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Offense Consolidated Under the Fast Pace
Q:
With combat that looks this fast, is attacking complicated in practice — especially in situations like combos, chasing an enemy down, or switching targets?
A:
Press the advantage and keep attacking when the opening comes, dash in to pursue once you have knocked an enemy back, work both sides when enemies close in from left and right in a crowd fight, switch targets the moment a mob goes down — everyone knows all of that, Soul knows it too, and Phantom Blade Zero has no intention of testing you on any of it.
Most of it has been folded into “specific condition + Sha-Chi attack button”: in those situations the player only presses the Sha-Chi attack button once, and knowing that much makes it easy to put into practice.
On combos, the key is how long the damage window is. The detailed breakdown goes into the next Q&A; here I will only mention one other trick — when the damage window is roomy, the instant one weapon’s combo ends you can switch to the other weapon, which cancels the recovery pause and keeps the offense rolling.
One more note. When we knock an enemy back, we can chase straight in. But if the enemy pulls back on its own after throwing out a move, be careful and do not charge in swinging, because that kind of retreat is often the prelude to the enemy’s next round of offense. The same goes for fighting a group: when the enemy who had been leading the attack falls back, it very likely means someone else is about to step in and attack.
When and How Enemies Hit Back, and How to Answer
Q:
When we get our attack in first, when can we deal damage safely without fearing a counterattack; and, on the other side, in what situations can an enemy still hit back, and does that counterattack come with a tell? How should we handle a possible counterattack?
A:
Phantom Blade Zero leans on read-and-answer combat, and enemies get plenty of turns to act, which also means Soul cannot fully pin an enemy down most of the time.
This is generally achieved with a two-part design. First, the protagonist is kept from having dense attacks that could suppress an enemy over a long stretch. Second, an enemy that has taken a set number of ordinary attacks, or has been hit for a set length of time, breaks free by force — going straight into armor or invincibility — and then either hits back or pulls away.
When You Can Attack Safely
The condition for safe damage — apart from picking the longer stretches where an enemy is vulnerable or staggered (that is, where you are sure it will not hit back) — is that for the rest of the time, since the enemy may hit back, Soul’s attacks have to carry full i-frame coverage, or have to be certain to interrupt and suppress the enemy.
Right now the only move with anything like full i-frame coverage may be the Ghost Step counter. A weapon’s ultimate or special move does not always come with i-frames across its whole length.
As for suppression, maybe only the ultimates and special moves of a few weapons carry the strongest suppressing effect. Everything else — other ultimates and special moves, the Ghost Step counter, Sha-Chi attacks and so on — cannot fully suppress an enemy in any of the footage we have. Note too that suppressing enemies gets harder on the hardest difficulty setting.
How the Two Enemy Classes Hit Back
Enemies can first be split into two classes: heavy enemies and regular enemies.
Heavy enemies almost never trade parries and blocks back and forth, and most of Soul’s attacks will not stagger them.
These enemies mostly attack and rest on their own rhythm, and they branch in few directions.
What follows deals mainly with the different branches of a regular enemy hitting back.
As mentioned earlier, once an enemy takes hits it can force its way out at a certain threshold, unless it is being strongly suppressed. After that, if it does not pull away, it normally hits back in one of two ways.
Break Free, Minor Guard, Major Guard, Then Hit Back
The first is to break free through armor and then start guarding.
An enemy’s guard comes in a minor guard and a major guard. The minor guard shows a small spread of white sparks as its effect; the major guard shows a wide burst of golden sparks (much like Soul’s own guard effect).
Neither enemy guard affects Soul’s Sha-Chi. The whole sequence is fairly steady, and generally runs
1–2 minor guards — 1 major guard — counterattack
(Against Soul’s short combos the guard may trigger more often, but the timing of the sequence barely changes.)
During this stretch the attacks the enemy blocks deal no damage: a minor guard drains a small amount of the enemy’s Sha-Chi, and a major guard leaves it unchanged.
All told, this stretch is the enemy cutting the damage it takes while, through the pattern of its guards, warning the player about the counterattack that is coming.
Eating Hits, Breaking Free, Hitting Back
The second is eating the damage. The enemy will even be rocked back and forth by the beating, but it still forces its way out through armor and then attacks straight back.
This kind of counterattack may have steady trigger conditions (thresholds) of its own, but going by how it looks, the tell is less obvious than the guard type above. The compensation is that the enemy takes every point of that damage in full.
Answering a Counterattack with Preemptive Guard
With either kind of counterattack, watch out for the enemy’s fast opening moves. Those moves are hard to handle on warning and reaction alone, so I recommend pressing guard preemptively, a little earlier than feels natural.
