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In a year punctuated with heavyweights like Nioh 3 and FromSoftware's The Duskbloods, my most-anticipated action RPG of 2026 is Phantom Blade Zero, the first game of its kind from Chinese developer S-Game. The studio has been making action games for over a decade, but with a more casual and often mobile focus – never anything with the depth, intensity, or presentation of Phantom Blade Zero, which is due on PS5 and PC on September 9.
I've been following and sampling this game, and interviewing its lead developers, for multiple years. With every updated demo or new reveal, I've become increasingly confident that this is going to be a big deal – not just a fun and replayable action romp, but another major milestone in the rise of Chinese games on console and PC, which is going to be a huge influence on games in the years and decades to come.
Kungfu, punk
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The closest parallel to Phantom Blade Zero, in terms of directions and stakes, is Black Myth: Wukong from Chinese studio Game Science. Yet Phantom Blade Zero is even less Souls-like, for one, as director 'Soulframe' Liang has told me repeatedly. Rather, it's proudly an old-school action game – Liang's reference is the PS2 golden age viewed through a Chinese lens – built around levels and replayability.
Phantom Blade Zero has stuck to its "kungfupunk" theming, combining Wuxia martial arts with dazzling fantasy elements to create larger-than-life boss fights, a huge collection of weapons and special attacks, and a more steel-on-steel rhythm for a combat system that looks to have one of the highest skill ceilings I've seen in a single-player game. From what I've played in multiple vertical slices – changing weapons to extend attack combos, perfectly countering specific enemy attacks, mastering environmental fixtures – I expect the action choreography GIF makers and no-hit enthusiasts of the world to have a ball with this game. It is not easy, but you can make it look easy.
Style and skill expression are heavily emphasized in Phantom Blade Zero, almost to a Devil May Cry degree. I think combat shines brightest in duels, but even in fights against multiple enemies, whether that's mob-type bosses or packs of NPCs in levels, S-Game smartly resists dogpiling you. You get enough space to cleanly interpret incoming attacks and respond with your own parries and flourishes. Combat is legible. But there's still enough of a mob threat that you'll want to prioritize specific targets, which is partly why I have a lot of hope for the levels we'll be exploring between bosses.
My mind also goes to Stellar Blade from Korean studio Shift Up – another case of a veteran Asian developer breaking into the hardcore action space on console and PC, and with what feels like a comparable balance of RPG-lite elements. But when we search the skies for Phantom Blade Zero, I think we'll find it in the growing constellation of Chinese games that includes Black Myth: Wukong but arguably began with Genshin Impact, another bridge between mobile and core platforms that not only triggered a sea change in the gacha space, but also turned millions and millions of eyes toward China.
Games from China
Everything about Phantom Blade Zero tells me it's the next big domino
This, for me, gets to the most exciting part of Phantom Blade Zero and games like it: this keeps happening, and it's going to keep happening. Wukong was not a one-off. The rise of premium Chinese games – currently, many action games, though I'd wager we'll see that trend evolve – has already brought a lot of refreshing ideas to games as a whole, and it's only going to accelerate.
It's not that we haven't had Chinese games available. We have, from Icey to Biped to Ex Astris. But we haven't had very many like this – not just on core platforms, but with this reach, both commercially and globally. More people are making, and playing, ambitious games that feel like they could only have been made in China. Phantom Blade Zero's integration of real Chinese martial arts, locations, and traditions gives it a texture that you can't find anywhere else.
I'm selfishly pleased that this Chinese boom has mostly been happening in action genres I love so much. I've been playing games for almost 30 years and I've been writing about them for almost half of that time, but I had never played games quite like these before the last few years.
Games like Nioh 3 and FromSoftware's RPGs carry distinct Japanese influences that I'll just get a hankering for sometimes – Japanese companies and styles obviously being so ingrained in countless genres and console generations across the lifetime of the games industry as a whole – and I hope to have that type of relationship with Chinese games as well. There is something inimitable here, and I want more of it. I still play Genshin Impact, I really enjoyed Black Myth: Wukong, and everything about Phantom Blade Zero tells me it's the next big domino.
