Phantom Blade Zero Languages & Audio
Short answer: the game supports 15 text and subtitle languages but only two full voice tracks — English and Simplified Chinese. If you want the intended performance, the Mandarin track is the one most reviewers preferred; the English track features a last-minute recast of the lead role.
Text and subtitle languages
The store pages list 15 supported text languages. The 14 we have verified against the regional PlayStation listings are:
- English
- Simplified Chinese
- Traditional Chinese
- Japanese
- Korean
- French
- German
- Italian
- Spanish (Spain)
- Spanish (Latin America)
- Portuguese (Brazil)
- Russian
- Thai
- Vietnamese
Regional store pages occasionally list one additional language by territory (for example Polish or Indonesian on some Steam builds). We only publish what a specific store page shows, which is why the count here is 14 rather than the advertised 15.
Voice acting
| Track | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Mandarin (Simplified Chinese) | Full voice | Original performance; the wuxia dialogue and idioms land as written |
| English | Full voice | Soul was recast days before launch — Roger Craig Smith replaced Jay Makensuk |
| Everything else | Subtitles only | No Japanese, French, German or Spanish dub exists |
The English cast is strong on paper — Roger Craig Smith (Sonic, Ezio, Batman) as Soul, Maggie Robertson (Lady Dimitrescu) as Mu Xiaokui, and Donnie Yen performing Mó Yuan in both tracks. What it cannot replicate is lip-sync: cutscenes are authored around the Mandarin performance, so the English track drifts slightly during close-ups. Full cast details on the cast page.
Which dub should you pick?
- Pick Mandarin if you care about authenticity, lip-sync and the original delivery of wuxia terminology. Reviews that played the final build tended to prefer it.
- Pick English if you play without reading subtitles, or if you want to follow combat callouts while watching the fight rather than the bottom of the screen — which matters in a parry-heavy game.
- Mixed setup — English audio with English subtitles is fine, but expect the dialogue to read more literally than it sounds.
How to change language
The voice language is selected at first launch and can be changed later in the audio settings menu; subtitles are independent, so you can run Mandarin audio with English text. On PS5, the console's system language sets the default subtitle track. On PC, Steam's language setting seeds the install language and can be overridden in-game.