Phantom Blade Zero’s First Major Update Patch Notes Released

Phantom Blade Zero’s First Major Update Is Making Weapon Adjustments, Nerfing Big Boss Published Nov 4, 2026, 3:43 AM EST Sam Woods is TheGamer’s Senior Reporter. He’s been in games journalism since 2020 and has undertaken a variety of roles in that time. These have included roles such as SEO Editor, Managing Editor at DualShockers, and Global Head of Gaming, and he's also been seen on the BBC. He was promoted to the Senior Reporter position in 2025 following a series of high-quality reports and exclusives for TheGamer. Since 2020, Sam has written over 3,000 articles and specializes in telling the stories of the people behind the games. He’s interviewed the biggest game directors, some of the industry’s top talents, told the stories of how indie games came to be, and spoken to players about what really makes them tick. He’s also interviewed some of the world’s biggest musical artists to find out how the medium has inspired their work, and TV and Film actors about their roles in video game adaptations. He even hosted a PAX panel in 2021 and made a documentary in 2024 surrounding the creation of a Disney game. Alongside this, Sam focuses on breaking news. He got the scoop on Perfect Dark’s cancellation, provided context on some AI drama, and revealed that Lady Dimitrescu’s actress would love to step back into the character’s giant shoes. These articles have been picked up by the biggest gaming sites, including IGN, GameSpot, and PC Gamer. He also loves to dive into the numbers behind the games. Sam’s journey in games journalism has taken him all over the world. He’s covered Gamescom in Germany, Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles, and Tokyo Game Show in Japan, each on three occasions. He’s been learning Japanese since 2024 with the intention of identifying and translating Japanese-language news and bringing it to English-language audiences first, something he’s done countless times. Sam’s first review was 2020’s Battletoads reboot, and he’s since reviewed games in The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, and Pokemon franchises. Sign in to your TheGamer account Character action games often receive multiple major updates in their first few weeks. As player data rolls in and community feedback hits the internet, a game's developer can paint a bigger picture of where the struggles lie. We saw this regularly with games like Elden Ring, and Phantom Blade Zero looks like itwill be no different. While there was a day-one patch, S-Game has just released details of its first major post-launch update, and it includes one big boss nerf, other boss changes, and adjustments to the way that the game's best weapons sound and feel. Phantom Blade Zero's First Post-Launch Update Details Have Been Revealed S-Game officially revealed details of its first big update on WeGame, a Chinese PC gaming platform operated by Tencent. It's the company's Chinese equivalent of Steam, which is now available in the country. Phantom Blade Zero's first update is headlined by a nerf to one of the game's most important bosses, alongside other changes. You can check them all out below (translated by machine translation): [New Features] Added the “Hit Sound Effect Intensity” and “Hit Impact Sound Effect Intensity” options to the audio settings. The “Interact” key can now be customized for both keyboard and controller. [Improvements and Adjustments] Improved performance and smoothness in certain areas. Adjusted the combat behavior of certain bosses, enemies, and environmental mechanisms. Reduced the frequency of Hua, Deadly Betrothed’s grab attacks on the Wayfarer and Pathbreaker difficulties. Other difficulties are unaffected. Enhanced the impact and feel of weapon hits, and adjusted the volume of certain sound effects and dialogue. Updated weapon descriptions, certain skill descriptions, and controller button icons. Adjusted the shader compilation process. The game will no longer compile ray-tracing shaders by default on startup, significantly reducing launch times. After the update, players who previously had ray tracing disabled will need to recompile shaders once upon their first launch. This process will take relatively little time. Players who already had ray tracing enabled can enter the game directly. If you wish to enable ray tracing in-game, you will need to restart the game, after which ray-tracing shaders will be compiled separately. Improved potential stuttering issues when using Bluetooth controllers. NVIDIA Reflex will now work when set to “Auto,” even with V-Sync enabled. [Bug Fixes] Fixed issues that could prevent progression under certain circumstances. Fixed issues in certain areas that could cause characters to become stuck. Fixed issues with certain cutscenes and visual effects. Fixed several combat-related issues. Fixed abnormal hair rendering for certain AMD graphics cards when using specific driver versions. It's a solid set of changes and fixes. Early player complaints led them to adjust Phantom Blade Zero's settings to make weapons sound more realistic, something S-Game has now done by default. The nerfing of Hua, Deadly Betrothed, and only Hua, Deadly Betrothed, is a little bit of a surprise, given she's hardly the game's most difficult boss, but she is the first optional one, and she does give a quest related to the game's true ending. It's likely S-Game saw people dipping from her early, without realizing the consequences. Other boss changes remain unspecified, but I'd expect this to be far from the last balance change we see. Don't forget to check out our 5/5 Phantom Blade Zero review. Systems Released October 29, 2026 ESRB Unreal Engine 5 Developer(s) S-Game Publisher(s) S-Game Engine Unreal Engine 5 Genre(s) Action, RPG