People said it wasn't hard enough, so one Phantom Blade Zero dev cooked up a hardcore difficulty mode that changes enemy AI so much it feels more like PvP

Phantom Blade Zero is an upcoming action RPG that isn't a soulslike, but it does feature some challenging combat. Some players at Gamescom thought it wasn't hard enough, though, so the devs kicked things up a notch.

In Phantom Blade Zero, you play as Soul, an assassin searching for answers about the murder of their organization's – The Order – patriarch. It's billed as a playable kung fu movie channeling the genre's golden age and folding in the creative spirit of the best PS1 and PS2 games.

"We got some feedback at Gamescom from our core players that the game could be even harder," a representative of developer S-Game told us at GDC 2025. "So between Gamescom and [Tokyo Game Show], I believe we had one employee that conceptualized this brand new AI. It wasn't just increasing the damage and health, it was a completely new enemy AI that removed the combos and created this PvP-like experience. And it shipped in time for TGS and we showed it off."

The representative credits this accomplishment of S-Game's "interdisciplinary style at work." Around 100 people are working on the game, and many of them touch on multiple parts of the project and aren't cordoned off to their own niche, unlike a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 which has 80+ gameplay animators and another 80 cinematic ones.

Phantom Blade Zero - Year of the Snake Gameplay Trailer | PS5 Games - YouTube

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Don't worry; the game isn't getting more difficult for everyone right off the bat. "For the first [playthrough], I think we'll try our best to let almost every player enjoy the game," says S-Game founder "Soulframe" Liang. "Accessibility is very important in our game, so that's why we have difficulty options and a very long tutorial. But the tutorial is story-driven, it's not like a list. We want to create an accessible game for players to enjoy the story and style of everything."

Instead, the harder parts of the game are unlocked in Extreme Mode. "The most important thing is we are not raising the difficulty only by raising the stats," Liang says. "We're raising many things, like game mechanics, in higher passes. It will feel more like a roguelike, and the AI is very important. The Extreme Mode, the AI, you feel like you're playing a different game. It's like a real person controlling the enemy. The boss can fake. He can use fake skills to lure you. The strategy is really in-depth."

There will also be other difficulty modifiers like banned weapons and items, limited health, and restricted respawns. This Extreme Mode is only unlocked after you beat the game, so you'll get a shot at the intended way to play before you have to really white-knuckle it and get good.

Phantom Blade Zero is coming to PS5 and PC, but there's no release date just yet.

Check out our list of all the upcoming video game release dates of 2025 so you know what to look forward to this year.