Digital Foundry has shared its first impressions of Phantom Blade Zero following a hands-on session with a high-end PC demo at Gamescom 2025. The analysis offers a detailed look at how the game handles its visuals, lighting, and performance, while also raising questions about how it may eventually translate to consoles.
According to John and Alex of Digital Foundry, the demo was running on a powerful PC likely equipped with an NVIDIA RTX 5090 and displayed on a 1440p high-refresh-rate monitor. While the setup represented the upper tier of available hardware, the build still provided some useful insight into the underlying technology choices.
The title uses Unreal Engine, though with an approach that avoids relying heavily on certain headline features of Unreal Engine 5 such as Lumen or Virtual Shadow Maps. Instead, the team noted that Phantom Blade Zero employs a mix of baked lighting, ray-traced shadows, and reflections. Alex explained that this design decision leads to some compromises in indirect lighting but ultimately produces consistent results. John added that this strategy may help ensure smoother performance when the game arrives on consoles.
“The shadows particularly do look really great,” Alex observed, noting their stability throughout the demo. Reflections were more sparingly applied, appearing mainly on water and puddles, possibly as a performance-saving measure. On the subject of geometry rendering, both reviewers debated whether the demo employed Nanite, as solid scenery showed minimal visible level-of-detail transitions.
Performance, however, was not entirely flawless. Alex acknowledged that the demo exhibited occasional stutters and an uncapped frame rate, though he cautioned that the footage available online appeared less stable than the live experience due to recording methods. Despite these issues, the game was still considered promising, with John remarking that its selective use of technology might prove advantageous compared to more demanding Unreal Engine 5 projects like Black Myth: Wukong.
Set in a fictional world with a unique “kungfupunk” aesthetic, Phantom Blade Zero blends wuxia, steampunk, and dark fantasy influences. Players take on the role of Soul, an assassin seeking justice after being framed for the murder of his clan’s patriarch. With only 66 days to live following an emergency cure, Soul must unravel the conspiracy while battling across the game’s richly designed environments.
S-GAME confirmed that Phantom Blade Zero will launch on PlayStation 5 and Windows PC, with a firm release date expected later in 2025.
