Described by PC Gamer's own Richard Stanton as "Sekiro on a drunken night out" , Phantom Blade Zero looks pretty dang intriguing. Developed by S-Game (and making its debut in the 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.