However, there’s plenty to discuss regarding the actual differences between the PS5 Pro and the base PS5, and we’re not talking about how it’s the same height or how the width is the same as the PS5 Slim.

The CPU

First off, the CPU. The PS5 rocks an AMD Ryzen Zen 2 with eight cores and 16 threads, clocked at 3.5 GHz. Sony hasn’t officially outlined the Pro’s CPU and specs, but CNET confirmed in its recent preview that it’s the same, corroborating a report from Insider-Gaming in March. The main difference is a reported “High CPU Frequency Mode”, increasing the clock speed from 3.5 GHz to 3.85 GHz for a 10 percent increase. It’s worth noting that since the CPU is receiving more power in this scenario, GPU performance allegedly undergoes a 1.5 percent downclocking, resulting in a one percent performance drop.

Regardless, you would think a higher CPU clock speed means better overall performance, right? The answer is: It depends on the game. Take FromSoftware’s Elden Ring, for example. The PS5 version suffers from some frame rate drops due to the sheer CPU dependence of the title, to the extent that the best way to get a consistent 60 FPS is to run the PS4 version on PS5 (and stomach the drop in fidelity). In this scenario, the PS5 Pro would provide a decent increase. How decent remains to be seen, but one has to wonder about future titles with extensive CPU operations and how they might fare on the console.

Case in point is Grand Theft Auto 6 and whether it will achieve 4K and 60 FPS, let alone offer a Performance Mode capable of the latter. Once again, it all boils down to the design. If its population density and variety, physics, and AI are vastly superior to Grand Theft Auto 5 (and it’s looking very likely), then the Pro’s CPU may not be that impactful. It’s hard to say at this point.

The GPU

The console’s other specs also play a part, though, and it’s here that some of the more significant improvements are visible. Sony touted the GPU as having 45 percent faster rendering and 67 percent more Compute Units, so going by the PS5’s number (36), the result should be 60 CU. In PC GPU terms, the PS5 would be equivalent to an AMD Radeon RX 6700, while the Pro is closer to a Radeon RX 6800. Though it features an AMD Radeon RDNA 2 chipset, Insider-Gaming reports that it offers 33.5 TFLOPS of performance. The most obvious benefit is having graphical modes with higher resolutions or more fidelity.

For example, CNET’s preview noted that Gran Turismo 7 offered 8K and 4K with improved ray tracing. How many people own an 8K TV is another matter entirely. However, some titles will also benefit from significant visual improvements. As lead architect Mark Cerny noted in the technical presentation, Horizon Forbidden West benefits from improved lighting and visual effects during gameplay and better hair and skin in cinematics.

Regarding the memory, it’s 28 percent compared to the PS5. Returning to Insider-Gaming’s report, the difference is a memory bandwidth of 576 GB/s for the Pro over the PS5’s 448 GB/s. Though the most noteworthy benefit is faster loading times and the rendering of complex environments (as noted by Forbidden West receiving an overall boost in detail), it’s another boon for titles targeting 4K and higher resolutions.

The other benefit of the larger GPU and part of the PS5 Pro’s “Big Three” is the advanced ray tracing. It offers double and sometimes triple the cast speeds of the base PS5, along with “more dynamic reflection and refraction of light” with negligible impact on the performance, even at higher resolutions. Gran Turismo 7 shines again, offering real-time reflections between cars during gameplay while maintaining 60 FPS.

Hogwarts Legacy benefits from more realistic shadows, higher-quality reflections and more varied reflective surfaces. Cerny told CNET that the console uses AMD’s advanced ray tracing features that aren’t included in the manufacturer’s current GPUs, which makes the PS5 Pro more impressive in the short to medium term.

PSSR

Finally, there’s PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, an AI-driven upscaling technology for improving image quality. The result means more detail and sharper upscaled images, as seen with Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. On PS5 Pro, distant details are clearer than in Performance RT mode on the base PS5. On the other end, players can maintain the texture quality and environmental details of Fidelity mode in The Last of Part 2 Remastered while still benefiting from the responsiveness of 60 FPS.

