Phantom Blade Zero: Beating the Aberrant Three-Faced Puppet and Its Rematch

Why the first encounter is a tough fight

The Aberrant Three-Faced Puppet is an optional early boss in Phantom Blade Zero, and the fight is tuned to make a first-visit victory a serious challenge. With the starting weapon and no Phantom Edges, your damage is low enough that you’ll likely need to avoid nearly every hit to win. That makes the encounter less a test of how quickly you can overpower the boss and more a demand for clean defense over a long fight.

There’s little reason to force the fight early: beating the puppet doesn’t award an early-game weapon or other useful gear. Return after you’ve progressed, improved your equipment, and unlocked stronger attacks. The difference can make the encounter far more manageable, because better damage shortens the time you need to survive its moves. This is more significant than it looks: an optional boss can be a poor use of time when its reward doesn’t address the weakness that makes the fight difficult.

Prepare before you return

Before heading back, treat your equipment as part of the strategy. You’ll want more damage, but survivability matters too; a boss that takes longer to defeat gives you more chances to make a costly mistake. The accessories listed below offer different forms of support, so choose according to what’s giving you trouble in the encounter.

Upgrade your weapon and accessories. Weapon upgrades raise your damage and unlock additional skills. Vendors sell extra upgrade materials, so check what’s available if you’ve been holding off on upgrades. For accessories, the Ancient Armor Fragment, Jewel’s Knot, and Resonance Talisman can help with damage negation, HP, and Sha-Chi. Those benefits address separate parts of the fight: staying alive, absorbing mistakes, and building toward stronger attacks.
Bring the Livingwood Talisman. Puppet bodies resist bleed, but the Livingwood Talisman applies it at 70% effectiveness against this boss. Find it in a chest near the Smuggler’s Tunnel in the Village of Lu, then polish it. Paired with a weapon such as Jagged Steel, it adds useful damage. The resistance means bleed won’t work at full strength, but the talisman still gives you a way to apply pressure while you manage the boss’s attacks.

Read the puppet’s attacks

Watch for the smoky black attacks: blocking them drains your stamina completely, so dodge out of their way. That’s a clear signal to change your response instead of relying on a block out of habit. The puppet has relatively few red and blue attacks, which leaves fewer chances to use dodge counters and parry counters. If you’re used to building your offense around those openings, you’ll need to be more selective here.

Keep up regular attacks between its strikes. They cost no stamina and gradually wear down the boss’s Sha-Chi. Once that breaks, use Sha-Chi combos to deal heavier damage, and use your LT attack when your weapon is powered up. The rhythm is deliberate: stay safe through the dangerous moves, then make the quieter moments count. A patient approach can be more effective than spending stamina aggressively and finding yourself unable to respond.

The later Triple Threat fight

Winning the first encounter awards the Three-Headed Doll story item. The next part of the Triple Threat quest becomes available much later, while exploring one of Pangzhen’s final areas. There, three quest-marked Memory Flowers lead to a rematch in the Crimson Forest against Yucong, No.34 Twisted Puppet. The gap between these encounters matters: beating the early puppet starts a thread that the game picks up later, rather than immediately sending you into another version of the fight.

For that fight, you’ll need the Soul Tempered version of Sanguine Reach, obtained from Forge. Creating it requires two Scorching Flame fragments:

Defeat Zhu Yuan, The Searing Blade, below the Pangzhen Sha-Chi Tower. Reach the tower by entering Meigu Lake from north Pangzhen and following the shore north. Use the exploding enemy to destroy the barrier that blocks the lift.
Complete the third Long Pillar challenge in east Meigu Lake.

These requirements make the rematch a preparation check as much as a return visit to a familiar enemy. You’ll need to handle two separate activities to get the fragments, then take them to Forge for the weapon upgrade. The route also spans several named areas, so keep the steps in mind if you’re collecting the materials over multiple sessions. A little planning saves a detour.

After collecting both fragments, meet Myst at the Order’s underground tavern in Pangzhen. You’ll have reached this point in the quest by then. Soul Temper Sanguine Reach into Blazing Edge, then head to Mirrorwood in the Crimson Forest for the rematch. Expect a long fight. And yet, having the required weapon gives you a defined preparation goal: collect the fragments, complete the upgrade, and arrive ready for an extended encounter.

What the encounter asks of you

The two fights reward different kinds of patience. The early encounter asks you to recognize that your current damage and tools may not justify the effort; the later one asks you to follow the quest and assemble the weapon it requires. If you’re working through the game’s optional content, that distinction can help you decide when to leave a boss for later and what to prepare before returning.

Here’s the thing: difficulty alone doesn’t make an optional boss a worthwhile early target. In this case, the first victory gives you a story item, while the practical payoff comes from being better equipped for the broader quest. You’ll get more out of the fight when your setup lets you focus on reading the puppet instead of simply trying to survive long enough to chip away at it.