PC System Requirements

2:46 Phantom Blade Zero's minimum PC is a GeForce GTX 1660 6GB or Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB graphics card, an Intel Core i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor and 16 GB of RAM, which S-Game rates for 1080p at 30 fps with upscaling enabled. Its recommended PC has a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB or Radeon RX 6700 XT 12GB, a Core i5-10600K or Ryzen 5 5600X and the same 16 GB, for 1440p at 60 fps, again with upscaling. Both need 64-bit Windows 10 or 11, DirectX 12 and an SSD. S-Game published the sheet on its official site on Aug 12, 2026, as pre-orders opened, with two more tiers that Steam does not show: ray tracing on an RTX 5060 8GB (1080p, 60 fps) and path tracing on an RTX 5080 16GB (2160p, 60 fps). Daniel Owen, going through the sheet two days later, confirms that the minimum and recommended tiers on S-Game's site match Steam's, and reads out each card and processor. The install size has not been announced as of Oct 15, 2026. Phantom Blade Zero launches on Oct 29, 2026 on PC (Steam and the Epic Games Store) and PlayStation 5 (Release Date and Time).

Quick facts

Phantom Blade Zero PC specs

S-Game's official sheet has four tiers, and every one of them assumes upscaling is on.

Steam's store page lists the first two columns in the same words, with the notes "1080p / 30 FPS with upscaling enabled. SSD installation required." for the minimum and "1440p / 60 FPS with upscaling enabled. SSD installation required." for the recommended PC (read Oct 15, 2026), and it has no storage line giving a size. Neither S-Game nor Steam names the graphics settings behind each target or how much upscaling it assumes. Daniel Owen guesses that the minimum means the lowest settings and that the recommended tier sits near what the PS5 version uses, but he is clear that this is his reading, not S-Game's.

Can my PC run Phantom Blade Zero?

10:00 If your graphics card is at least as fast as a GTX 1660 6GB, S-Game says you can play at 1080p and 30 fps with upscaling. To place other cards, Daniel Owen uses TechPowerUp's relative performance chart with the GTX 1660 as the baseline: an RTX 3050 8GB is about level with it, a GTX 1080 or an RTX 2060 is well above it (the 2060 by about 32%), an RTX 2070 is about 50% faster, an RTX 3060 66% and an RTX 5050 89%, and the recommended RTX 3060 Ti is about 2.15 times as fast. The chart is an average across many games, he warns, not a measurement of this one. On processors, he describes the minimum Ryzen 5 3600 as a six-core, 12-thread chip from 2019 whose gaming performance is close to the PS5's processor, and the recommended Ryzen 5 5600X as one generation newer.

The minimum memory and the recommended memory are both 16 GB, so more RAM is not part of S-Game's jump from one tier to the next. An SSD is required for both the minimum and the recommended PC: neither tier allows a hard drive.

Ray tracing and path tracing

12:41 For ray tracing, S-Game recommends a GeForce RTX 5060 8GB at 1080p and 60 fps; for path tracing, a GeForce RTX 5080 16GB at 2160p and 60 fps, both with upscaling. Daniel Owen points out that the ray tracing tier drops to 1080p from the recommended tier's 1440p, and that the RTX 5060 is only about 11% faster than the RTX 3060 Ti. The path tracing tier is the only one with a 4K target, and he expects it to lean on aggressive upscaling. He had not heard of path tracing in the game before the sheet, and had seen no path-traced footage by Aug 14, 2026. S-Game names only NVIDIA cards for these two tiers.

2:42 Digital Foundry's look at the gamescom 2025 PC demo found an Unreal Engine 5 game built differently from most: Alex and John saw no sign of Lumen or Virtual Shadow Maps: the lighting looked baked, in the style of Unreal Engine 4 games, with ray-traced shadows and ray-traced reflections on top. NVIDIA lists the PC's ray-traced effects as reflections, shadows and caustics, which it calls "PC-exclusive" (Jan 5, 2026). Soulframe Liang's letter announcing the delay to Oct 29 (Jun 2, 2026) says ray tracing will "further enhance the visuals", but that the team spent the extra time making sure the game's core look holds up without it.

