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Phantom Blade Zero has arrived with a bang. S-Game's kung-fu action RPG launched on 29 October on PS5 and PC, and according to SteamDB figures reported by TechPowerUp, it peaked at 731,026 people playing at the same time on Steam, having passed half a million within its first nine hours.
I haven't got my hands on it yet, but I can't wait to. And beyond one big launch, it's a story I want to follow closely: some of the most exciting, best-made games right now are coming out of the East, and Phantom Blade Zero looks like the latest proof.
That launch was enough to put it at the top of Steam's global best-sellers list, a remarkable result for a $59.99 game rather than a free-to-play giant. Players seem happy too: Steam reviews were rated Very Positive, with 84% of more than 27,000 reviews recommending it when TechPowerUp checked.
The numbers swing hard, though. TechPowerUp noticed the player count dipping to around 110,000 roughly every 12 hours before climbing again, which suggests the audience is concentrated in particular regions rather than spread across time zones. And those figures only count Steam: the game is also out on PS5 and the Epic Games Store.
So what kind of game is it?
At first glance it looks like another Soulslike, but it plays more like a stylish mix of kung-fu cinema and Metroidvania. You are Soul, a swordsman of a group called The Order, brought back from the dead with a poisoned heart and given 66 days to find a replacement and defeat his adoptive brother turned nemesis, Zuo Shang, as Empire's review sets out. It's a prequel and a fresh start for a series released mostly in China over the past two decades, most recently as smartphone RPGs, so newcomers don't need any homework.
Fights revolve around a meter called Sha-Chi. In S-Game's own walkthrough on the PlayStation Blog, blocking drains yours, while perfect parries, dodges and clean hits drain your opponent's; swapping between your two main weapons tops yours back up. The clever twist is where those weapons come from. Most are claimed from the bosses you beat, so you learn how a weapon works by surviving it first. Some special Phantom Edge weapons also break barriers or grapple you to new areas, giving the world a reason to go back and explore.
Martial arts legend Donnie Yen is part of it too: he plays the mysterious Gold-Masked One, and Empire credits his motion-capture involvement for how fluidly the fights move.
What the critics think
Empire is thrilled with it, calling it "easily a contender for action game of the year" and praising combat that is precise, demanding and deeply rewarding, set in compact levels packed with secrets. Its two gripes: a story that jumps between timelines and characters so often it gets hard to follow, and Soul snagging on bits of scenery, which can be deadly in the middle of a fight.
The reviews look amazing, and a full-price action game from a series with its roots in China going straight to the top of Steam is exactly the kind of moment I want to pay attention to.
Before you play: the patch and your drivers
A day-one update of roughly 5GB promises better ray tracing and path tracing performance plus bug fixes, as Rock Paper Shotgun reports from the developer's Steam post, and the install itself is around 145GB. One more tip for PC players with Nvidia graphics cards: the developer says it has seen instability with Nvidia's 621.01 driver and recommends rolling back to version 617.42 until Nvidia's next update.
Quality games from the East are a big part of what I want to cover here at Pop Culture Pulse, so expect more from me on this one once I've played it, and on the studios behind games like it. Have you jumped in already? I'd love to hear how it's going.
