Described by PC Gamer's own Richard Stanton as PlayStation Showcase last year) Phantom Blade Zero does indeed look absolutely slammed with high-octane nonsense—and I mean this affectionately. I like nonsense a lot.
Its jet fuel combat had my interest, but a recent interview by our friends at GamesRadar with director "Soulframe" Liang doubles down on a similar sentiment shared in a PlayStation blog last year, and that has my attention: "It's just like the old Souls games … You move around and explore in a seamless map, it's just not a huge open-world map. But every region is connected together seamlessly."
As someone very publicly on-record about my general malaise surrounding Elden Ring's open world—a feature executed beautifully, but which constantly lies at-odds with the game's other strengths—this has me very interested. As a matter of personal taste, I prefer a smaller, intimate, connected world over big open fields any day.
"There's still some process you go through," explains Soulframe, "but it's non-linear. There are always multiple paths you can go through. It's just like the Souls games before Elden Ring."
Soulframe seems keen to stop the soulslike comparisons there, though—in a Q&A last month, they were adamant that the team was angling more for "combo-driven, heart-pumping combat that is hectic, rewarding, and exhilarating." The team's taken inspiration from the soulslike genre for its environments, sure, but little else: "There will be difficulty options, and you won't have to face respawned mobs after you die or interact with checkpoints."
If anything, that description smacks a little more of God Hand, a 2006 beat-'em-up often mentioned in the same breath as soulslikes in of its difficulty, with long combo strings more at home in fighting games.
Either way, I'm hungry for this thing. I never had the chance to play the OG God Hand, but I'm always a big fan of games that take change up the recipe—why not draw on the legendary dev's environmental design while also doing your own thing? Reuse and recycle, I say.