It should also reduce the artifacting seen in other upscaling methods while facilitating further graphical modes for developers patching their titles to support the console. Depending on how essential ray tracing is for you, PSSR will let you experience it at 60 FPS, though use cases vary based on the game, as usual.

SSD

As for the solid-state drive, it gets a pretty big boost with 2 TB of space. Some of that will be reserved, but it’s still an improvement over the base PS5 and its 825 GB SSD, of which only 667 GB is available (even if the read speed is still 5.5 GB/s, per CNET’s preview).

More space allows for installing more games, obviously, but it may also be an effort to mitigate the lack of a disc drive while encouraging digital ownership. Another potential benefit is more room for higher-resolution footage, so if you’ve been salivating at the thought of uploading 8K footage of Gran Turismo 7, this is good news. It also segues nicely into the Wi-Fi section.

Wi-Fi

Instead of the PS5’s Wi-Fi 6, the PS5 Pro sports Wi-Fi 7. On top of supporting 2.5, 5 and 6 Hz data bands, it also features 320 MHz bandwidth support, with a potential max speed of 46 GB/s. Downloads and streaming will thus be quicker, perhaps even benefitting those streaming titles from the cloud. This does depend on your internet plan, but it’s one of the more underrated future-facing features of the Pro.

Conclusion

Despite touting it as a means to bridge the gap between Fidelity and Performance modes, Sony is marketing the PS5 Pro as more of a premium option than a simple mid-gen refresh. There’s plenty of debate about its necessity, especially compared to the PS4 Pro, which offered a significant jump over the base PS4 (viewed as outdated from the get-go). Comparatively, there are still plenty of cross-gen titles instead of exclusives for the PS5, with few truly pushing the console’s limits.

Even with the PS4 Pro retailing for $399 – the same price as the base console when it launched – it would sell 14.5 million units in its lifetime, about 12 percent of total PS4 sales. Ampere Analysis research director Piers Harding-Rolls estimates a similar response for the PS5 Pro, with about 1.3 million PS5 Pro sales forecast for this year.

Sony’s external disc drive is currently eighth on Amazon US’s Best Sellers list while being sold out on Best Buy. Assuming that translates into enthusiasm for the console, perhaps there’s decent enough demand (or scalpers are having a field day). Once again, we won’t know until pre-orders for the console go live.

While it’s a better machine than the PS5, the PS5 Pro’s CPU enhancements are incremental at best. Time will tell how developers leverage the hardware for current titles. It’ll be even more interesting to see how future first-party games take advantage of the GPU and ray tracing. Nevertheless, the PS5 Pro is a far cry from a PS6-level jump in terms of technology, forget the pricing or the additional costs.

Reviews are now in for the open-world sci-fi action-adventure, and while it currently has a 77 Metascore based on 61 critics’ opinions, there are some less-than-enthusiastic reactions to go with the positives. In our own review, we mostly enjoyed the story and open-world design but found the overall movement, enemy AI, stealth, and design decisions to be iffy. Insta-fail sections in 2024? You really shouldn’t have.

However, from the outset, Star Wars Outlaws has always looked beautiful. That initial showing last year generated some skepticism about the overall performance (which we’ll delve into more shortly). Yet, the Snowdrop Engine proves again that it’s simply phenomenal for creating large worlds laden with fidelity and details.

It was also utilized in last year’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, not to mention The Division 1 and 2, with all three games positively received for their gorgeous visuals. The engine also delivers absolutely gorgeous character models, atmospheric effects, and lighting, especially when transitioning indoors to outdoors and vice versa.

The worlds all look colorful and vibrant overall, with the 21:9 mode adding to that cinematic flair. Whether you’re out in the wilds and gazing upon mountains in the distance of Toshara or slinking through crowded streets and alleyways at night, there’s a certain charm and attention to detail throughout. The wind is realistic, causing trees to bend and dust particles to travel in their direction. It even ruffles Kay’s hair. All of this looks great while accentuating the realism even further.

