Phantom Blade 0’s 66 Days Mode Is Brilliant

When I start action games, I usually begin on harder difficulties, just so the game can push my limits and strategies a little further. So when I first launched Phantom Blade Zero, I was surprised to discover that you do have the option to start on Wayfarer, Pathbreaker, or Hellwalker—i.e., easy, medium, or hard—but not 66 Days mode. This initially confused me. Coming to terms with starting on Hellwalker, I found that you can switch difficulties whenever you like, which I’m sure can be a good or bad thing, depending on who you ask.

But after 40 hours of beating the game on Hellwalker, I wasn’t sure whether the 66 Days mode would be worth replaying the game for. 66 Days mode is the same difficulty as Hellwalker, the hardest difficulty I had already played, but with the added rule that you are locked into that difficulty and only have 66 lives. If you die 66 times, it’s game over—permadeath. You have to start all over.

Hesitant to go through the game all over again, I hovered over the option for a moment before curiosity got the better of me and I gave it a try. The first thing I noticed is that you get to keep all of your gear, all of your upgrades, all of your builds, but no quest items. This was surprising, as I thought you would start from scratch and work your way up again. But as I kept going, the second thing I noticed changed my impression.

The moment I got hit for the first time, a switch flipped in my brain telling me, “Hey, don’t f**k this up.” This thought did not occur at all during my initial playthrough, as I would just mindlessly fly through swarms of trash mobs, and if I got sloppy and died, I’d just run back and clean up the rest of the mobs.

This is the moment I understood 66 Days mode. In a sense, your first playthrough is a teacher who teaches you the tools on how to tackle the problems, and learning the history and stories. There’s no worry about asking questions or experimenting to see if something works; there’s no risk and it’s okay to be wrong. Just try again. This also ensures you complete Soul’s journey all the way to the end, no matter what, and you learn the truth of the story.

But 66 Days mode is the true test. You have all the knowledge you need of how every encounter works now, and you have your best/favorite builds that you’re familiar with to go through every fight. And you can’t mess up, because you only have 66 chances.
When I died for the first time in 66 Days mode, I truly felt like it was my fault. I fought all these bosses before, I know how they work, I have my favorite build, I have all the tools and knowledge at my disposal. If you die now, there’s nobody to blame but yourself, and I love that.

Being in new situations for the first time and learning new things can be both an invigorating and frustrating experience. At best you understand that it’s part of the learning process, and at worst you just straight up blame the game. But in 66 Days mode, you can only point the finger at yourself given how powerful and knowledgeable you have become, and it felt so much more rewarding to fly through bosses back to back with that power.

This comes back to a general point in game design: restriction, risk, and power, when done just right, are an amazing tool. They can recontextualize the exact same situation in a completely new light, and many other games balance these things to great effect, such as Arc Raiders’ loot, Elden Ring’s runes, and Blood of Dawnwalker’s time limit.

Probably the biggest point of contention at this point is that players don’t want to invest 30-40 hours just to get to the mode they want to play. But I would say this is purpose built this way; every game is designed differently, and this intentional choice for Phantom Blade 0, which didn’t make sense to me before, is now clear.

All that is to say, if you enjoyed your first playthrough of Phantom Blade Zero and feel confident enough to attempt another streamlined run that skips all the cutscenes and focuses solely on the game’s crown jewel—its glorious combat—give 66 Days mode a try. I certainly didn’t regret it.