If this is your first encounter with Rainblood, play Town of Death, then City of Flame, and finish with Mirage. That order puts you beside a hunted Soul before you understand who has manipulated him. You investigate Pang Town, follow the consequences into a wider Wulin conflict, and only then return to the period when Soul and Zuo Shang could still fight as partners.
You can also skip every older game and begin with Phantom Blade Zero. The developer has said that newcomers do not need the earlier plot, while the new game's official premise already supplies the essentials: Soul has been framed for murdering his master, his heart has been gravely injured, he has sixty-six days to live, and his former comrades are hunting him. Read the developer's story explanation and the official Steam story description if you want the confirmed starting point without inherited spoilers.
Pick an order by the result you want
| What you want | Recommended order | What you gain | What you give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preserve the mysteries of Phantom Blade Zero | Start directly with Phantom Blade Zero | Character identities and shifting loyalties remain open questions | You may not recognize returning locations or echoes of old dialogue immediately |
| Experience the older story for the first time | Town of Death → City of Flame → Mirage | You investigate with Soul first, then use the prequel to reinterpret the brothers' relationship | The games are not arranged by in-world chronology |
| Spend about ten hours on the most relevant old plot | Town of Death → City of Flame | You cover Soul's flight, the Pang Town mystery, and its direct consequences | You miss much of Soul and Zuo Shang's earlier time as partners |
| Buy one older game that is easy to locate now | Mirage | Its Steam page is still active, and you can control both Soul and Zuo Shang | It does not tell the full story of Pang Town or the sixty-six-day crisis |
| Revisit the series after learning the major revelations | Mirage → Town of Death → City of Flame | You follow the relationship from cooperation to pursuit and conflict | Some mysteries become easier to predict because you know the earlier relationships |
Do not assume that a prequel must be played first. A prequel can supply the earliest events while still being written for an audience that already knows the later outcome. Mirage gains weight when you recognize the distrust, omissions, and broken loyalties that follow it. Seeing where Soul and Zuo Shang end up before watching them work together turns ordinary exchanges into warning signs. For a first playthrough, release order protects that effect better than chronology.
Start with Town of Death to share Soul's uncertainty
The first game appears under several names, including Rainblood: Town of Death, Rainblood 1: Town of Mystery, and the Chinese title Rainblood: Mizhen. Its spoiler-free setup is simple: a black-clad fugitive enters Pang Town, a settlement afflicted by a strange plague, while people from his past and unnatural pursuers close in. That is the closest older starting point to the published premise of Phantom Blade Zero, where Soul is again condemned, hunted by former comrades, and trying to expose the conspiracy around him. The surviving authorized English release page preserves this basic setup without revealing the answer.
The useful lesson is not a list of sect names. Town of Death teaches you how to read a Rainblood mystery. A plague, a medicine, an apparently helpful witness, and an old relationship may all be parts of someone else's design. When Soul receives a clue, ask who benefits if he believes it. When a scene offers an obvious culprit, keep the possibility that somebody arranged that conclusion. This habit will help you more in Phantom Blade Zero than memorizing every subordinate in The Order.
Town of Death and City of Flame are turn-based PC RPGs. When the creator later made both games freely available and opened their project files, he estimated that the two stories took about ten hours together and said that the newer package included a high-speed option for players catching up on the plot. If you have one weekend, those two games give you more direct narrative context than clearing every achievement in Mirage. The creator's notice is preserved in this official-disclosure mirror.
Official 2025 Phantom Blade Zero image of Pang Town. Look at how the wet stone road and old town buildings rebuild the location as a third-person environment. View the original S-GAME page
Continue directly into City of Flame
Rainblood 2: City of Flame follows the result of Town of Death. The first game confines Soul inside a town-sized mystery. The sequel connects the surviving clues to The Order's internal conflict, competing Wulin powers, and Soul's damaged personal relationships. Pang Town stops looking like an isolated disaster and becomes one move in a much larger contest. Contemporary release material explicitly presented City of Flame as the continuation of Town of Death, so swapping the two games only removes context rather than creating an interesting mystery. See the 2011 release information.
