// PC GAMER — GAMING
After Onimusha's focused swordplay, Phantom Blade Zero delivers a sprawling, maximalist action epic
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At just about 15 hours into Phantom Blade Zero, I've changed out my primary weapons more times than I do in an entire Souls campaign. I quickly dropped my starter sword for a pair of dual blades and a jagged weapon that chunks damage off my enemies in showers of blood. But I didn't stick with either for long. Soon I was running around with a two-handed blade taller than my martial arts hero Soul, which sprouts a trail of magical, energy-sapping flowers with every swing. It shares a moveset with another two-handed giant that absorbs life with each hit. But I don't have time to use either one: I'm already smitten with my new twin blades, one of which I can send spinning in a circle around me like a protective Beyblade.
Somehow I haven't even touched the weapon that I took off a crazed monk that turns Soul into a drunken boxer. But I'm sure I'll have time: apparently I'm less than a third(!) of the way through a game that's far, far bigger than I anticipated when I played a chunk of it last year.
For the most part, Phantom Blade Zero's epic ambition is exciting—PC Gamer senior guides writer Sean Martin promises me that I've got about a hundred thrilling boss fights left to come. Its first dozen hours also illustrate the dangers of a long-in-development game ballooning in scope.
While playing Phantom Blade Zero I've been thinking a lot about this season's other big action game, which also spent more than half a decade in development: Capcom's revival of Onimusha. That game wastes little time in introducing its protagonist Miyamoto Musashi or the forces he'll be up again. He's brash and headstrong, taunting a group of samurai after whipping up on their master—then leading them on a Looney Tunes-style chase when there are too many to fight at once. The game punctures this silly tone shortly after introducing Musashi's rival, Ganryu, when both are murdered by demonic Genma.
Musashi's saved when he's given an oni gauntlet in the afterlife and sent back to the land of the living to harness souls with it; the rest of the game is about him deciding who and what he fights for. It's about that personal journey first and foremost, with the machinations of the game's villain spurring him along—and fantastic acting and facial motion capture do a ton of the work to make the story compelling.
In Phantom Blade Zero, by contrast, I've already lost track of the tangled web of characters, relationships, betrayals and motivations with dozens of hours to go. I've seen (and played) flashbacks to Soul's childhood, teenage years, and recent past; I've watched cutscenes about his enemy doing some Machiavellian scheming with another guy I can't name; I've read dozens of cryptic messages scattered throughout each zone that are meant to explain more about why I'm fighting puppets, dudes whose bodies have "transcended" into pure energy, monks who coat their bodies in hardened gold, and mean dogs. (Actually, nothing has explained the dogs yet).
I appreciate PBZ's attempt to start in media res and give Soul a sense of urgency—we flash back to him being stabbed through the heart, then shortly after flash forward to him getting a temporary fake heart that will fail on him in 66 days. But the flashbacks and bits of incidental storytelling often feel like infodumps from someone who's spent years writing a massive story bible and has lived with the whole thing in their head for so long that they don't realize how hard it is to follow when you're coming in with zero context.
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Take these flowers, Phantom Blade Zero's way of doling out health upgrades. You'll find them scattered around each area, and finding all of them (usually around 3-6) will net you about 10% more health. Each plays 30 seconds or so of dialogue, and the writing's often vague references to c