Phantom Blade Zero Demands 300GB Install Space Despite 145GB Actual Size, Raising Questions About Storage Requirements

Phantom Blade Zero

We are not in a cheap era for PC parts. A (possibly manufactured!) GPU shortage is making cards that can actually run modern games near-inaccessible to the vast majority of people, while RAM and SSDs are generally horrifically expensive due to demand for their use in data centers. This combination is making contemporary games with high performance requirements very difficult for some people to justify even trying to run, let alone buy. S-Game’s recent reveal of the wuxia action game Phantom Blade Zero’s preload guide and system requirements has brought this to mind, alongside bringing tears to my eyes, as the game requires not only an SSD to run at all and 145GB to install, but 300GB of free space to pre-load.

Genuinely, what are we doing here. The guide states that this is because “temporary files and the complete game must coexist during the unlock process,” and that “once the process is complete, storage usage will drop to approximately 145GB.” Oh, sure, just a small install then. 145GB is already a ridiculous size for one game — I know that commenters will tell me that this has become somewhat standard, but that is not reasonable or a good thing — and requiring players to free up double the actual install size just to get the damn thing on their system remains absurd. Deputy ed/former hardware ed James says this is probably a quirk of how Unreal Engine 5, specifically, handles updates. I asked him if there was anything else wrong with UE5 and he began staring into space.

Anyway, there’s a lot of things that happen in games that makes me say something along the lines of ‘fuck’. Constant layoffs, AI’s tendrils being spread everywhere, CEOs telling me and their staff that it’ll save their company. But this is something different, in which I stare at my monitor, read those system requirements again and just want to scream ‘what the FUCK?’ Phantom Blade Zero could be the greatest game ever made (it seems to be pretty good, if the recent reviews are anything to go by), but no game could ever be worth 300GB. Again, what are we doing. That’s like, uh, sixty Devil May Cry 3s.