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Phantom Blade Zero Just Killed Crimson Desert's Chances At a GOTY

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Phantom Blade Zero Just Killed Crimson Desert's Chances At a GOTY

Phantom Blade Zero is off to a roaring start. The Wuxia action game by S-Game started the week with strong reviews and ended it with stratospheric player numbers on Steam, where the Chinese audience can be relied upon to turn out for a big release from their native country.

Phantom Blade Zero is part of a new wave of Unreal Engine 5-powered, AAA PC and console games from China. The figurehead of this wave was Black Myth: Wukong, 2024's Soulslike-adjacent riff on Journey to the West by Game Science, which went on to a Game of the Year nomination at The Game Awards. It looks like that will be Phantom Blade Zero's fate, too.

There's a pretty direct comparison between the two games. Along with this year's Crimson Desert and, arguably, Blood of the Dawnwalker, they are what I call "outsider AAA": ambitious productions from outside the big publisher system looking to take it on at its own game. Often made in Central Europe or East Asia, these games present themselves as old-school "gamer's games" with an uncompromising aesthetic and design direction that's both back-to-basics and no-holds-barred. They can garner passionate support from a certain breed of reactionary gamer, but also reach a broad general audience with their lush visuals and technical prowess.

A new breed of reactionary studio from outside gaming's traditional heartlands wants a piece of the blockbuster pie

Black Myth: Wukong 's GOTY nomination was earned in spite of reviews that were on the soft side of positive; it remains the lowest-rated game on Metacritic ever to be nominated for Game of the Year .


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