Phantom Blade Zero is so much better than it has any right to be, but I’m worried that it might not get its flowers. This has nothing to do with the game’s actual quality, but rather the incredible spate of both recent and upcoming 2026 releases, including heavy-hitters like Grand Theft Auto 6 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, both of which are right around the corner.
November 19 is the date that every video game fan has marked on their calendars, as that’s when GTA 6 is set to crash through the industry. A number of high-profile titles, including Playground Games’ Fable reboot, have even altered their release plans in order to offer GTA 6 more runway. Indeed, it will be immeasurably difficult for any game to truly compete with GTA 6 in terms of attention and sales, and increasingly difficult economic conditions in the West certainly don’t help. With gaming budgets becoming leaner for many consumers, only the likes of the Ocarina of Time remake, which releases on November 5, are worth picking up ahead of GTA 6‘s Earth-shaking launch. But allow me to humbly submit Phantom Blade Zero for consideration as well, as I would say it’s even more worthwhile than the Ocarina reprisal.
Phantom Blade Zero Is Top-Notch
2026 has been a pretty rough year for the games industry in a lot of ways, but it’s also been a year filled with pleasant surprises. It kicked off with predictably great releases like Resident Evil Requiem, but the following months played host to plenty of sleeper hits as well. Two recent examples, for me, are Star Wars Zero Company and Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve—games that far exceeded my expectations and give me cause for optimism regarding AAA gaming’s future. I feel much the same way about Phantom Blade Zero.
Phantom Blade Zero is so much better than it has any right to be, but I’m worried that it might not get its flowers.
I completed Phantom Blade Zero for a GameRant review, and have around 45 hours of gameplay under my belt at the time of writing. That’s just from my first playthrough, which was more than enough to warrant a near-perfect score, and I suspect my love for it will only deepen with time, as its stunning visuals, boss design, and broad, multifaceted gameplay loop, not to mention a strikingly original science-fantasy story, are all more than worth a second look.
If you’re like me, Phantom Blade Zero will probably draw you in with its combat and spectacle. Inspired by Chinese Wuxia, Phantom Blade Zero‘s battles, both within and without gameplay, are expressive, flamboyant, and jaw-dropping, with an almost unbelievable elegance. But beneath the surface of these flashy visuals is a deceptively labyrinthine combat system built around diverse, creative weapons, and buttressed by terrific enemy variety and boss design.
World design and storytelling are equally compelling, albeit for different reasons. Phantom Blade Zero‘s bizarre quasi-steampunk world is thought-provoking and sophisticated, conveyed through a mix of high-fidelity cinematics and intentionally obscure in-game lore drops (e.g. text logs, item descriptions). But the various overlapping qualities of this fictional world, including how it deftly weaves real spiritual concepts like Chi with Lovecraftian horror and sci-fi, are revealed through rewarding exploration and quest design. Everything in Phantom Blade Zero rewards your time and attention; it’s easily one of the most quality-dense games I’ve played in quite some time.
If You Can Only Play One Game Ahead of GTA 6, Please Let It Be Phantom Blade Zero
Just like Ace Combat 8 and Zero Company, I gave Phantom Blade Zero a very high review score, and I fervently recommend it to just about anyone with an interest in action games. But I feel a bit stronger about Phantom Blade Zero, not necessarily because it’s hands-down better than those aforementioned titles, but because of the context of its release. GTA 6, Ocarina of Time, and potentially even FromSoftware’s The Duskbloods are all looming menacingly in the distance, threatening to gobble Phantom Blade‘s lunch.
It’s perhaps inevitable that these games will be bigger, more popular, and certainly more profitable, than Phantom Blade Zero, but it would be utterly tragic for them to overshadow it entirely. Ultimately, something like the Ocarina of Time remake is going to be successful regardless, whereas Phantom Blade Zero, the first project from Chinese studio S-GAME that even approaches this level of scale and ambition, is a bigger risk. This team deserves success, but selfishly, I hope Phantom Blade Zero lands well so that S-GAME can continue to build upon its foundation with future releases—I simply need more games like Phantom Blade.
Even without taking financial circumstances into account, no gamer has the time to play all the myriad incredible games that have released in 2026. Backlogs around the world are growing as new smash-hits seem to be tripping over each other to get out the door before 2027. This is a time of fierce competition, and Phantom Blade Zero ought to have a spot in the ring.
- Released
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October 29, 2026
- Developer(s)
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S-Game
- Publisher(s)
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S-Game
