The Action Genre: What’s Next?

When it comes to video games, the action genre is in a bit of an identity crisis. Sure, we could argue that 2026 is one of the greatest years the genre has had in a long time, with games like 007 First Light and the hugely anticipated GTA VI on the calendar, but when I hear the words “action game” my brain immediately goes back to the plethora of hack and slash games that defined the early 2000s. Nowadays, action is a rather broad description when it comes to categorizing games. Even glancing over Steam’s store selection of the “action” tag gives you a varied mix of everything from MMOs to soulslikes and everything in between. Does that mean the classic hack-n-slash action games I grew up on are all gone? Absolutely not. If anything, the next step in the evolution of the genre is closer than you might think.

The problem with the modern action game is people tend to categorize them as something they’re not. Soulslikes may be the flavor of the generation with everyone chasing FromSoft’s crown, but that isn’t to say the action genre has been boiled down to just a singular type of game. If anything, I think the opposite is happening right before our eyes with the new kid on the block, Phantom Blade Zero. Naturally, Phantom Blade Zero was unanimously looked upon by the community as a game that looked too good to be true. The original trailer sold us the idea of a power fantasy told through the flashy moves and hack and slash combat we’d seen so little of since the soulslike genre came to power. Some dismissed it as another clone, while others like myself hoped that it would break the mold we’ve been trapped in for so long. Does Phantom Blade Zero embrace its own identity or fall into the same trap we’ve seen a hundred times? Let’s find out.

A Tale of Legends: Betrayal, Brotherhood and Revenge

Phantom Blade Zero is a game built off the foundations set by those that came before it. From the moment the first cutscene plays until the last curtain falls, you are treated to one of the most ambitious experiences that has released in the last decade from an action game standpoint. It would be easy to immediately compare it to the recent string of soulslikes that have saturated the space since the rise of FromSoft, but at its core Phantom Blade Zero is a beautiful amalgamation of so much more than the standard formula. Its combat is brutal and leans into the idea of freedom of expression like the Devil May Cry series, but at the same time pushes the medium forward just like Ninja Gaiden and Sekiro did in their respective years. It seemingly combines the familiarities of these games and improves on them in nearly every aspect, from the world Soul inhabits to, most importantly, the combat.

Phantom Blade Zero’s story is perhaps the most conflicting aspect of the entire experience, if I’m being honest. The tale itself is a strong one, but the way it’s delivered won’t work for everyone. You play as Soul, a man wrongfully accused of murdering the leading member of The Order, a shady organization that governs from the shadows using the usual nefarious means like assassinations and sabotage. During the events at the beginning of the game, Soul is eventually hunted and engages in a battle with Zuo Shang, the new Shadow Sovereign for The Order and former companion of our main hero. This section is used as a means to teach you the basics of the game and how it functions. In usual action game fashion, our hero is defeated and left for dead until a mysterious healer named the Flesh Sculptor implants a Tainted Heart in Soul that continuously pumps venom through his body. The kicker is you only have 66 in-game days until the heart kills you, though on a first playthrough this is purely a story device. Finish the game once, and you unlock 66 Days mode, which pairs the hardest difficulty with a hard limit of 66 deaths. Good luck with that.

The Die is Cast: A Conspiracy To Unravel The World

From that moment onwards, the story has Soul slaying his way through dozens of different larger-than-life characters as he tries to find a cure for his ailing heart. This leads him into a world-ending conspiracy centered around the Blight, an epidemic that has the power to more or less warp reality into a place that reminded me of Silent Hill f, funnily enough. The game constantly relies on these beautiful red hues that are equally terrifying to look at, with disembodied voices and everything else you would come to expect in a game that leans into an almost cosmic horror feel. Once you realize the conspiracy that Soul is wrapped up in, the story kicks into overdrive, and many of the things that didn’t make sense to you in the first few hours all start to connect to the overarching story.

Most of the backstory is explained to you in prerendered cutscenes that fill in the missing pieces of Soul’s strange past, but if I had to nitpick one aspect of the entire experience, it’s the fact that most if not all of the other story elements that relate to the world around you are hidden in the usual FromSoft way of doing things. Instead of random notes and NPCs, you are treated to memories located inside blue roses you find throughout the world and documents that can range from a few sentences to as lengthy as the page of a novel. As someone who is used to this type of exposition, I don’t mind having to discover the secrets of the world through exploration, but if you simply follow the main questline and refuse to complete any of the side quests or explore the other areas, you’ll constantly be wondering “what the hell is going on” every time a new character is shown.

