If you’ve been hankering for some video gamey wuxia shenanigans, today seems like a good day for it, given that Phantom Blade Zero has now been released unto the world (with a 145GB install size that’s technically actually 300GB but only for a bit). And like many big games before it, it comes not quite finished, as a day one patch attends to some of the action game’s issues… I think, anyway, there’s been a promise of a day one patch but no clear indicator if it’s actually arrived or not. I don’t own it either, so I can’t check. At least I can tell you what’s in it!
According to this Steam blog post, the update adds on a whole extra 5GB, claiming to significantly improve “ray tracing and path tracing performance,” and offer “several bug fixes. If you’ve already pre-loaded the game, please download and install the update before launching. If you haven’t pre-loaded, your download will automatically include the latest version.” That does more or less make it sounds like the patch is already here, there just aren’t any patch notes to go with it.
The post goes on to explain that the team has “spent a great deal of time refining the game’s rasterized visuals so that each environment stays true to our art direction even with ray tracing turned off.” It should also work on mid-range and lower-end PCs, and handhelds too, though on the game’s discussions page and elsewhere I have spotted some folks facing some trouble.
Last point on the post also states that they’ve “observed some performance instability with NVIDIA’s latest 621.01 driver. Based on our testing, version 617.42 currently offers the best experience in Phantom Blade Zero. If you’ve installed a driver newer than 617.42, we recommend rolling back to 617.42 and choosing the clean installation option. Please stay on this version until NVIDIA releases its next driver update, which we expect to arrive soon.”
Essentially, nothing that sounds like a massive dealbreaker just yet, so, happy Phantom Blade Zeroing I guess!