The art design is also very strong, recreating extraneous details from the classic films without skipping a beat (and capturing the seedier side of the universe’s locations quite well). Even the pre-rendered cutscenes look sharp in terms of overall fidelity and animation work. Unfortunately, even when playing on PC, there are some places where you can spot lower-resolution textures, such as on certain rocks in the environment.

When testing the PC version, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 5950x, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, 32 GB of RAM, and a solid-state drive. The resolution was set to 3840×2160 with DLSS enabled (upscale set to Biased and Quality). We stuck with the quality preset on High, meaning almost every single graphics option – from Environment Refraction Quality to the quality of Microdetails, Particles, and Scatter Density – was set to High. Most Ray Tracing settings are on Medium, though BVH Quality (which affected the geometry quality), Raytraced Diffuse Reflections (and their resolution), and Raytraced Specular Reflections, were set to High.

For the most part, the performance was pretty good, remaining steady even with multiple light sources and characters in the environments. It’s when you venture out into the open environments of Outlaws’ multifarious planets that fluctuations can be observed. Traversing on the Speeder in Toshara saw the frame rate fluctuating between 50 and 60 frames per second, even with minimal action. Nevertheless, it’s very playable and doesn’t significantly hamper the experience. Ray tracing also looks quite gorgeous, especially when traversing over water bodies and seeing the environment reflected in the same.

It’s the console version where things start to get dicey. We tested out the PS5 version, which includes the special 21:9 cinematic mode alongside other options like Motion Blur Intensity (both camera and per-object), Film Grain, and Chromatic Aberration. Otherwise, you can choose from two graphical modes – Quality and Performance – which are fairly straightforward.

The former can be quite stable throughout, but some stutters are apparent during the more hectic combat sequences, both on and off the Speeder. Performance Mode seemed far more stable and suffered fewer hiccups while offering a higher frame rate. Though there is an obvious trade-off in resolution, if you want the most fluid experience, it really seems like this is the way to go.

However, the PS5 version suffers most when accounting for the overall technical polish. Animations would glitch out often, adding to the woes of traversal and exploration with Kay. There were also a surprising amount of issues with lip-syncing and hit detection. Also, as crisp as draw distances could often feel on the PC version, they would look somewhat muddier on the PS5. That contrast in detail is noticeable in the early hours when Kay is tasked with breaking into a mansion, as she scales a cliffside while the latter is visible in the background with fireworks going off.

If that weren’t enough, audio bugs and the occasional pop-in would occur on PS5, disrupting immersion all the more. Considering how well-versed Massive is with the engine (heck, they created it), this could just be a case of Star Wars Outlaws needing more time in the oven to really hammer out its technical issues on console.

For what it’s worth, we didn’t encounter any game-breaking glitches or crashes, and nothing that hampered progress (at least none in the opening hours). Thankfully, when examining loading times, both platforms perform incredibly well, transitioning to and from cutscenes with next to no delay.

Overall, Star Wars Outlaws is a stunning open-world title, one that captures the franchise’s look and feel to an incredible degree. The special cinematic mode is a welcome addition, adding to the authenticity of being set during the original trilogy. For all the criticism against it, there’s something special about walking through these locations or hopping on a Speeder and watching the plains unfurl before your eyes, especially at different times of the day.

However, the best way to experience it all is on PC, hands down, whether it’s due to the multitude of options available or simply because of its more consistent performance (which could use a bit of tightening up). The PS5 version isn’t outright terrible on a visual level. Quality Mode could use shoring up to handle the frame drops during combat; however, the overall experience could be significantly improved if the pop-in and draw distance issues are addressed. It’s almost everything else that desperately needs more polish to truly deliver on that space scoundrel fantasy.

Regardless of how it performs in terms of sales, Star Wars Outlaws will doubtless receive more updates to improve the experience and address any lingering issues. As it stands, much like last year’s Avatar, it’s an incredible benchmark in current-gen visuals that will cater to franchise enthusiasts with its details. Here’s hoping it aspires to more.

While it’s impossible to create a PC with the exact same specifications as the Xbox Series X, it always presents an interesting opportunity for exploring the current PC market and whether purchasing a PC would be a more feasible decision than Microsoft’s console. To that end, we present a comprehensive PC build that matches Xbox Series X in terms of specs and performance and try to see the price gap between the two machines.

