S-Game details Phantom Blade Zero design philosophy, leaving 30 weapons deliberately unbalanced

S-Game director Liang Qiwei (Soulframe) explained Phantom Blade Zero's combat and world design in interviews with 4gamer and PCGamesN. The game ships with at least 50 bosses. It has 30 main weapons and more than 20 sub-weapons. Weapon balance is intentionally asymmetrical because the title is single-player. "The good thing is our game is a single-player game, and we don't have to make everything 100% balanced, so there are stronger ones and weaker ones" - Soulframe, Founder and Game Director, S-Game

Soulframe calls balancing 30 distinct weapons hard.
Multiplayer action games need every weapon to be roughly equally viable.
S-Game drops that requirement and accepts stronger and weaker weapons.
Weapons alter both damage output and character movement, so they are not reskins.
For a studio, this shifts effort from parity tuning toward encounter-specific design.

"We keep on giving players different problems to be resolved, and sometimes these problems require certain weapons or some certain builds to resolve them." - Soulframe, Founder and Game Director, S-Game
Shield-bearing enemies yield to the axe or the big flower blade.
Many enemies carry hidden weaknesses, with varying levels of discoverability.
Some weaknesses tie to story, unlocked through character-specific weapons.
PCGamesN's preview found one weapon blunted a boss's main attack.
The game does not signpost the right tool, so players must discover it.

Players can reset weapon levels and reallocate them to other weapons.
Sub-weapons drop from bosses, linking the 50+ boss count to the arsenal.
Defeated enemies do not respawn, which removes resource farming loops.
Optional side stories and their bosses can change the main ending.
Soulframe frames the structure as a pyramid with high-speed combat at the top.
Narrative RPG elements and exploration form the base, level design the middle.

Modes range from Invader to Rebel.
Differences come mainly from AI aggressiveness and responsiveness, with minor stat changes.
Enemies feint, interrupt combos and react to player actions.
Reverse Heaven and 66 Days share AI difficulty.
66 Days caps the player at 66 deaths.
No one on the development team has cleared 66 Days without dying.

Asymmetry is tested only in previews, with no data on player behaviour at scale.
Unsignposted weaknesses risk frustration that S-Game's accessible guidance must offset.
Production savings from skipping full balance are implied by the design, not quantified by S-Game.

For Service Vendors: Pitch discoverability-focused playtesting to single-player action studios building unsignposted enemy weaknesses.
For Investors & VC: Require single-player action pitches to quantify tuning headcount saved by asymmetric arsenals.