You have an interesting range of characters that lie in the realms of friend and foe, with some teetering on the thin line between the two, and each one carries their own weight in the story and what their goals are. Some of the ones closest to you in the beginning might end up as your enemies by the end, and the dynamics between Soul and those he meets are often packed full of history that really isn’t known to the player until they tell us. It does add an extra layer that Soul is some infamous assassin in the mythos, and his name and who he associates with command a decent amount of respect.

The Power of Exposition: A Slow Burn

These friendships and rivalries are further compounded by the voice actors delivering their lines with enough emotion and skill to really convey what their characters are saying. I played Phantom Blade Zero with the default Chinese voice actors and English subtitles, and it made the experience that much more entertaining, as the lip sync actually matched the words being spoken. A small positive, sure, and there weren’t any performances that felt weaker than the others. Adding more fuel to the fire is how realistic most of the main characters actually look in motion. It’s very rare that you can count individual pores on characters’ faces, but they did it, and they did it in a way that’s as photorealistic as I’ve seen in years. With solid voice acting, motion capture, and overall quality, I think most of the general populace will be pleasantly surprised with the roster of characters in front of you, even if some of them are nothing more than strangers with a pretty face.

It does end up presenting itself in a rather slow fashion in the first few hours, but dare I say most people will be so infatuated with the world and the combat that I don’t see it being a valid complaint if you’re truly experiencing the game as it was meant to be played. The side quests all have meaning behind them, and I found myself wanting to explore off the beaten path every opportunity I was given. Does it lay it out in a way that Western audiences will enjoy? Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s painfully slow at some points and balls to the wall the next, and I never had any problems with it in the 35 hours it took me to complete the main story. At the end of the day, it’s a story focused on the more uncomfortable aspects of life in this world. It’s a story about betrayal, brotherhood, revenge, and reclaiming your own life and laughing in the face of fate. Overall, a strong tale that is further reinforced the deeper you get into it.

Beauty In The Violence: Vibrance in Violence

Beyond the story, one thing that piqued my interest from the moment I loaded into the first area was the beauty of the world and, more importantly, the depressing nature of it. More often than not, you’ll find yourself in places and zones that feel like they were pulled right from an alternate history of China’s Ming Dynasty, but what separates Phantom Blade Zero is how it tells the story through the visuals around you. Sure, you’ll be trekking through the usual range of dilapidated villages and cities, but some of the prettiest looking areas are the ones where nature is fully in control. You have a good range of vistas, from the snow-capped peaks of a mountain in the distance to a lake with dozens of landmarks, and each one leans into the world that the story has created. The aspect that adds the most character to an otherwise standard looking feudal China is the thing that brings so much color to the world: the red strings that seem to hold it together.

It’s very strange that a game uses so much of one color and it comes off as unique as opposed to redundant, but Phantom Blade Zero has done it with the blood-red strings that Soul runs into throughout the world. These red strings tie into the lore of Chinese culture and are meant to signify the inescapable love, hatred, and, more than anything, fate that ties the characters together in a world centered on the genre of wuxia. Have no idea what wuxia is? In short, it’s a specific genre of Chinese fiction that follows the adventures of martial artists in ancient China. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Anyway, these threads are a metaphor in my eyes, and the game very much leans into the idea that Soul is fighting against fate as he tries to unravel this conspiracy that is chasing him down from the shadows.

The Gameplay: A Stylish Foray Worth Every Penny

Once we get past a story that hides too much of itself and a world that’s begging to be explored, we end up at the most important part of this entire review: the gameplay systems. Now there isn’t much to be said besides the sentence I’m about to type out. Are you ready? Right, here it is. If you were like me and saw the trailer for Phantom Blade Zero, or really all that they’ve released since its announcement, and thought “There’s no way the game plays like this, they’re lying to us,” I am afraid I have a surprise for you. Yes, Phantom Blade Zero actually plays like that. Yes, the combat is some of the best that the gaming industry has ever produced. Yes, it rivals Devil May Cry and even Ninja Gaiden for its gameplay loop. Need I say more? Why are you even here?

Now if you are still here and reading past this point, congrats! You’ve made it farther than I would have. In simplest terms, Phantom Blade Zero’s combat loop is one of the best that the action genre has seen since the early 2000s. Not only does it encourage the player to think outside the box and explore the dozens of weapons you have at your disposal, but somehow every weapon looks and feels more unique than the last. Even someone like me, who is a slave to one weapon in most action games, felt a certain sense of awe at the options that are available to you by the end of the game. Sure, you have standard swords and the usual you’d come to expect in a game set in ancient China, but where the game gets interesting is the Phantom Edge weapon set. These are your more specialized tools like bows and firearms, shields and sickles, and even support weapons like bladed fans and summoning devices that allow you to craft Soul in a way that fits the playstyle you’re aiming for.