How to Find the Right Damage Window
Q:
For most of a fight, how do we find the right damage window?
A:
Since Soul cannot fully suppress an enemy for most of the time, we start from how an enemy’s attack strings are put together as a whole, and look at which windows allow damage.
Where Your Attention Goes While Attacking
This point needs a note of its own. Enemies act often, the payoff from greedily extending a combo does not cover the cost of the damage taken, and the attack inputs have been consolidated and simplified — so while we are attacking, most of our attention is in fact not on the attack. It is on watching and predicting how the enemy will hit back next.
This attention split looks tilted toward defense, but it actually covers both sides. For one thing, Soul is no health sponge, and you still have to answer moves carefully to survive and keep dealing damage. For another, it is precisely by watching how an enemy’s attack strings run that we can judge when damage is available.
Attacking is necessary to beat an enemy, it is instinct, it is the concrete expression of fighting spirit, it is the vehicle through which you feel your own agency; but it genuinely should not take up much attention, not under the efficient strategy this whole design points to.
Recommended Damage Windows and What to Watch
Inside a single attack string, the hit-check gap between one move and the next is one broad category of window.
Between two adjacent attack strings, from the moment the closing move of the first string lands to the moment the opening move of the next string comes out, there is
the recovery pause of the first string — the return to neutral — a brief hold in the neutral stance — the wind-up of the next string
and that whole “between-string rest” is the other broad category of window.
Generally speaking, the between-string rest runs at least as long as the medium-long type of move interval; and since the first string usually closes on a heavy move, with the second half of the gap always the return to neutral, it is comparatively easier to recognise and remember. Note also that when a string ends on a blue-light, its between-string rest turns into a set sequence of “blue-light + Ghost Step counter”; when it ends on a red-light, it becomes “perfect dodge + Ghost Step counter” — two routes to the same circle-behind.
On the whole, it is better to go and learn and practise the between-string rest category of damage window first.
Whichever kind of window you attack in, make good use of the underlying adaptive defense to insure yourself and to recover.
The Sha-Chi a Sha-Chi attack costs is also the resource that holding guard draws on, and it is spent the moment the move starts, with nothing refunded if you cancel; so pick the longer windows you know well before using it.
The Rest Between Adjacent Strings
As said before, separate heavy enemies from regular enemies first, then check whether the first string closes on an ordinary attack, a blue-light or a red-light. Blue closes on a successful parry and red on a successful perfect dodge; both trigger the Ghost Step counter, and both go behind the attacker.
This section covers ordinary cases only. Against enemies with special mechanics or overwhelming strength, or when taking on the hardest difficulty, the length and the course of an enemy’s between-string rest may all shift, and so may the ability of Soul’s Ghost Step counter to interrupt.
Between-String Rest: Heavy Enemies
Ordinary attack close. The enemy generally spends the between-string rest at its own rhythm: hit it or not, it behaves the same, and it neither staggers nor guards.
If the way it recovers from the first string is fairly ordinary, stay conservative while attacking; if the recovery pause is unusually long (a sacrifice back throw and the like), you can lean on Sha-Chi attacks more.
Blue-light close. The Ghost Step counter staggers the enemy, and on the back of that you can get a short burst of damage in.
Once that stagger ends, what follows is like the ordinary-attack close: the enemy returns to neutral at its own rhythm, and whether the player attacks or not, it will not stagger or guard again.
Between-String Rest: Regular Enemies
Ordinary attack close. Three cases:
- Not hit; it returns to neutral on its own.
- Hit; it then forces its way out and starts guarding.
- Hit; it then keeps eating the hits, with only a small rocking stagger.
The self-reset case does not last long, which gives the odd feeling that the window only grows if you take the initiative and hit it. Its guard, or its eating of hits, is one of the two counterattack patterns already described, so decide your attacking approach from the thresholds you have learned.
Blue-light close. Same idea: the Ghost Step counter staggers it first, and you can attack during that; what follows is the same three branches as the ordinary-attack close.
The Gaps Between Moves Within a String
This has been classified before, and the same classification is used again here.
Very short (short) and short-to-medium intervals. Do not bother with them; leave those for experts to work out.
Medium intervals. Ordinary attacks are recommended.
Medium-long intervals. Use an ordinary attack combo, or open with one stretch of Sha-Chi attack that lands its full damage.
Long intervals. You can fit in several Sha-Chi attacks, but do not drag it out too far either — the window is not all that long.
Very long intervals. Awkward; play it by ear. There is plenty of time, but because these moves are showpieces, the enemy may be far away and out of reach.