DLSS, upscaling and frame generation

2:00 Phantom Blade Zero launches with NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution and Multi Frame Generation on PC. S-Game wrote on Aug 18, 2025 that the game "will launch with ray tracing and DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation", and NVIDIA confirmed "day-one support" on Jan 5, 2026. In NVIDIA's "RTX: Inside the Game" feature of Jan 7, 2026, Liang calls RTX and DLSS 4 "the main features that enhance our game", says rain is "one of our core environmental feature[s]", so anything in the rain has to look convincing, and credits DLSS 4 with keeping the frame rate stable while the graphics stay at their best. NVIDIA's announcement ties Multi Frame Generation's speed-up to its GeForce RTX 50 Series cards.

The DLSS version moved up before launch. When NVIDIA released DLSS 4.5, it wrote on May 31, 2026 that "Phantom Blade Zero's DLSS integration is now being upgraded" to bring DLSS 4.5's improvements to players at launch, under the heading "Phantom Blade Zero Launches This Fall, Featuring DLSS 4.5 & Ray Tracing". That is why Daniel Owen says in Aug 2026 that the game "has been confirmed" for DLSS 4.5. NVIDIA's post repeats the day-one list (DLSS Super Resolution, DLSS Multi Frame Generation, and ray-traced reflections, shadows and caustics) and does not mention DLSS Ray Reconstruction. S-Game's own Aug 2026 sheet names no upscaler at all.

A week before launch NVIDIA filled in the rest. Its GeForce Game Ready 621.01 WHQL driver, released on Oct 20, 2026 with Phantom Blade Zero as its headline game, adds launch support, and NVIDIA's post says the game uses "a full suite of DLSS 4.5 technologies": DLSS 4.5 with Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, and DLSS Ray Reconstruction refining its path-traced lighting and effects. That is NVIDIA's first written mention of Ray Reconstruction for the game, and it confirms the path-traced mode behind S-Game's RTX 5080 tier. NVIDIA recommends installing the driver before launch.

S-Game has not announced AMD FSR or Intel XeSS as of Oct 15, 2026, although its minimum and recommended tiers include AMD cards and every tier assumes upscaling. Owners of AMD cards and older GeForce cards should expect to rely on whatever upscaler the game offers them at launch, which S-Game has not named.

What the previews ran on

9:53 The final press previews ran on PC, and performance was the main worry. IGN's Travis Northup, after six hours with a build that was not final, reports "infrequent but fairly severe frame rate drops" on "a decently powerful PC", and says S-Game told him that most of its focus in the weeks before launch was optimization. RPGFan's preview rigs had RTX 5080 cards.

12:07 Fextralife, who played the first two chapters in Beijing for about ten hours, also on RTX 5080 PCs, had only a few hitches of a few seconds each, but heard from other players at the event about frame rate issues, some substantial. He hopes the last weeks before launch fix it. A year earlier, at gamescom 2025, Digital Foundry's John played on a high-end PC at NVIDIA's event (probably an RTX 5090, the team thinks) at 1440p and saw "a few little minor stutters" with an uncapped frame rate. No review or benchmark of the final PC version has been published as of Oct 10, 2026; how the game plays on console is on PS5 and PS5 Pro.

Steam Deck and low-end PCs

Valve has not tested Phantom Blade Zero for the Steam Deck: its compatibility rating for the game is still "unknown" as of Oct 15, 2026. Liang told PC Gamer in Jun 2026 that the studio is working to bring the game to the Steam Deck, and tied the effort to rising hardware prices: "So we think we need to let the game be played by as many players as possible without reducing the quality." S-Game has not published Steam Deck settings or a target frame rate.

Other PC details

Steam lists Phantom Blade Zero as single-player with full controller support for DualShock and DualSense controllers, and also marks it "Gamepad Recommended". The Steam version has Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud and Family Sharing, uses Denuvo DRM, and runs on Windows only. It has full audio in English and Simplified Chinese and text in 15 languages. What the four difficulty settings change is on Difficulty Modes, and how long a run takes is on How Long to Beat.

Frequently asked questions

What are Phantom Blade Zero's minimum PC requirements? Phantom Blade Zero's minimum PC has a GeForce GTX 1660 6GB or Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB, an Intel Core i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB of RAM, 64-bit Windows 10 or 11, DirectX 12 and an SSD, for 1080p at 30 fps with upscaling enabled.