Soul is, after all, a master assassin, and the brutality and precision with which he is able to twirl and dodge his way in and out of fights while dealing damage is as impressive to watch as it is to execute. If there’s one singular thing I took from this game, it’s how well motion capture can work in action games when it’s not wasted on prerendered cutscenes and other in-game cinematics. Every move Soul makes, every hit you land, has a certain feeling to it that feels like the most intricate symphony of violence brought to life, and the best part is you’re in the driver’s seat. What sells this idea the most is the variety of weapons you have access to and how unique each one feels. Most action games employ a “less is more” way of thinking when it comes to adding weapons, but Phantom Blade Zero presents its weapon choices with all the variety you could ever want. No two weapons feel the same, and each one has its own perks and strengths that it caters to and animations to match. Heavy weapons feel heavy and weighty, your standard one-handed swords feel like the perfect mix of damage and speed, and so on. A tool for every situation feels like an oversimplification, but it’s the perfect way to describe it.

The Power of Choice: Beauty in Violence

Once you pick a weapon that suits your playstyle and dive into the world, the combat with standard enemies can feel a bit weird at first. You’ll mostly be fighting the same three to four enemy types in the first few hours, and it really doesn’t stray too far from the standard creepy puppets and the human factions that inhabit the world. What they may lack in variety, they make up for in speed and aggression. The standard enemies are almost always in groups of three to four at a minimum, and you quickly learn how dangerous they can truly be once the blades start swinging through the air. For anyone who was concerned that the early reviews talked about the game being too easy, don’t fret; there was a day one patch that reportedly addressed most of the balancing issues. Anyway, my completed game screen said I died a whopping 232 times on the standard difficulty mode, so take that information as you must and run with it. Granted, most of those deaths were to the impressive roster of bosses, but still. The game is far from easy, and I’ll stand by that fact to the end of this review.

A Boss For Every Occasion: A Roster of Challengers

Now for the final part of this review, let’s dive into the aspect that I think is its strongest besides the actual combat, the bosses themselves. I should start this section off by saying that this game separates itself from the usual soulslike comparisons by employing a system that is rare for this style of game. When you enter a boss area and fight them, sometimes you’ll be treated to a second phase with a new health bar and new moves to memorize and avoid. Phantom Blade Zero takes this idea of multiple phases and turns it on its head by allowing you to continue the fight from whatever phase you were on if you died during it. That means if a boss has three phases, which mind you some do, and you make it to phase three just to die because you ran out of healing items, you are able to continue from where you left off. Does this remove some of the challenge associated with some of the bosses? Reddit thinks so, but on the same note, some of these bosses have such huge health pools and intricate movesets spanning each phase that, you know what, I like it. There, I said it. Burn me at the stake.

This emphasis on making the game as streamlined as possible to make the player experience a positive one can also be felt in the world. Enemies don’t respawn after you defeat them, so these systems not only encourage you to get better and learn a specific phase if you’re stuck on it, but also to explore the world to your heart’s content without having to run the gauntlet every time you want to revisit a previously explored area.

Back to the boss fights themselves. Simply put, they’re amazing. There are more than thirty bosses in the game, and there were only three that I could remember off the top of my head that felt recycled or similar to others. The fact that some of them feel spongier than others is quickly forgiven because you don’t have to fully restart the fight every time you die or make a mistake. It encourages you to learn the moves for each phase without stressing the minute details and honestly just have fun with them. There are moments in some of the boss fights that will have you going “ooh” and “ahh,” and just as many where you’re simply paired against someone who would’ve been your equal if the stakes weren’t so high. The bosses serve as a constant reminder of the playground the developers have given us and as the ultimate test for those who are willing to take it. The bosses are how you are meant to showcase Soul’s raw talent and what you’ve learned, and dare I say they did just that.

On the technical side, the game looked and ran flawlessly for me on PC. Even on high settings with most of the fancy graphical options turned on, I still maintained a solid 70+ FPS throughout my entire playthrough. Impressive in the age of Unreal Engine slop? Absolutely, and I have to commend them for it.

Final Thoughts: A Sleeper GOTY Contender

Phantom Blade Zero is the definitive action game of the generation, delivering a stylish gameplay loop, larger-than-life boss battles, and a world that begs you to step off the beaten path. S-GAME has achieved the impossible, not only living up to my expectations but surpassing them in nearly every way.

Phantom Blade Zero was reviewed on PC. Gamer Social Club would like to thank the devs and publisher for the code.