers: “you don't lose anything upon death”.
• Die in a boss’s second phase and you restart at that phase.
• In Sixty-Six Days mode, each death costs a day, and the run ends at zero.

One earlier report differs: IGN’s 2025 hands-on says every death “costs him one” of Soul’s 66 days. Later reports tie the countdown to Sixty-Six Days mode only; see the time limit page.

How do parries and the blue and red flashes work?

Fights turn on a second meter beside health, Sha-Chi (likely the Chinese name; our match). When an enemy runs out of it, the enemy is breached: its stance breaks and it is left extremely vulnerable.

Weapons, Sha-Chi refills and the rest of the system are on the combat page; individual boss fights are on the bosses page.

What is not yet known

Is Phantom Blade Zero like Black Myth: Wukong?

No. Both are single-player Chinese action RPGs from different studios. Phantom Blade Zero came out on 29 October 2026. Black Myth: Wukong came out on 20 August 2024. The line-by-line comparison is on the vs page.

Phantom Blade Zero is S-GAME’s kungfupunk wuxia game, with Soul, a swordsman who has sixty-six days to live. Black Myth: Wukong is Game Science’s game, based on Journey to the West. Neither lists co-op. Read every line on Phantom Blade Zero vs Black Myth: Wukong.