Can a GTX 1060 run Phantom Blade Zero? The GTX 1060 is not on S-Game's list: Phantom Blade Zero's minimum graphics card is a GTX 1660 6GB or an RX 5500 XT 8GB, for 1080p at 30 fps with upscaling, and S-Game has not said how older cards perform.

What GPU do you need for ray tracing in Phantom Blade Zero? S-Game recommends a GeForce RTX 5060 8GB for Phantom Blade Zero's ray tracing at 1080p and 60 fps, and a GeForce RTX 5080 16GB for path tracing at 4K (2160p) and 60 fps, both with upscaling.

How big is Phantom Blade Zero's file size? S-Game has not announced Phantom Blade Zero's install size on Steam, the Epic Games Store or the PlayStation Store as of Oct 15, 2026; it only says an SSD is required.

Does Phantom Blade Zero have DLSS? Yes. Phantom Blade Zero launches with NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution and Multi Frame Generation: S-Game announced DLSS 4 in Aug 2025, and NVIDIA wrote on May 31, 2026 that the integration was being upgraded to DLSS 4.5 for launch. NVIDIA's Oct 20, 2026 driver post adds Dynamic Multi Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction for the path-traced mode. S-Game has not announced FSR or XeSS.

Does Phantom Blade Zero have FSR? S-Game has not announced AMD FSR or Intel XeSS for Phantom Blade Zero as of Oct 15, 2026, even though its minimum and recommended PCs include AMD cards and every tier of its sheet assumes upscaling.

Does Phantom Blade Zero have frame generation? Phantom Blade Zero supports DLSS 4.5 Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, which NVIDIA ties to its GeForce RTX 50 Series cards; S-Game has not announced any other frame generation option.

Which NVIDIA driver do I need for Phantom Blade Zero? NVIDIA released GeForce Game Ready driver 621.01 WHQL for Phantom Blade Zero on Oct 20, 2026, and recommends installing it before the game launches on Oct 29 (the evening of Oct 28 in the Americas).

Is Phantom Blade Zero Steam Deck verified? No. Valve has not tested Phantom Blade Zero for the Steam Deck as of Oct 15, 2026, though director Soulframe Liang has said the studio is working to bring it to the handheld.

Sources

• Phantom Blade Zero PC System Requirements Revealed, S-Game, Aug 12, 2026
• Phantom Blade Zero | Return to Pangzhen - RTX On Gameplay Reveal, S-Game, Aug 18, 2025
• A Letter from Creative Director, S-Game, Jun 2, 2026
• Phantom Blade Zero on Steam, Valve (system requirements, features, DRM and languages, read Oct 10, 2026; requirements read again Oct 15, 2026)
• Steam Deck compatibility report for Phantom Blade Zero, Valve, read Oct 15, 2026
• DLSS 4 Is Available In Over 250 Games, And Coming To 007 First Light, Phantom Blade Zero, PRAGMATA with Path Tracing & Many More, NVIDIA, Jan 5, 2026
• DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction Announced; Over 1000 RTX Games & Apps Available Now, NVIDIA, May 31, 2026
• GeForce Game Ready Driver For Phantom Blade Zero & Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Released, NVIDIA, Oct 20, 2026
• Phantom Blade Zero Director on Launching Close to GTA 6: "We Don't Think About Any of This", GamingBolt, Jun 12, 2026
• No need to spend on new hardware: Phantom Blade Zero developers promise excellent performance even on weak hardware, iXBT Games, Jun 12, 2026
• Phantom Blade Zero Hands-On: The Kung Fu Souls-like I Didn't Know I Wanted, RPGFan, Oct 8, 2026
• Phantom Blade Zero PC System Requirements Analysis, Daniel Owen, Aug 14, 2026 (video)
• Phantom Blade Zero Hands-On - First Look - Unreal Engine With A Difference, Digital Foundry, Sep 11, 2025 (video)
• RTX: Inside the Game | Phantom Blade Zero - Building a Cinematic Wuxia Action Experience, NVIDIA GeForce, Jan 7, 2026 (video)
• I Played 6 Hours of Phantom Blade Zero and Can't Stop Thinking About It | IGN Preview, IGN, Oct 9, 2026 (video)
• Phantom Blade Zero GAMEPLAY Impressions - I LOVE This GAME!, Fextralife, Oct 9, 2026 (video)