Anticipated action RPG Phantom Blade Zero is starting to sound like an extremely exciting blend of some of the best action games and best RPGs of the last decade or more.
Speaking to the Future Games Show, game director Soulframe Liang said that "people will never understand what [Phantom Blade Zero] is exactly until they actually play it." While many of the descriptions of the game so far have focused on its similarity to true action RPGS, Liang says that it's actually "something in between a Souls game and a really big Baldur's Gate or Witcher."
That attachment to traditional RPGs stems in part from the "many accessible ways to navigate people around the map" that can be found in the game, but it's also part of a push away from more traditional Souls games. "Because the Souls genre is very influential," Liang says, "many people will hide everything, and it's super complicated, with no direction."
By contrast, he says "we see our games as different, where we even have a hand-drawn map that will guide you to the next spot." While games like Dark Souls are defined by a mysterious approach to narrative, in Phantom Blade Zero, "the point is to tell our story, to build an original world, and to showcase our amazing moveset. Our game is not about slow movement, or exploring or [getting] lost in a very intricate map."
If you’re looking for more excellent games from today's Future Games Show, have a look at our official Steam page.
