Phantom Blade Zero has just launched on PC and PS5, and developer S-Game has released a day-one patch of roughly 5GB. Director and producer Soulframe Liang confirmed the update in a message posted on Chinese social media and translated on the game’s subreddit. This is not a minor hotfix: according to Liang, it “significantly improves ray-tracing and path-tracing performance” and bundles a batch of bug fixes. Players who preloaded the game are urged to install the update before starting, while those who did not preload will receive the latest version automatically.
The patch carries more weight than usual given the game’s demands. Phantom Blade Zero is a demanding title even without ray tracing, and its install size is already large—around 145GB on PC and roughly 134.9GB on PS5. Adding another 5GB on launch day is no small matter, but for players planning to use path tracing it could be the difference between a showcase performance and a stuttering mess.
Nvidia’s 621.01 GRD is the driver to avoid
The guidance is meant to avoid universal panic. Wccftech’s reviewer, running an RTX 4080 on driver 617.14, reported little to no issues. Yet a studio asking players to downgrade their GPU driver on launch day is notable, suggesting the compatibility problem is real enough that S-Game would rather absorb the confusion than let players judge the game on an unstable build.
The patch has a performance gap to close
Ray tracing was always going to be the stress test. In Wccftech’s review, the game ran at around 100 FPS at 4K with High settings and DLSS Quality on an RTX 4080. Enabling ray tracing dropped that to the high 50s, while path tracing brought it down to roughly 30 FPS. Our own coverage noted similar concerns, with reviewers reporting conflicting PC results and frame-pacing issues on higher-end hardware. The game still holds an 88 on Metacritic across PC and PS5, so the technical shortcomings haven’t stopped critics from calling it a standout.
Whether a 5GB patch can close that gap entirely is doubtful. Path tracing at 30 FPS on an RTX 4080 is still far from smooth, and a single update is unlikely to double performance. But even a meaningful improvement in ray-tracing stability would make the mode viable for more players, and that is exactly what S-Game is promising. The patch may not fix everything. It at least shows the studio knows what is broken.
Buy the Phantom Blade Zero game guide on Amazon
Source(s)
WccfTech| NBC | TechPowerUp | X
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