There has maybe by no means been a press release made by a human or group of people that I resonate as a lot as the next phrases from Phantom Blade Zero director Qiwei Liang to PC Gamer in its new journal problem: “Nowadays there are too many Souls games.”
Yes. YES. If I’ve to observe one other trailer for an in any other case promising fantasy RPG, solely to acknowledge the acquainted, lumbering swagger of an enormous factor with a much bigger weapon, a participant character dodge-rolling round its orbit, the next clanging of parrying metal, then face the belief that, sure, it is one other gosh darn Soulslike, I’m gonna go mad.
Liang has previously insisted that Phantom Blade Zero is “neither a Soulslike game nor a traditional action game,” and from what I’ve seen in gameplay trailers, it does appear to focus extra on frenetic, acrobatic fight than the excessive gravity, methodical motion that defines Soulslike battles. What I’m saying is, I like what I see. That mentioned, Liang mentioned we can’t actually know what we’re till we play it.
“People will not understand exactly what it is until they actually play it. But this is how the gaming industry evolves – many current genres are some sort of mixture. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, all these kung fu masters created a new genre in kung fu movies. We don’t call them action movies. We call them kung fu, right? It incorporated some of Hollywood, Chinese kung fu culture, and Chinese traditional opera to make something new.
“So for us, our thought is to create a brand new subgenre [within] the RPG or motion sport: a kung fu motion sport.”
I’m skeptical about the suggestion that “kung fu motion” isn’t already an established game subgenre, especially with Sifu not very far in the rearview and Shenmue going way back to the late ’90s, but giving Yiang the benefit of the doubt, I’ll assume he’s specifically referring to the Soulslike variety of action RPGs and suggesting there’s untapped potential in blending that type of experience with a martial arts focus, which indeed sounds pretty cool.
Phantom Blade Zero has no release date just yet, but while we wait for one, here are the best RPGs to play right now.