Is Phantom Blade Zero a Soulslike? Full Answer

No, Phantom Blade Zero is not a Soulslike — developer S-GAME has said so explicitly, and more than once, since the game was first announced. As Push Square put it in 2025, S-GAME "is really going out of its way to make sure that everyone knows." The studio positions it as a lightning-fast Wuxia action RPG built on aggressive combos and rapid exchanges between attack and defense, not the deliberate, stamina-governed rhythm that defines Souls combat. As of September 2026, with launch set for October 29, that answer has not changed.

What S-GAME Has Said, In So Many Words

After Summer Game Fest 2024, S-GAME published a lengthy statement declaring bluntly that Phantom Blade Zero "is not a Soulslike." Game director and CEO Soulframe Liang has since explained why so many people assumed otherwise: "When Phantom Blade Zero was first announced, people thought it was a 'Soulslike'... it seemed to feature interconnected maps, hidden secrets, and those sigh-of-relief checkpoints."

His definition ultimately rejects both labels: "Phantom Blade Zero is neither a Soulslike game nor a traditional action game." Instead, he floated the idea that the game might "create a new identity that is Wuxia Action Games" — much as nobody files kung fu cinema under generic action. "Few people would simply call them 'action movies'... we refer to them as Kung Fu films, Wuxia films, or martial arts films."

What It Borrows, and What It Leaves Behind

Ask whether Phantom Blade Zero is a Soulslike and S-GAME will concede exactly one debt: "the multi-layered maps, multiple approach paths, and hidden nooks and crevices." The checkpoint bells scattered through the world have even been described by a hands-on player as "bells that work almost like bonfires." That is roughly where the family resemblance ends.

The studio's stated influences run elsewhere: Chinese Wuxia novels, Hong Kong films of the 1970s through the 1990s, the manga Vagabond, Berserk, and Claymore, and the action games Ninja Gaiden, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Nioh. Writing on the official PlayStation Blog, Soulframe called the team "huge fans of the hack and slash genre" and argued that today's slower strategic action games "slow things down a notch or two" in a way that "doesn't convey the kind of action fest we have in mind."

Soulslike vs. Phantom Blade Zero at a Glance

Feature	Typical Soulslike	Phantom Blade Zero
Difficulty options	Usually none	Four modes, from story-friendly Wayfarer to permadeath
Enemy respawn	Enemies return when you rest or die	Defeated enemies stay dead
Corpse run	Recover lost currency from your body	No corpse-run mechanic
Combat pace	Deliberate, stamina-managed	Aggressive combos, rapid attack-and-defense exchanges
World structure	Interconnected regions	Semi-open world of eight connected regions

The last row is where the confusion lives: the world really is interconnected and checkpoint-driven, which reads as Soulslike at a glance — until the fight actually starts. For the full picture, see our Phantom Blade Zero gameplay breakdown and the semi-open world explainer.

What Hands-On Players Say

People who have actually played it tend to agree with the studio. Rurikhan, a creator who tried the game twice at offline events, put it this way: "it doesn't play like a Souls-like, even though it has the bells that work almost like bonfires... it doesn't feel like, say, Devil May Cry-ish. It feels like a strange kind of in-between... I feel like they've carved their own niche when it comes to the way that this gameplay feels."

On punishment, he was blunt: "I would say this is less punishing than Sekiro. Ninja Gaiden is also way more punishing than this." He also found the game "more lenient with you coming up with different strategies for each of the bosses" — instead of bowing to every mechanic, you can swap weapons and approaches and simply overwhelm a fight. IGN's hands-on similarly placed the feel somewhere between Ninja Gaiden and Sekiro, calling the default difficulty genuinely hard but never cheap. Boss fights are a clear focus of the design, with hidden bosses tucked into dungeons, all of it hand-crafted rather than mass-produced.

The Steam Tag Oddity

Here is the twist: as of September 2026, the most popular user tags on the game's Steam page include "Souls-like" right alongside "Hack and Slash" and "Fast-Paced." The community keeps filing Phantom Blade Zero under the very label its developer keeps publicly rejecting. The same store page lists adjustable difficulty among the game's features — itself a break from Soulslike convention. Treat the tag as player shorthand for "hard action game with checkpoints," not as a genre verdict; the demo impressions above explain what the game actually feels like.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Phantom Blade Zero a Soulslike?

No. S-GAME has stated repeatedly that Phantom Blade Zero "is not a Soulslike," describing it instead as fast Wuxia action — possibly the start of a "Wuxia Action" category of its own.

Is Phantom Blade Zero harder than Sekiro?

Judging by hands-on impressions, no — testers found it less punishing than both Sekiro and Ninja Gaiden, and more open to improvised strategies.

Does Phantom Blade Zero have bonfires?

Not literally, but it has bells that function like bonfires: they act as checkpoints and fast-travel points while revealing sections of the map.

Do enemies respawn when you die or rest?

No. S-GAME has confirmed enemies do not respawn after you die or touch a checkpoint, and there is no corpse run to recover lost progress.

What genre is Phantom Blade Zero, then?

By the studio's own framing, it is neither a Soulslike nor a traditional action game — Soulframe Liang proposes a new identity: "Wuxia Action Games."