Featured image: official Phantom Blade Zero screenshot by S-GAME via the Steam store page
Phantom Blade Zero finally went live on the evening of October 28 in the US, and the first 24 hours have been loud. The dark wuxia action RPG from Beijing studio S-GAME arrived with an 88 on Metacritic, a Steam audience that one outlet puts at 500,000 players at its peak, and a day-one patch that comes with an unusual warning for NVIDIA owners.
If you have been waiting to see whether the hype holds up, here is the picture so far: what the game costs, what your PC needs, how critics and players are reacting, and the one driver note worth reading before you press play.
The short version
- Price: $59.99 on Steam, with a $10 Deluxe Edition upgrade sold separately
- Platforms: PS5 and PC (Steam and Epic Games Store), launched October 29 at 02:00 UTC
- Critics: 88 on Metacritic, with Eurogamer’s 60 as the notable outlier
- Players: Steam users rate it Mostly Positive, with roughly 79% positive reviews at the time of writing
- Install size: 145 GB, SSD required on PC
- Warning: S-GAME recommends NVIDIA driver 617.42 over 621.01
What kind of game this is
You play as Soul, a warrior with only sixty-six days left to live, fighting through a stylized wuxia world of assassins and world-ending conspiracies. It is built on Unreal Engine 5 and sits somewhere between a character action game and a soulslike, with a combat system that leans fast and fluid rather than slow and punishing. Earlier previews pointed to more than 55 weapons and a large, connected world.
The main campaign runs about 20 to 30 hours, side content adds roughly another 20, and a completionist run stretches toward 50 hours. There are four difficulty tiers, so the game is more approachable than the genre usually is. It also has full English and Simplified Chinese audio, with a long list of other subtitle languages.
The launch numbers
The headline figure comes from TechTimes, which reports a peak of more than 500,000 concurrent players on Steam within hours of launch. Treat that as one outlet’s number for now. Nerdly, using an earlier snapshot, counted 399,310 players in game at 06:30 UTC on October 29, which fits a climbing curve rather than a contradiction. Steam’s own charts will settle it.
Either way, the comparison with this year’s other big action releases is striking. The same report lists the all-time Steam peaks of Control Resonant at 42,799, The Blood of Dawnwalker at 78,188 and Onimusha: Way of the Sword at 85,081. Phantom Blade Zero clears all three by a wide margin on day one.
Steam peak concurrent players, 2026 action releases
Phantom Blade Zero figure is the reported day-one peak and may change. Others are all-time peaks as cited by TechTimes.
For perspective, Black Myth: Wukong peaked above 2.4 million in 2024, and nothing this year has come close to that. But Phantom Blade Zero is a new IP from a studio most players had not heard of three years ago, so a six-figure launch is a real result. Our own report on Control Resonant selling a million copies shows how rare it is for a single-player action game to move this fast.
The pre-launch sales story backs it up. Alinea Analytics estimated roughly 850,000 combined PlayStation Store and Steam pre-orders by launch day, worth around $43 million, with more than three million wishlists across platforms. Sales through Tencent’s WeGame in China sit on top of that.
What critics and players are saying
The Metacritic average is 88, with the PC version at 88 across 43 outlets and the PS5 version at 87 across 38. OpenCritic sits at 91. Almost every outlet praises the combat, and several reviewers said they kept playing past 50 hours because the fights stayed fresh.
| Source | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Metacritic (PC) | 88 from 43 outlets |
| Metacritic (PS5) | 87 from 38 outlets |
| OpenCritic | 91 average |
| Eurogamer | 60, citing balance and quality issues |
| Steam user reviews | Mostly Positive, about 79% positive |
The complaints cluster in the same places. Reviewers mention frame-rate inconsistency, thin quest direction and some boss encounters that feel uneven. PS5 Pro owners got the roughest ride in one high-profile review, with frame-rate problems that persisted even with ray tracing off. If you want a sense of how this compares with other fall heavyweights, see how critics treated Ace Combat 8 and Gears of War: E-Day earlier this month.
PC requirements
The spec sheet is gentler than you might expect for an Unreal Engine 5 game, but both tiers lean on upscaling, and an SSD is mandatory.
| Minimum | Recommended | |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Core i7-8700K / Ryzen 5 3600 | Core i5-10600K / Ryzen 5 5600X |
| GPU | GTX 1660 6GB / RX 5500 XT 8GB | RTX 3060 Ti 8GB / RX 6700 XT 12GB |
| RAM | 16 GB | 16 GB |
| Storage | 145 GB, SSD required | 145 GB, SSD required |
| Target | 1080p at 30 FPS with upscaling | 1440p at 60 FPS with upscaling |
Preloading needed at least 300 GB of free space, because temporary files and the full game coexist during the unlock. After that the install settles at about 145 GB. The PS5 download is listed at roughly 135 GB.
Before you launch on an NVIDIA card
- S-GAME’s roughly 5 GB day-one patch improves ray tracing and path tracing performance
- The studio says it saw instability with NVIDIA driver 621.01 and recommends rolling back to 617.42 with a clean install
- One review outlet reported no driver-specific problems on 621.01, so results vary by system
- Install on an SSD that is not your system drive if you can, as the developer advises
One more PC thing: DLSS 5 mods already exist
Wccftech reports that the first mods adding NVIDIA DLSS 5 support and gameplay tweaks appeared in under a day. Mods are unofficial, so back up your saves and expect breakage after patches. Still, it says something about how quickly the PC community has taken to the game, and how much headroom players want from the upscaling options.
What to watch next
- Follow-up patches: S-GAME has promised polish, and frame-rate fixes on PS5 Pro will be the first test.
- A new NVIDIA driver: the studio’s rollback advice should be temporary.
- Physical editions: Standard, Deluxe and Ultimate PS5 boxes are planned for 2027, with no date or price yet.
- Steam’s long-term score: Mostly Positive today, and early scores often move once the launch rush passes.
My take
The interesting part is not the raw peak but the spread of opinion. Nearly every critic loves the combat, and the complaints are about polish rather than design. That is the kind of problem patches can fix, and it is a far better position than a game with a shaky core loop.
At $59.99 and with a 145 GB footprint, it asks for a real commitment, so if you are on NVIDIA, sort out the driver first and give it a couple of weeks to settle if you are sensitive to performance dips. If you love fast combat and a stylish setting, this looks like one of the strongest new action IPs of the year.
Sources: TechTimes, Nerdly, Chainplay, WindowsForum, Wccftech, Steam.
About this article: GeekBlog covers U.S. technology news, AI, phones, smartwatches and gaming. Every story is written and checked under our Editorial Policy. Spotted a mistake or have a story tip? Contact our editors.
