Anyone who has followed games media for years knows a perfect score gets attention on its own. IGN China‘s review of Phantom Blade Zero, however, went global because of its first paragraph. Published on October 26 and written by Charles Young, it opens by comparing S-GAME’s game with Black Myth: Wukong, whose success two years ago, it says, involved “some element of luck,” and states that after finishing Phantom Blade Zero the author is sure of one thing.
In SavePoint’s translation, straight from the Chinese: “In the foreseeable future, when Western game creators are stuck in a creative rut, held hostage by elements of political correctness and bound by highly industrialized commercial logic, producing one assembly-line, canned game after another that amounts to industrial garbage, let Chinese game creators teach them a proper lesson and make them relearn what a high-quality, content-rich AAA game should look like.”
The passage spread on social media this week, mainly on X, where it was shared in English and drew many replies, most of them from players agreeing with the criticism of games that put messages ahead of gameplay. As of publication, no major Western studio or publisher had responded.
The review itself praises the “challenging but not torturous” design, the martial-arts-film rhythm of the combat, the main and side stories, and the amount of content, with multiple endings. As weaknesses, it lists slightly stiff facial expressions in cutscenes, some disconnect between systems and characters, and bugs in the press build that S-GAME said were fixed at launch. It also highlights Donnie Yen’s role and a traditional Chinese art performance lasting more than 20 minutes.
Phantom Blade Zero launched on October 28 and passed 720,000 concurrent players on Steam. Everything about the game is in our Phantom Blade Zero guide.
Source: IGN China.
Max Xavier