Essential Combat Tips for Phantom Blade Zero - Phantom Blade Zero Guide - IGN

Being a master swordsman in Phantom Blade Zero takes more than just swinging your blade around and somersaulting every time someone takes a swing at you. There’s nuance to this, details that can make the difference between whether it's your head, or that of your opponents that goes rolling. That’s why we’ve put together these tips and tricks to help you master combat in Phantom Blade Zero.

Essential Combat Tips for Phantom Blade Zero

Years of action games like Ninja Gaiden or Dark Souls have taught players the value of dodging, blocking, and hitting back in the windows in between. However, that’s not typically the best approach here. Instead, most of your defense should come via parries.

That means timing button taps when attacks land, not holding it down and waiting. Not only does this keep you safe, it’s also often the best way to chip away at an enemy's sha-chi meter, breaking their guard and opening them up to attacks. For tougher enemies, especially bosses, this is your window to do meaningful damage. Ideally, you are looking for the flash of sparks that lets you know you’ve timed your parry perfectly.

Soul can carve through basic enemies without too much trouble. However, tougher baddies and bosses lie in wait to make his day much worse, and they won’t be impressed with a few basic attacks.

Really putting the hurt on them comes down to timing. Use your attacks and parries to break down the enemies guard first, go all out on the aggression. A particularly effective damage phase will look something like this: Guard is broken and you consume your Sha-Chi essence, then you empty your sha-chi meter with your Sha-Chi attacks, switch weapons, and use your now refilled sha-chi to do it again until the enemy stagger ends.

Fights against tough enemies, especially bosses, are as much about managing your sha-chi meter as they are about your quick-twitch combat skills. You need to keep your meter up, when it runs empty you are exposed to a lot of potential damage. Follow the 30% rule, as long as your Sha-chi is greater than 30%, swing freely, including using your sha-chi attacks. However, once it drops below that threshold, focus on just standard attacks until it refills. The exceptions are when you are pummeling a guard broken enemy like we mentioned before, or when you are about to switch weapons, which will instantly refill your sha-chi.

Always have one shieldbreaker phantom edge equipped

While Soul has an extensive arsenal, you only get to use four weapons, two standard and two phantom edges, in a single fight. Use whatever tools of destruction you like, no judgement here, but do yourself a favor and make sure to always have at least one Phantom Edge that specializes in breaking down shields. Shielded enemies will appear fairly regularly, and most standard weapons will take forever to break through their guard. But, if you have something like Dread Axe, or Iron Gauntlets equipped, you can smash through them almost instantly, saving a lot of time and effort against harder targets.

One of the early upgrades to Soul is called Flowing Chi. The description lists a bunch of requirements, but all you need to know is that this is unlimited free usage of your Phantom Edges , in the right context. Once you have this ability, you will start seeing a new button prompt appear. Tap it quick enough, and Soul will bust out an attack from a phantom edge, without consuming any Remnant Spark. When the prompt appears and what attack is used depends on the enemy, and whether or not you’ve unlocked the weapon used in the combo, but it can add a powerful effect to the middle of your assault. You can even get an item that grants a chance to generate new Remnant Spark anytime you use these free attacks.

Jagged Steel is a top tier weapon you get early, upgrade it right away

Early on you’ll face a boss called Jagged Steel, the Frenzied Brute . Cut him down to get his sword, also called Jagged Steel . You’ll unlock the ability to upgrade weapons soon, and make this your top priority; it’s by far one of the most powerful early-game weapons you can get your hands on. It has a great moveset, deals solid damage, and builds up a status effect called bleed, dealing a large chunk of additional damage when it procs. Get this to level five as soon as you can to unlock a special attack that builds bleep quickly on guard-broken enemies, and thank us later.

Another great weapon available in the early hours is the Scarlet Wraithblade. However, unlike Jagged Edge, this is on an optional boss, and completely missable. Don’t miss it. This massive two-handed sword cleaves through enemies quickly. It also leaves a wake of red lilies behind, which drain the sha-chi and health of any enemy standing in them, including bosses. Given how important draining sha-chi is to set up your attack opportunities, that’s a huge benefit.

To get the Scarlet Wraithblade, you’ll need to reach the Sha-chi tower in the Weeping Creek Valley, which you'll come across naturally as part of the story during Steel and Steam . After dealing with the monks on the first floor, look for an opening in the floor, slide down, and follow the path to the left to find Hua, Deadly Betrothed. You’ll need to beat her to get this sword. Be warned though, she’s no pushover. Check out our detailed Hua boss fight guide for help.

Soul gets access to a wide variety of accessories over his travels, and can eventually equip up to six of them at a time to maximize his combat potential. The game will often telegraph what sort of enemies you will be facing based on what accessories it drops, like giving you the Cavalrybane, right before you take on a particularly nasty jerk on horseback. As a general rule of thumb, if you get a new accessory specific to a type of enemy, or negating a type of damage, consider equipping it sooner rather than later.

Still, some accessories are good in almost any situation. Here are a few of our favorites.

The Token of Pursuit increases damage to Guard-Broken enemies. Since that’s when you’ll deal most of your damage, that’s an easy winner.

The Quick Hand Pendant and Quick Hand Might boost your damage with one and two-handed weapons respectively. That’s especially useful if you are doubling up on either weapon type.

The Mother’s Talisman restores some of your HP when your guard is broken. While we don’t suggest spending a lot of time in this state, if you are clever with your weapon switching, you can leverage this for some badly needed mid-fight healing.

The Reflex Device increases the timing window for your dodges and parries. Fully upgraded it gives a 25% boost. That’s a pretty big difference, and, with how much you’ll be using those moves, it can be a literal game changer with those tight windows.

It’s a dangerous world out there, but if you follow these tips you can turn the tables and become the danger yourself.