Things Phantom Blade Zero Doesn’t Tell You - Phantom Blade Zero Guide - IGN

One thing Phantom Blade Zero makes very clear is that pretty much everything wants to kill you. Sure, you’ve got a sword and some slick moves to help you fight back, but it doesn’t tell you a whole lot outside of that. Fortunately, you’ve got a deeper bag of tricks than you might realize. Here are nine things Phantom Blade Zero doesn’t tell you, with plenty of tips to help you fight back.

9 Things Phantom Blade Zero Doesn’t Tell You

You'll burn through a lot of Sha-chi while attacking and defending, making it easier to break your guard and vulnerable to a quick trip to an early grave. You could let it regenerate naturally, but enemies often won’t give you that time given the quick pace of combat. Instead, when you find your Sha-chi meter nearly depleted, switch your weapons.

While the game does tell you, briefly, that switching weapons instantly refills your supply of Sha-chi, it does not emphasize how absolutely critical this particular mechanic is to your success. Use this method to fuel your attacks, or to replenish your defense when the enemy is on the verge of breaking your guard. Eventually you can unlock a faster cooldown on weapon switching, enabling you to quickly chain back and forth between your weapons, and keep your Sha-chi topped off as you do. If an enemy is about to recover from a guard break, you may be better off switching weapons and stopping your attack early so you can be ready to defend.

You can tell if the enemy is close to a guard break by the yellow meter by it, or in a boss's case, beneath its name. Keep an eye on its regeneration to know when to switch back on the defensive.

The flashy and brutal finishers are one of the best elements of Phantom Blade Zero’s combat, and they have one major benefit beyond just removing enemies in satisfyingly gruesome ways.

To perform a finisher, look for a button prompt to pop up while attacking an enemy.

Soul is completely invulnerable to incoming attacks during finishers. So, while it may be tempting to pull off a stylish kill the second you see the prompt, a bit of patience is often rewarded. If you can hold off for a few extra seconds to time it during incoming attacks, setting you up to avoid damage completely.

A lot of your core adventure will revolve around slaughtering legions of baddies as you go from point A to point B, but when it comes to exploration, Phantom Blade Zero is much more like a metroidvania. Pathways in every region will be blocked by barriers that keep them shut until you find just the right tool, which means you won’t be one-hundred percenting areas before moving on. But you should come back when you can, as these barriers often hide upgrade materials, quest items, and even secret bosses, often with brand new weapons for you when you beat them. So take advantage of backtracking once you get the items to unblock these paths.

You have a lot of freedom to work on the main story or work on cleaning up sidequests, but that comes with a warning: some sidequests eventually disappear if you don’t do them on time. One example is gathering medicines for Yu’er. She’ll move on to new areas depending on where you are in the main quest, and when she does, there’s no going back once she does. If you are a completionist, you’ll want to make sure you’ve progressed each side quest as far as you can before finishing the main mission in each area, or you could miss out on valuable goodies.

Soul Remnants, metals, and other upgrade materials can feel stingy at times, but that doesn’t mean your chance to experiment with new weapons is necessarily limited.

Every weapon , Phantom Edge , and Accessory lets you upgrade it to level 10, then revert it back down, returning everything that was spent and consumed in the process. Don’t ignore this, stripping one weapon to try out a new toy is the best way to find which weapons work for you. After level ten, and again after level twenty, you’ll need to use a special consumable to revert, but these are plentiful enough that you should feel comfortable using them as needed. Keep in mind that Phantom Edges and standard weapons require different consumables to respec once you hit those upgrade thresholds.

Upgrading new weapons and experimenting is extremely important, for while combat can seem simple at first, with only two buttons for attacking (one for standard, and one for Sha-chi) much of the depth of each weapon comes with their alternate abilities or properties that are often unlocked by reaching certain upgrade thresholds. For instance, when you get Jagged Steel to level 5, you unlock a special attack that can inflict massive Bleed buildup to enemies who are guard broken.

At level 5, Sanguine and Sanguine Twin allow you to buff your weapons for 20 seconds to greatly increase damage. These upgradeable perks even extend to Phantom Edges. Dread Axe at level 5 unlocks the ability to immediately perform a fully charged strike by double tapping R2 or the Right Trigger and spending two Remnant Sparks. And Hunter’s Chain Sickle gives a Scorpion-like yank that pulls enemies in after a combo.

An important thing to note is that while you can see what you need to upgrade a weapon to unlock certain abilities on the upgrade equipment screen, if you’re looking at them in your inventory, you need to press the highlighted "Advanced" button to go into the advanced tab.

Many Upgrades come later than you might expect

You have a lot of things to upgrade in your journey. From your weapons, to your accessories, medicines, phantom edges , and Soul himself. However, what you can upgrade and when depends on pick ups and vendors scattered throughout the entire game. Be prepared to gather upgrade materials, like the ones for medicines or accessories, and not be able to use them until later. General rule of thumb, if you don’t know how to upgrade something, just keep playing and eventually the game will tell you. We also have another video on how to upgrade weapons, accessories, and medicines.

As you explore the world of the Wulin, you’ll come across scrolls, shrines, and other intractable objects. These are great for fleshing out the world, learning about characters, and understanding the various factions warring throughout the land. But it often comes with another important benefit too: Remnant Dust, your do-it-all upgrade currency. Anytime you see the glowing light indicating a scroll, or you see the button prompt for Soul to investigate a person or object, there’s a good chance you’ll earn free XP to upgrade your character and weapons, and you might even learn a thing or two along the way.

I know “Soulslike” is a very loaded term and comes with a lot of baggage, and Phantom Blade Zero may bear a few of the markers of the Soulslike genre, but it is very much its own thing. For one, enemies don’t respawn after touching bells, Phantom Blade’s equivalent of Bonfires. And while bosses can be tough, and definitely act as difficulty spikes and skill checks throughout the adventure, some will even skip the first phase on retries if you die after getting to later phases. All in all, Phantom Blade Zero is an action game with a few Soulslike trappings. And really, who cares at the end of the day. Are you having fun? That’s all that matters.

Armed with this knowledge, and few trusty weapons, you should be well prepared to take on all manner of murderous baddies. Just make sure to upgrade your weapons, medicines, and trinkets while you are at it.