Phantom Blade Zero: controller or keyboard and mouse

Phantom Blade Zero runs on both inputs and nothing is locked behind either one. On PC you can plug in an Xbox, PS4 or PS5 pad, or stay on keyboard and mouse. The fights are the same. What changes is how many things your hands are doing at once.

Which input to use

Controller. I played on a pad and tried keyboard and mouse for fun. Don’t.

Combat comes down to parry and dodge. A pad puts both on the shoulder buttons. Block is L1 or LB, dodge is R1 or RB, and neither thumb leaves the sticks. On keyboard and mouse the parry is a tap of right mouse and the dodge is Left Shift. Your mouse hand is steering the camera while it also attacks and parries, and that is where it falls apart.

Right mouse also carries both special skills. Hold it with F for the first one, or with left mouse for the second. Those chords are locked, so you cannot move them off right mouse however you rebind the rest.

Then there is the camera. The mouse has no smoothing, so every twitch lands on screen. A PC that stutters in scene changes makes it worse.

None of this makes keyboard and mouse unplayable. If a keyboard is all you have, you can finish the game on it. If you own a pad and are stuck choosing, plug it in.

Default controls

Dodge and sprint share a button on both setups. Tap it to dodge and hold it while moving to sprint. You can walk while blocking on either input.

Rebinding controls

For keyboard and mouse, open Settings, go to Controls and scroll to Button Bindings. The default layout cannot be edited, so move to a custom slot, 1 or 2, before changing anything. Every action takes a primary and a secondary key. The same screen lets you clear one slot or reset the layout. Mouse side buttons take bindings too.

Some inputs stay locked in every layout: movement, camera, target switching, the special skill chords and the menu keys.

Controllers have three preset layouts and a custom screen where you remap the buttons. Steam Input also works if you want a layout the game does not offer.

Camera and lock-on settings

These sit in the same Controls tab. Camera inversion has separate X and Y switches and both start off. Horizontal and vertical sensitivity run from 1 to 100 and start at 50. The sliders apply to the mouse and the pad at once, so if you swap inputs you will need to retune them.

The tab also holds the vibration options, including Trigger Effect Intensity for the DualSense, and three lock-on switches: Combat Assist When Unlocked, Auto-Switch Lock-On and Auto Lock-On When Attacking. They are worth checking whichever input you use.

DualSense and wired pads on PC

Plug a DualSense in with a data cable. Bluetooth limits some of the haptics, and that is where most controller problems on PC start.

Sort your PC settings before you judge either input. A stuttering frame rate makes the mouse camera feel worse than it is and makes parries feel late on a pad. A tap of block just before a hit is a parry on both, and the usual parry and dodge habits carry over unchanged.