This is also the least suitable entry for a quick ending recap. Its payoff depends on remembering what the first game made you doubt, then watching several factions exploit those doubts. A video that jumps straight to the final confrontation may teach you an identity while removing the chain of decisions that makes the revelation matter. If you are worried that older lore will reveal too much before Phantom Blade Zero, stop after Town of Death. You will still understand Pang Town, Soul's fugitive position, and his former connection to The Order without learning every answer attached to the older timeline.
If you continue, play City of Flame immediately rather than inserting Mirage between the two RPGs. The first two games share an investigative rhythm, and the second assumes that the first game's names, suspicions, and unresolved relationships are still fresh. Finish that arc before changing combat systems and moving backward in time.
Save Mirage for the relationship it recontextualizes
Rain Blood Chronicles: Mirage takes place earlier, but it plays very differently from the two turn-based RPGs. Its official Steam page describes a side-scrolling action game with two protagonists: you can switch between Soul and Zuo Shang, fight through eight stages, and discover books, letters, and drawings that expand the conspiracy. That makes it both the easiest older title to buy through a familiar storefront and the least direct account of the crisis that begins Phantom Blade Zero. See the official Mirage Steam page.
If story is your goal, do not sprint from one boss to the next. The collectible documents are part of the narrative, not completionist decoration. Take the obvious side paths, read the materials you find, and notice what each protagonist can do without treating their old combat systems as tutorials for Phantom Blade Zero. You do not need to clear more than one hundred Steam achievements to finish your lore preparation. Complete the eight-stage journey, collect the narrative items you encounter, and concentrate on how the two men cooperate, divide responsibilities, and respond differently to the same threat.
Playing Mirage last changes the question you bring to it. Instead of asking only whether Soul and Zuo Shang will survive the mission, you watch for the smaller choices that help explain their later distance. The prequel becomes a character study rather than a compulsory prologue. If you already know the older revelations, reverse the order and begin with Mirage; chronology then becomes useful because suspense is no longer what you are protecting.
Official Rain Blood Chronicles: Mirage Steam gameplay image. Its fast side-scrolling combat is distinct from the turn-based systems in Town of Death and City of Flame. View the original store page
What can you obtain safely now?
As of September 1, 2026, the Steam store page for Mirage remains accessible, and its language table lists an English interface; Steam's official data does not list subtitle languages for the game. Its price varies by region, so check the page shown to your own account instead of relying on a number quoted for another country. The requirements still name Windows XP, 7, and 8, while the Steam client no longer supports those operating systems. That mismatch does not prove that the game fails on every modern PC, but it is a reason to check the current refund terms and recent compatibility reports before buying it for your hardware.
The creator previously released Town of Death and City of Flame for free and opened their RPG Maker project files. However, an old campaign page or a repost of that announcement is not automatically a stable download source in 2026. Before running a package, confirm that its link comes from S-GAME, a page named in the creator's notice, or a transparent archival source that explains the file's origin. Do not install an unknown executable labeled as an unofficial remaster merely to save a few hours of story research.
If you cannot verify a safe copy of the first two games, do not replace them with a full ending montage by default. Read a spoiler-controlled summary of Pang Town first, then decide whether you want the later character revelations. You can play Mirage legally through Steam for the early partnership and still enter Phantom Blade Zero without knowing every answer from City of Flame.
Remember four things before Phantom Blade Zero
- Soul is the hunted investigator, not an all-knowing narrator. Information reaches him through people with their own objectives. Test both the claim and the beneficiary of his belief.
- The Order used to be Soul's home and is now pursuing him. Some enemies may know him, have served under him, or have fought beside him. A familiar blade can carry more history than a random assassin encounter.
- Pang Town is both an old mystery setting and a location explicitly rebuilt for the new game. You do not need every old resident's fate, and you should not assume the old events will recur unchanged. If the new game raises plague, medicine, or local memories again, first see whether it confirms, rewrites, or rejects the older account.
- Sixty-six days is a confirmed story premise, not yet proof of a sixty-six-day gameplay timer. Until an official system explanation says otherwise, treat it as Soul's urgent motive rather than planning a day-by-day first playthrough.
Stop there if preserving the new game's revelations matters most. For the full older route, begin with Town of Death, move straight into City of Flame, and use Mirage to look back at Soul and Zuo Shang before their relationship broke. To focus only on the returning location, read why Pang Town connects Rainblood and Phantom Blade Zero. To understand the two former allies before accepting larger spoilers, read how Soul and Zuo Shang reached their conflict.