Phantom Blade Zero First Hours Walkthrough: What to Do Before Day 10

The tutorial throws you into Soul's shoes right as everything goes wrong. You're framed for murdering the patriarch of The Order, left for dead, then revived by a mystic healer who gives you the bad news: 66 days to live. The first thing the game does after this cutscene is drop you into a combat tutorial that feels borderline basic -- and then immediately hits you with a mini-boss. That's not a mistake. S-GAME wants you to learn by getting knocked around a bit.

After the opening sequence, you'll wake up in a small settlement that serves as your first hub. Don't leave yet. There are four NPCs here that matter, and two of them won't have quest markers over their heads. The old weaponsmith near the gate gives you a rusty straight sword if you talk to him twice -- it's not glamorous but the parry window on it is wider than anything else you'll find for the next five hours. The herbalist's apprentice, sitting by the well, hands over a stack of healing items that would otherwise take you an hour of grinding to accumulate. Most players miss her entirely because she's not marked on the map.

Your first real combat test comes at the Broken Bridge checkpoint, about 45 minutes in. This is where the Sha-chi system stops being theoretical. The enemies here -- three Order enforcers with blue-tinged weapons -- are designed to teach you that red attacks need Ghoststep, not block. The timing is tighter than it looks. What I found works: watch their weapon hand, not their body. The hand moves a split second before the attack actually launches, and that's your dodge window. Once you Ghoststep through a red attack, the teleport-behind animation gives you about two seconds of free damage before they recover.

Weapon choice in these first hours matters more than you'd think. The area after Broken Bridge branches three ways, and one of those paths -- the left fork toward the Sunken Forge -- is balanced around you having found at least one Phantom Edge. If you haven't explored the side room before the bridge (crouch through the broken wall on the right), you missed a free Phantom Edge dagger that fills your Sha-chi meter on-hit. Grab it. The Sunken Forge boss without a Phantom Edge is doable but it takes forever and you'll burn through all your healing items.

By hour three, you should have two primary blades you're comfortable with, at least one Phantom Edge, and a basic understanding of which combos chain into which finishers. The combo-chain presets in the skill menu aren't random -- each preset favors a different playstyle. The "Crimson Chain" preset is aggressive, short combos with high Sha-chi generation. "Iron Lotus" is slower but has built-in guard points on the third hit. Try both before committing upgrade materials.

I want to pause on the sword-finding quest because it's genuinely the most missable thing in the early game and the reward is unique. The kid is standing near the well in the second hub, not marked on the map. He asks you to find his father's sword, which was lost in the Iron Port district. Most players nod, walk away, and forget about it because there's no quest log entry. The sword is in a warehouse near the south docks, behind some breakable crates. The warehouse itself is locked, and the key is on a named enemy who patrols the dock at night. You basically need to stumble into this quest's solution. The reward is a Phantom Edge called Remembrance, which boosts Sha-chi generation specifically from parries. If you're running a parry-focused build, it's one of the best Edges in the game. If you miss the quest, it's gone forever after the Iron Port story mission concludes.

A thing nobody mentions: the 66-day timer doesn't tick during exploration or side content. Days only advance when you complete main story missions or die. So you can freely wander the semi-open zones between story beats without any time pressure. That means you should absolutely clear every side area you can access before advancing the main plot. Some side quests become unavailable after certain story milestones -- there's no warning when this happens, the NPC just disappears or dies.

One more thing about the second hub: there's a training dummy behind the inn. The game never points you to it, but practicing Ghoststep timing on the dummy for even five minutes will save you hours of frustration later. The dummy cycles through all attack colors and speeds. It's not exciting practice, but it's more efficient than dying to the same boss six times while you figure out the timing. It also scales to your current zone, so you can come back periodically with new weapons and test combos against whatever faction you're currently fighting.

Difficulty settings are available from the start. Normal is the intended experience for a first run. Hellwalker mode with its adaptive AI is for new game plus or people who genuinely enjoy suffering. Boss Rush unlocks after your first clear. There's genuinely no shame in normal -- the combat has enough depth that you'll still be learning new things 30 hours in.

Release is currently penciled for September 9, 2026, with a possible push to late October. Steam, Epic Games Store, and PS5. No Xbox version announced yet. S-GAME has been clear about the platform lineup in interviews, so if you're on Xbox, you might be waiting a while. One more thing before you dive in: the game autosaves frequently but there's no manual save system. If you want to experiment with a risky build or test a boss strategy without burning calendar days, create a separate save slot at a checkpoint. The save management is buried in the system menu under a submenu that's easy to miss -- took me ten hours to even find it. Not the most exciting tip, but losing progress because you didn't know how saves work is a special kind of frustration.