Phantom Blade Zero's PC requirements reveal a 145GB install, 300GB for preloading, and upscaling

[midian182]

WTF?! One of the year's most anticipated games, Phantom Blade Zero, arrives in just a few days, which means the PC requirements are finalized. The good news is the minimum and recommended specs aren't too taxing – though upscaling is enabled, again. The bad news is that you'll need a lot of free SSD space: 145GB for the game, and a comical 300GB if you're planning on pre-installing it from later today.

Chinese developer S-Game posted the PC requirements on the game's official X account. There are few details beyond just Minimum and Recommended setups. However, in what has now become a standard in the industry, these specs only apply when upscaling is enabled.

The minimum requirements are an Intel Core i7-8700K/AMD Ryzen 5 3600 paired with a GTX 1660 or Radeon RX 5500 XT and 16GB of RAM. The caveat is that this is still only for 1080p/30fps with upscaling enabled. There's no indication what level of upscaling this is, either.

For the recommended requirements, Phantom Blade Zero asks for a Core i5-10600K/AMD Ryzen 5 5600X paired with an RTX 3060 Ti/AMD Radeon 6700 XT. This is for 1440p/60fps, but again, an unspecified level of upscaling is enabled.

What has a lot of people talking is the required storage space. Phantom Blade is one of 2026's most drive-hogging releases, requiring a massive 145GB of free SSD space. That puts it between Crimson Desert and Death Stranding 2, both of which need 150GB, and Nioh 3 (125GB).

If, however, you plan on preinstalling the game from later today (7:00 pm PDT), that SSD space requirement more than doubles to 300GB.

The company explains that this is due to temporary files and the complete game both needing to be stored on a PC during the unlock process. Once the game is unlocked, the amount of storage it uses will drop to 145GB.

This sort of thing isn't unprecedented. Destiny 2's The Final Shape launch required existing Steam players to accommodate almost 300GB, despite a final installation of around 155GB, because the existing game and preloaded update temporarily occupied the drive together.

The post also recommends that Nvidia and AMD GPU users update to the latest Game Ready and Adrenalin drivers, respectively.

Phantom Blade Zero has received a slew of excellent reviews ahead of its official release, making it one of the highest-rated titles of the year so far. It currently has a critic score of 88 on Metacritic, and there's already talk of it being a PC game of the year contender.

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Phantom Blade Zero's PC requirements reveal a 145GB install, 300GB for preloading, and upscaling

 

[Theinsanegamer]

300GB is absolutely ludicrous.

Is this another example of having the same data in 17 locations like we saw with helldivers?

 

[polord]

I think gta6 will be more

 

[yRaz]

It's fun seeing the the 8700k and zen2 still being relevant. I was talking to someone about how to do a budget build recently and the idea of using a Thinkstation desktop with an 8th or 10th series in it came up and dropping in a cheap GPU Is about as close as you can get. The sizes of these games is getting a bit rediculous but I'm sure this game has been in development longer than the chip shortage.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Alright! Another game I never heard of. And another game that forces upscaling, oh boy!

 

[Hellbishop]

Sheesh soon these games will be so big it will be like turning your pc into an arcade machine where you can only play one game. Either that or its back to putting the games back on 1990's cartridges which are designed to make the games run better without needing any of the hardware/chip components being used for data centers and ai eliminating the worry of scarcity of parts.

 

[yRaz]

Sheesh soon these games will be so big it will be like turning your pc into an arcade machine where you can only play one game. Either that or its back to putting the games back on 1990's cartridges which are designed to make the games run better without needing any of the hardware/chip components being used for data centers and ai eliminating the worry of scarcity of parts.

SSDs are too expensive for cartirdges to make a comback. The cartridge alone would cost $60-70 and then they are going to want licsensing and copyright fees for "designing" a propritary system. (probably an M.2 in a case that connects via USB3). Then you'll probably have to buy the drive that connects to it. Games will start costing $200 real quick and the digital versions will be priced the same.

 

[Hellbishop]

SSDs are too expensive for cartirdges to make a comback. The cartridge alone would cost $60-70 and then they are going to want licsensing and copyright fees for "designing" a propritary system. (probably an M.2 in a case that connects via USB3). Then you'll probably have to buy the drive that connects to it. Games will start costing $200 real quick and the digital versions will be priced the same.

Thanks for the information. It's too bad computers and consoles can't be redesigned in certain areas to cut out the expensive bits with cheaper and totally new types of components so instead of a game which relies on an SSD made of scarce resources you pop in the equivalent of a thumb size mini vinyl record made of resources that are easily available with the game on it and just press play. Instead it seems we are headed to cloud computing and perhaps even console/pc rentals in the same way cable boxes were rented to subscribers to watch movies in the heyday of cable television.

 

[yRaz]

Thanks for the information. It's too bad computers and consoles can't be redesigned in certain areas to cut out the expensive bits with cheaper and totally new types of components so instead of a game which relies on an SSD made of scarce resources you pop in the equivalent of a thumb size mini vinyl record made of resources that are easily available with the game on it and just press play. Instead it seems we are headed to cloud computing and perhaps even console/pc rentals in the same way cable boxes were rented to subscribers to watch movies in the heyday of cable television.

SHHHHHH!!!!! don't give them any ideas! But realistically it would need to be something with high random read speads if it was to replace being installed on an SSD.