Phantom Blade Zero Fixes The Struggle That Might Be Keeping You Away From Soulslikes

There's a lot to love about soulslike games, but one of the things in the negative columns for a lot of players is how much time they can suck up. And while Phantom Blade Zero is an action-RPG that's not quite a soulslike, it's similar enough that some players might look at its super-fast combat and exceedingly tough boss battles and decide to take a pass.

But if you're the kind of person who is souls-curious or looking for a soulslike game with a little less commitment, Phantom Blade Zero might be for you. It uses a number of elements of the genre's formula, with some key tweaks to make progress a little faster. The biggest one: boss fights that give you checkpoints in the middle.

In lots of soulslikes, you'll face bosses who go through multiple phases. Beat them down enough, and they transform into something more hideous and deadly, usually with a cutscene in between forms. And usually, if you lose during the second phase of the fight and return to try the boss again, you're facing down the entire fight, with both phases. In other words, these battles can be like taking on two or even three bosses in a row, without a chance to restock your supplies or heal up.

Phantom Blade Zero, mercifully, shakes up this approach. There are multi-phase bosses to take on as you work through the game (and even one three-phase boss, with the last phase seeing two new combatants show up to face you at the same time), but the game drops checkpoints in between the phases. Finish the first portion of a two-phase boss, then die, and when you return to try again, you'll start the fight in the second phase. Once you beat that first part of the fight, it stays beaten.

There are a few other ways that Phantom Blade Zero breaks the soulslike mold to make things a little less time-consuming, too. You can adjust the difficulty level of the game any time you want, even in the middle of a boss battle, which can really help if you're hitting a wall with a particular fight. 

Lowering the difficulty doesn't change the boss's behavior or the speed of the fight; it just makes adjustments to the numbers behind the scenes—parries don't become easier to execute, for instance, but they have a bigger effect on a boss's Sha-Chi, the meter that dictates when they get staggered. The effect is that a boss comes at you just as hard, but you need to be a little less perfect in your execution of the fight to be victorious. Battles still feel difficult, but not quite as frustrating.

Backtracking is also a little more forgiving in Phantom Blade Zero. Scattered across the game are magic bells that serve the same function as bonfires in Souls games. Ring one, and you can pull up a menu to upgrade your character or your equipment, fast-travel to other bells, and save your game, and your supply of healing medicines is restored.

Crucially, though, stopping at a bell does not come at a cost. In most soulslikes, resting at a bonfire or its equivalent causes all defeated enemies in the world around you to respawn. That approach encourages a risk-reward approach to exploration; you're forced to choose whether you're better off stopping to resupply, or risking death and pushing on. In Phantom Blade Zero, when you clear an area of enemies, they stay dead.

With a metroidvania approach to exploration, you'll spend a lot of time running back around the map and unlocking huge new areas, often with their own stories and side quests. The fact that you're not constantly bombarded with enemies while you do so makes it easy to track down things you missed. And while there are drawbacks, like the inability to grind and build strength before a tough fight, you at least spend less time on areas you've already visited.

Check out our Phantom Blade Zero review for more on S-Game's Wuxia-meets-souls approach to action-RPGs. But if you're looking for a soulslike game that's a little more forgiving than most, while still putting you through your paces, this might be a good choice.