Phantom Blade Zero Is Topping Steam's Charts Before It Even Launches

A wuxia action RPG with a death clock

Phantom Blade Zero casts you as Soul, a warrior framed for murder and left with a fatal wound that gives him just 66 days to live. He spends that countdown chasing a conspiracy across a fractured martial-arts world laced with steampunk machinery, phantom weapons, and a mysterious dimension called the Phantom Realm. Developer S-GAME built the game on Unreal Engine 5, with motion capture and fight choreography handled by veteran martial-arts film crews, so the combat is going for something closer to a wire-fu movie you control directly than a typical souls-like.

Why it is already a top seller

The game does not launch until October 28, but it has spent days near the top of Steam's global top-sellers chart on pre-order sales alone, after briefly hitting No. 1 back in August when pre-orders first opened. S-GAME actually pushed the release back about seven weeks from an original September 9 date, specifically to keep polishing the game before launch, which is usually a better sign than a chart position alone.

What you are buying

• Standard Edition: $59.99. Digital Deluxe Edition: $69.99, with bonus cosmetic and in-game content.
• A single-player campaign estimated at 20 to 30 hours, spanning eight regions with eight different endings.
• Over 30 primary weapon types plus 20 "phantom" weapons, with combat built around distinct martial-arts sects.
• Four difficulty modes, from the standard Wayfarer setting up to the punishing "66 Days" mode.
• Available on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, plus PS5, with no Xbox version announced.

Who it's for

If you have been waiting for a souls-adjacent action RPG built around real wire-fu choreography instead of another grim copy of the usual formula, this is the one worth watching, especially if you already have it wishlisted going into launch week.