Phantom Blade 0 Has A Really Cool Detail That Hasn’t Been Explained

“If you watch a lot of Hong Kong Golden Age kung fu movies, you will feel all the swordplay in Chinese kung fu,” Liang said. “They are all attacking while defending, so it happens at the same time. You will [see] this very dynamic, fluid combat scene in the movie. 

“Previously there were not so many games coming out of China bringing the authenticity of Chinese kung fu and Chinese gameplay into the gaming industry. So [with] the assistance of Donnie Yen and his team, we have [built] everything from the ground up. We had to rethink all these combo systems–defending and attacking–to see how we can implement the movement of Chinese kung fu into a playable game.”

So how did studio S-Game execute this idea? In Phantom Blade 0, there are light and heavy attacks, and combos alternating the two. But this game does something strange that most games character action games do not, most of these attacks have no commitment, almost a taboo in combat design. Additionally, if you’re in a string of attacks, you can often continue where you left off uninterrupted after the parry. It sort of reminded me initially of the Dual Blades system in Wuchang Fallen Feathers, which clashes with incoming attacks. But that’s attacking TO parry or clash, Phantom Blade 0’s system has both attacking and defending as separate systems in tandem at the same time.

Once I rewired years of “your turn then my turn” gaming habits out of my head, this subtle gameplay tweak completely changed the pace of combat. Unlike other players I was watching, I rarely found myself just waiting in place for the enemy to attack, and instead I was rushing in while paying attention to enemy cues simultaneously, knocking away sword strikes left and right. In this same system, enemies are capable of parrying your attacks, and if you slightly mistime a parry mid-offense, it will be blocked and eat into your Sha Chi. A fully whiffed parry, meanwhile, will often knock you off your feet and stop your barrage, so there is incentive to stay locked in. Combining that with familiar systems like special skills, buffs, stances, equipment loadouts, and combos means that integrating this complicated system was a conscious decision. Making its complexities work was crucial for S-Game to differentiate Phantom Blade 0. 

“It’s still very hard because we have to make sure people understand the combat system. They can use intuitive, fundamental judgment to pull off all these skills and do all this fighting,” Liang said. “It’s a kind of a conflict between accessibility and creativity. But we then find a balance point to keep the attacking while defending vibe. But actually there are certain periods of defending and certain other periods [of] attacking, we just blur the line.”

Blurring the line sums up the concept. Phantom Blade 0 still has moments of pure offense and pure defense just like in any other action title and wuxia itself, but its exciting twist is eliminating the transitional moments between them to allow players to blend both seamlessly.

Phantom Blade 0 is the perfect home for this idea, and although I’m not the first to point this detail out, it’s clear this mechanic has been severely underutilized by other players. In talking to others at the event, I realized that they didn’t quite understand what I was talking about, or even know of its existence, and I imagine some players seeing it now may think it makes the game trivial or make it look way too chaotic to understand what is happening. But trust me when I say seeing it in action and playing it are two completely different experiences. And after six hours of hands-on time on the hardest difficulty, I found Phantom Blade 0’s wuxia-inspired combat so liberating.