Phantom Blade Zero Gets Unofficial Soulslike Mode

It Has Taken Less Than A Week For Phantom Blade Zero To Become A Soulslike Published Nov 2, 2026, 4:28 AM EST Sam Woods is TheGamer’s Senior Reporter. He’s been in games journalism since 2020 and has undertaken a variety of roles in that time. These have included roles such as SEO Editor, Managing Editor at DualShockers, and Global Head of Gaming, and he's also been seen on the BBC. He was promoted to the Senior Reporter position in 2025 following a series of high-quality reports and exclusives for TheGamer. Since 2020, Sam has written over 3,000 articles and specializes in telling the stories of the people behind the games. He’s interviewed the biggest game directors, some of the industry’s top talents, told the stories of how indie games came to be, and spoken to players about what really makes them tick. He’s also interviewed some of the world’s biggest musical artists to find out how the medium has inspired their work, and TV and Film actors about their roles in video game adaptations. He even hosted a PAX panel in 2021 and made a documentary in 2024 surrounding the creation of a Disney game. Alongside this, Sam focuses on breaking news. He got the scoop on Perfect Dark’s cancellation, provided context on some AI drama, and revealed that Lady Dimitrescu’s actress would love to step back into the character’s giant shoes. These articles have been picked up by the biggest gaming sites, including IGN, GameSpot, and PC Gamer. He also loves to dive into the numbers behind the games. Sam’s journey in games journalism has taken him all over the world. He’s covered Gamescom in Germany, Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles, and Tokyo Game Show in Japan, each on three occasions. He’s been learning Japanese since 2024 with the intention of identifying and translating Japanese-language news and bringing it to English-language audiences first, something he’s done countless times. Sam’s first review was 2020’s Battletoads reboot, and he’s since reviewed games in The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, and Pokemon franchises. Phantom Blade Zero's reviews were exceptional. It outscored contemporaries like Nioh 3 and Onimusha: The Way of the Sword, earning an 88 on Metacritic and becoming the best-reviewed Chinese game of all time. It scored a 5/5 from us here at TheGamer and achieved a frankly staggering player count on Steam for a single-player game. There were some pre-launch concerns from players, though—some reviewers deemed the game a little easy, and it lacked the Soulslike elements some players expected (despite S-Game making it abundantly clear it wasn't one). For those who had those concerns, fret no more. In just a few days, somebody has made a comprehensive mod that turns Phantom Blade Zero into a full Soulslike game. Phantom Blade Zero Is Now A Soulslike Thanks To One Player While Phantom Blade Zero is very much not a Soulslike, it definitely shares some of its DNA. The game's Bells mimic Dark Souls' Bonfires; there's a big reliance on parrying and dodging; the bosses are almost rhythmic in nature; and some of the exploration harkens back to titles like Demon's Souls or Bloodborne. The inspirations are clear, but Phantom Blade Zero charts its own path. Enemies don't respawn, you don't lose your Remnant Dust (the game's version of Souls) when you die, and bosses respawn at the phase you left them at when you die. It's a fantastic game, but it's not a Soulslike, and that has left a few disappointed. One fan, PVLW, has changed all of that, though: their mod, Phantom Souls, just dropped on Nexus Mods, and it makes all the changes needed to turn Phantom Blade Zero into a true Soulslike experience. In Phantom Souls, enemies will come back after you die or rest at a bell. When you kill them a second time, they bless you with only 25 percent of their Remnant Dust, which helps maintain balance, but they still return. Thankfully, like the Souls games, the first time you touch a Bell, enemies won't respawn, only after you rest there. Like the Souls games, the Phantom Souls mod ensures that Soul drops his Remnant Dust upon death and can reclaim it as long as he doesn't die a second time. This one is brutal as, by a third of the way through my second playthrough, I had over five million Dust available. It forces you to invest early. One of the biggest early complaints about Phantom Blade Zero is that if you get a boss to its second phase, it respawns at that second phase. Phantom Souls fixes that: if you die during a boss fight in phase 2, it respawns at phase 1. The mod also adds a death counter, but everything else remains the same. Early on, PVLW seems committed to making Phantom Blade Zero as difficult as possible. They've also created content that makes normal attacks and dodges cost Sha-Chi, as well as a Boss Rush mode. If you want to take things to the next level, other options are available. One allows you to make parrying and dodging harder, another allows you to have a Souls-style controller layout, and a third multiplies enemy damage. Or, you can always play as Steve from Minecraft, Nier's 2B, or The First Descendant's Valby. Systems Released October 29, 2026 ESRB Unreal Engine 5 Developer(s) S-Game Publisher(s) S-Game Engine Unreal Engine 5 Genre(s) Action, RPG