Phantom Blade Zero PC System Requirements

Phantom Blade Zero’s PC requirements are unusually transparent — S-GAME published four tiers, not the usual two, going all the way up to a path-tracing configuration. The entry bar is friendly (a GTX 1660 clears minimum), but there’s one caveat that runs through every tier: all four targets assume upscaling is on, and the only confirmed upscaler is NVIDIA’s.

Official requirements — all four tiers

Tier	CPU	GPU	Target
Minimum	i7-8700K / Ryzen 5 3600	GTX 1660 6GB / RX 5500 XT 8GB	1080p / 30 FPS
Recommended	i5-10600K / Ryzen 5 5600X	RTX 3060 Ti 8GB / RX 6700 XT 12GB	1440p / 60 FPS
Ray Tracing	—	RTX 5060 8GB	1080p / 60 FPS
Path Tracing	—	RTX 5080 16GB	2160p / 60 FPS

Both base tiers need 16 GB RAM, DirectX 12, a 64-bit Windows 10/11, and — importantly — an SSD installation, which is mandatory rather than recommended.

Note that the ray tracing and path tracing tiers list NVIDIA GPUs only, with no AMD or Intel equivalents given, and they don’t restate CPU or RAM figures.

The upscaling caveat everyone should read

Every published target — all four of them — carries the phrase “with upscaling enabled.” None are native-resolution figures. A GTX 1660 hitting 1080p/30 means 1080p/30 with the render resolution dropped and upscaled back up.

This creates an open question S-GAME hasn’t answered: both base tiers list AMD GPUs (RX 5500 XT, RX 6700 XT), and both assume upscaling — but the only confirmed upscaler is DLSS, which is NVIDIA-only. FSR and XeSS support have not been announced. Which upscaler AMD owners are supposed to run is, as of mid-August 2026, unstated.

Ray tracing, path tracing and DLSS 4

NVIDIA confirmed at CES 2026 that the game ships with day-one DLSS 4 including Multi Frame Generation, plus PC-exclusive ray-traced reflections, shadows and caustics.

Two details worth flagging:

• Path tracing was a late reveal. It wasn’t in NVIDIA’s CES announcement — it only surfaced with the August 12 requirements post.
• Ray-traced global illumination is reported as not supported. Ray tracing here covers reflections, shadows and caustics, not RTGI.

There’s useful context in the delay, too: when S-GAME pushed the game from September 9 to October 29, director Soulframe Liang said part of the extra time went to “preserving as much of this visual impact as possible even without relying on ray tracing” — the team’s stated priority is that the game looks right on hardware that can’t do RT at all.

DRM: Denuvo confirmed

The Steam page carries the standard notice: “Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: Denuvo.” No activation limits, offline terms or removal plans have been announced.

Steam Deck: aspiration, not a promise

Director Liang has named Steam Deck as the team’s lowest-end optimisation target, while openly calling it “a hard task” they’re still working toward. His stated reasoning is worth quoting because it’s unusually candid about the market:

“This year the hardware price is going up, and people who want to replace their hardware may postpone their plan to upgrade their equipment, so we think we need to let the game be played by as many players as possible without reducing the quality.”

No Deck compatibility rating has been published — Valve typically doesn’t issue one before release.

Still unannounced

• Install size — no GB figure anywhere; only “SSD required”
• FSR / XeSS / NVIDIA Reflex — not announced
• Ultrawide (21:9, 32:9) and HDR on PC — not announced
• Frame-rate cap and graphics-menu contents — not announced
• Console modes — the only figures on record (2K/60 and 4K/30) come from a hedged 2023 developer statement and should be treated as three-year-old aspiration. PS5 Pro enhancements are confirmed to exist but entirely unspecified.

We’ll update this page as launch approaches — our release date guide tracks the rest of the pre-launch schedule.