S-Game will release a day-one patch of approximately 5GB for Phantom Blade Zero, improving ray tracing and path tracing performance and fixing some software issues. The patch will be available simultaneously when the game launches on PC and PS5.
Game Director and Producer Liang Qiwei stated that the team completed this update before launch. Players who have pre-loaded the game can download the patch separately before launching; those who haven't pre-loaded will receive the latest version including the patch when downloading the game directly.
Previous reviews disabled ray tracing due to its high hardware performance requirements. To maintain 60 FPS using frame generation, NVIDIA DLSS needs to be set to Performance Mode. However, even without ray tracing enabled, the game still delivers impressive visual quality.
Liang Qiwei also reminded NVIDIA GPU users to pay attention to their driver versions. The team found that driver version 621.01 can cause performance instability under certain conditions. After testing, version 617.42 currently offers the best compatibility with Phantom Blade Zero. Players who have already upgraded to a newer version can choose to perform a clean installation of the older driver or wait for future updates from NVIDIA.
The relevant reviews did not use driver version 621.01, so its specific impact cannot be confirmed. During testing with an RTX 4080 and driver version 617.14, almost no issues were encountered. The actual optimization level of the day-one patch and the choice of driver version will affect the initial PC experience with ray tracing, path tracing, and frame generation enabled.