What are the Phantom Blade Zero review scores?

Phantom Blade Zero averages 88 on Metacritic and opened at 91 on OpenCritic. The embargo lifted on October 25, 2026, four days before the game unlocked.

Aggregator Score What the figure covers
Metacritic (PC) 88 The PC build; this is the number Steam prints on the store page
Metacritic (PS5) 88 Reported at the same level in launch-week round-ups; console averages can move a point
OpenCritic 91 at open, 89 Top Critic Average 96% of critics recommending, per the OpenCritic card published with TheGamer's round-up

Both are weighted averages, which is why one 6/10 does not sink the total. The gap between the two sites is normal: they draw from overlapping but not identical outlet lists and weight critics differently.

Last checked: October 29, 2026, four hours after the global unlock. Aggregates move for weeks after launch — read the live pages before quoting a number.

Which outlets scored Phantom Blade Zero highest?

Outlet Score as published
Wccftech 10/10
TheGamer 5/5
PCGamesN 10/10
PSX Brasil 10/10
The Outerhaven 10/10
DualShockers 9.5/10
IGN 9/10
Push Square 9/10
GamesRadar+ 9/10 (90/100)
Press Start 9/10
Gameliner 8/10
GameSpot 8/10
VGC 8/10
Dexerto 8/10
Eurogamer 6/10
Polygon Unscored

Fourteen of the fifteen scored entries sit at 8 or above. That spread is narrow for a studio's first console release, and the narrowness is the more interesting signal than any single 10.

What do the positive reviews agree on?

Four claims recur across outlets that otherwise disagree:

  • Combat flow and animation. Even Eurogamer's 6/10 calls the animations and environments "exceptional in so many areas" and says that "when the combat works, the sense of flow is incredible."
  • Boss design. TheGamer singles out "some all-time great boss battles" as part of why it scored the game 5/5.
  • The soundtrack. TheGamer credits "a phenomenal soundtrack that fuses Chinese sounds with contemporary genres" — consistent with a score of more than ten hours of music written largely by one composer.
  • Wuxia presentation. Polygon, which did not score the game, still describes "few joys like watching a good Wuxia movie play out on screen."

For the systems those reviews are describing, our combat guide covers the announced weapon slots and secondary tools, and the bosses hub tracks the encounters that reviewers name without spoiling the phases.

What does the 6/10 actually criticise?

Eurogamer's review is the only score two full points below the next lowest, and it is worth reading for what it does not say. It does not argue that the combat is unresponsive or the game broken. It argues that boss fights slow the early pace and that the narrative is unremarkable — a pacing and writing complaint attached to a game it otherwise calls visually exceptional.

Polygon's unscored review raises a different objection: that the game "lacks putting trust in the player to act out these abilities, minimizing the active nature of the game." That is a design-philosophy critique about player agency, not a technical one.

So the disagreement is about how much the game asks of you, not about whether it looks and sounds good. If you want a game that hands you spectacle, the 9s and 10s describe it; if you want one that demands improvisation under pressure, the 6 is the review written for you.

How does 88 compare with other action games this year?

TheGamer's round-up notes that 88 puts Phantom Blade Zero above two of its closest 2026 comparisons: Onimusha: Way of the Sword at 85 and Nioh 3 at 86. Both are established action series with existing audiences; this is S-GAME's first console release.

That context matters more than the raw number. A high-80s average from a first-time console studio is a different result than the same average from a franchise on its fourth entry, and several outlets framed their scores around that surprise rather than around the polish alone.

What do Steam players say so far?

Steam user reviews held at "Mostly Positive" once the sample grew: 77% of 1,301 reviews, read at 14:00 on October 29 (UTC+8), four hours after unlock. The opening reading was 78% of 161. The percentage barely moved while the sample grew eightfold — that is the useful part, because it means the first two hours were representative rather than a fluke of early installers.

Metric 2 hours after unlock (12:00) 4 hours after unlock (14:00)
Steam review summary Mostly Positive Mostly Positive
Share positive 78% 77%
Reviews counted 161 1,301
Players in-game at the same moment 376,670 403,419

Two things stand out in the growth. Concurrent players went up, not down — 376,670 at noon, 403,419 at two, which is unusual for a launch day that started at 10:00 local time and suggests the audience is still arriving rather than churning. And the review ratio stayed inside one point, so the complaints that matter are structural rather than setup noise: driver and ray-tracing friction would have pushed a weak opening even lower as more machines hit it.

The gap that remains is between critics and players. A critic average of 88 comes from completed playthroughs on review hardware; a 77% Steam ratio comes from however far people got in four hours. The two levers S-GAME has already published are the ~5 GB day-one patch and the NVIDIA 617.42 driver note, both covered in our day-one patch guide. If performance is the complaint behind the missing 23%, those are the two fixes that exist.

This section will be read again once the count passes five figures, when a Steam percentage starts to separate design disagreements from launch-week friction.

Do the reviews reflect the build you will play?

Not necessarily. Review copies went out before the roughly 5 GB day-one patch that S-GAME says significantly improves ray tracing and path tracing performance. IGN, for example, scored 9/10 while reporting performance issues — the exact area the patch targets.

Two practical consequences:

  1. Performance comments may be stale on day one. Read the patch notes alongside the review if frame rate is your deciding factor. Our day-one patch guide lists what the update changes and which NVIDIA driver S-GAME recommends.
  2. Visual comparisons may not match your settings. Reviews were written across different GPUs, upscaling modes, and ray-tracing states. Our PC requirements guide separates the official tiers from measured results.

What the scores do not tell you

Question Status at the time of writing
Review count behind each average Not published in the round-ups checked here
Steam user-review score Mostly Positive, 77% of 1,301 reviews four hours after unlock — see the section above
Whether every outlet reviewed both PS5 and PC Unconfirmed — platform splits are not consistently disclosed
Whether post-launch patches will move the averages TBD
Whether the Deluxe extras change the experience No — they are cosmetic and digital extras, per our editions comparison

A review average is a summary of other people's priorities. The unlock time, the patch, and your own hardware decide more about your first session than the difference between 88 and 91 — start with the release time guide if you are planning tonight, or the Steam guide if you are still choosing a storefront.

Official sources