WTF?! One of the most anticipated games of the year, Phantom Blade Zero, is coming out in just a few days, which means the PC requirements have been finalized. The good news is that the minimum and recommended specs aren’t too strenuous – although upscaling is enabled again. The bad news is that you’ll need a lot of free SSD space: 145GB for the game and a weird 300GB if you plan to preinstall it starting today.
Chinese developer S-Game has posted the PC requirements on the game’s official X account. There are few details beyond the minimum and recommended settings. However, these specifications, which have now become the industry standard, 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 16 GB of RAM. The caveat is that this still only applies to 1080p/30fps with upscaling enabled. There is also no indication of the level of upscaling.
For the recommended requirements, Phantom Blade Zero requires 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 upscaling level is enabled.
What gets many people talking is the storage space required. Phantom Blade is one of the most drive-intensive releases of 2026, requiring a massive 145GB of free SSD space. This puts it between Crimson Desert and Death Stranding 2, both of which require 150 GB, and Nioh 3 (125 GB).
However, if you plan to preinstall the game starting today (7:00 p.m. PDT), the SSD storage requirement will more than double to 300GB.
The company explains that this is due to the need to save both temporary files and the full game on a PC during the unlocking process. Once the game is unlocked, the storage space required drops to 145 GB.
Something like this is not unprecedented. Destiny 2’s The Final Shape launch required existing Steam players to accommodate nearly 300GB, despite a final install of around 155GB, as the existing game and pre-installed update temporarily took up the drive together.
The post also recommends Nvidia and AMD GPU users to update to the latest Game Ready and Adrenalin drivers respectively.
Phantom Blade Zero has received a number 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 are already rumors of it being named PC Game of the Year.
