Phantom Blade Zero has officially been released, bringing its wuxia action gameplay to players with a substantial initial footprint. The game features an install size of 145GB, which temporarily expands to 300GB during the installation process. Consistent with many major titles, the launch includes a day one patch designed to address various issues and improve the overall experience.
According to a Steam blog post, this update adds an extra 5GB to the download. The patch claims to significantly improve ray tracing and path tracing performance while delivering several bug fixes. Players who pre-loaded the game are instructed to download and install this update before launching, while those downloading for the first time will automatically receive the latest version. Although the post confirms the presence of these improvements, specific patch notes detailing every change have not been provided.
The development team highlighted their efforts in refining the game's rasterized visuals to ensure environments remain true to the art direction even when ray tracing is disabled. The update is intended to support mid-range and lower-end PCs as well as handheld devices, though some users have reported encountering difficulties on discussion forums.
Additionally, the developers noted performance instability linked to NVIDIA's latest 621.01 driver. Based on internal testing, version 617.42 currently offers the best experience for Phantom Blade Zero. Players who have installed a driver newer than 617.42 are recommended to roll back to this version using the clean installation option and remain on it until NVIDIA releases its next update.
Sources: Rock Paper Shotgun.