Phantom Blade Zero's day-one patch is out, and S-Game says skip Nvidia's newest driver

Phantom Blade Zero has launched with a day-one patch, and developer S-Game wants you to grab it before you start swinging swords. It's already climbing Steam's most-played chart, so plenty of people are about to find out how it runs.

The update is roughly 5GB on PC and 2GB on PS5, where it shows up as version 1.301.524. Alongside a batch of bug fixes, it brings performance improvements for both PC and console players.

Most of the attention goes to lighting. The patch improves ray tracing and path tracing, and it also tweaks rasterization, with S-Game saying the work is about "ensuring the scene’s art style is perfectly conveyed, even with ray tracing disabled." That's encouraging if you're on a mid-range rig and don't plan to turn every setting up.

Handheld players get a nod too. The game isn't Steam Deck Verified by Valve yet, but S-Game says handheld devices have been "extensively tested."

Then there's the driver warning. "We found that Nvidia’s latest driver 621.01 has some unstable performance issues," S-Game said in the patch announcement. The studio recommends rolling back to driver 617.42 for the best performance. PC Gamer points out that rolling back drivers is pretty easy, so that's a short detour before you play.

The patch notes come from Soulframe LIANG, creative director and CEO of S-Game. If you're still waiting on your download, budget some space: Rock Paper Shotgun reports a 145GB install size that temporarily needs closer to 300GB.