Even if it isn't a Soulslike, Phantom Blade Zero still wants to channel that "pre-Elden Ring" FromSoftware level design with secrets and layers

The developers of Phantom Blade Zero claim they're trying to channel "pre-Elden Ring" FromSoftware level designs for the game, even if they're adamant it's not a Soulslike.

If you're a fan of classic hack-and-slash games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, you've no doubt been in the same boat as me over the last few years. Every time a promising action game is shown off, it turns out to be a Soulslike, Stellar Blade being one of the most recent examples. Thankfully, Phantom Blade Zero's development team has been very focused on letting players know the upcoming game is not a Soulslike. But even if it's primarily an action game, it doesn't mean there's no Souls DNA in there.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, Phantom Blade Zero director developer S-Game told us the game is built on three pillars: Devil May Cry-lite combat, Souls-lite level design, Resident Evil-lite atmosphere and narrative.

A rep for the studio told us, "On the Souls-lite level design side, we are definitely a fan of and inspired by the pre-Elden Ring, interconnected, tight level design." The rep also revealed that the game's director, 'Soulframe' Liang, "actually went to school for architecture, so the level design is something that's very important for us and we want to have very robust levels, have a lot of depth to them, very dense."

"Before, everyone thought we're making a Soulslike game," Liang said. "So in order to prove we have a totally different combat system for the core gameplay, we're showcasing these combat demos. But now people have maybe come the other way around, they think it's a hack-and-slash with no story and you just go kill to the end, but it's not something like that. It's more like a Resident Evil but fighting with blades."

Liang later told us, "Anything that is useful and good for us to make our pillar, a playable kung fu movie with exploration and character progression, we'll make use of it. Whether it's exploration from a Souls game or vibes from Resident Evil or combat from this hack-and-slash game, we'll take that and bring them together. But the overall experience is still very coherent. It's not ripped apart from something else.

"We have deeper ideologies and principles in designing the game. If we don't have that, every element we brought from different genres would feel separate and fall apart. One is to bring back the golden age of Chinese kung fu movies, starting from Bruce Lee in the 1970s and into maybe the early 2000s. We want to rekindle this passion for the kung fu movie. The other one, for gaming itself, we want to rediscover the golden age of PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2."

I got my hands on the game back at SGF 2024, and it's a demo I'm still thinking about to this day thanks to its intense combat. I never got to experience this Soulslike level design in the limited encounters, but if it's anything like early Dark Souls, I'm down.

Speaking of FromSoftware, it just announced a new game, so be sure to check out everything we know about The Duskbloods.