Before starting out with the feature, it’s important to mention that we have only used off-the-shelf prices for brand-new components – and building out a comparable PC with used components will undoubtedly come at a much cheaper cost. Also, we have tried to include components that were close to the Xbox Series X hardware as it’s not feasible to have a 1:1 component list. And finally, the prices for these parts may change in the near future.

With that out of the way, let’s begin!

The CPU

Starting things off with the CPU, the Xbox Series X features an 8-core CPU that offers the flexibility between opting for a higher base clock without hyperthreading (or SMT as Microsoft calls it) and a lower base clock with hyperthreading enabled. For our purposes, we will be going with an Intel i5 Intel i5-13400F which features a total of 10 CPU cores (6 of which are performance cores and 4 are efficient cores).

With hyperthreading enabled, our i5 13400F is able to surpass the raw performance power of the Xbox Series X CPU thanks to the advantage of a newer more efficient architecture and higher base clocks. Having that performance buffer is important since Windows background services and system applications can eat up a decent chunk of the available resources. At a price point of $160, the i5 13400F might be a bit on the expensive side – but it does offer some assurance in terms of future-proofing our machine for at least the next couple of years.

The GPU

To absolutely no one’s surprise, the GPU is the beating heart of a gaming machine – and Xbox Series X packs some serious grunt with its RDNA2-based custom chip that enables a raw output of 12 TFLOPs which is marginally higher than the 10 TFLOPs of the PS5’s chip. To match our target machine, we will be going with RTX 3060 which comes with hardware-level ray tracing support and 8 GB of GDDR5 memory.

The Xbox Series X draws its graphics memory from the common RAM pool of 16GB, so going with an 8 GB card ensures that we have ample memory for rendering the latest games at high resolutions. Taking into account the RTX 3060’s 3584 CUDA cores and clock speeds of 1.76 GHz on the founder’s variant, we get a comparable 12 TFLOPs output as well which puts our system on a level playing field with Microsoft’s offerings. The RTX 3060 retails from anywhere between 275 to 300 USD depending on the manufacturer you choose.

RAM

Having ample system memory is paramount to ensuring smooth performance across a wide range of games, and for our purposes – we will be going with the Corsair Vengeance DDR4 16GB memory kit. It retails for around $40, and is the perfect pick for our needs of creating a comparable machine.

With a 3200 MHz memory speed, our PC shouldn’t suffer from any bottlenecks which should ensure stable performance results. Having dual channel memory also helps with performance optimization, though consuming 2 RAM slots on our motherboard does limit future upgrade options – so do make your choices wisely.

Motherboard

The motherboard is the component that houses our parts together, but it’s not the component that would really affect gaming performance in a tangible way since we are working with factory clocks and not bothering with overclocking. As such, we wouldn’t be spending much on this component to keep competitive pricing to the Xbox Series X – though you could spring up more cash if you wish to create a similar PC build. The MSI H610M-G gets the job done, and it comes at a price of just $80 which makes it a perfect candidate for such a list.

Power Supply

Talking about cheaping out on PC parts, the power supply is the one thing that one should definitely invest in. It’s always best practice to rely on reputed brands and ensure 80+ ratings to avoid any chances of frying out your expensive gaming equipment in an unfortunate case of a power surge. We are going with the Cooler Master MWE Gold 850 V2 which checks all of our boxes and comes in at a price of $95.

Storage

One of the bigger changes that the current gen consoles bring over the last gen is in terms of the storage which has been upgraded from traditional hard disk drives to superfast SSDs that have shortened loading times by a significant margin. Windows has also introduced a DirectStorage API that helps in optimizing load times with PCI e 4.0 SSDs, but not all modern games are making full use of that tech on PCs.

But still, we will be going with a PCI e 4.0 SSD for our build – and our candidate of choice is the Samsung 990 EVO 1 TB variant which comes in at around $84. Even comparing the read-write speeds on both devices wouldn’t offer an apples-to-apples comparison since the Xbox’s close-knit architecture gives it an edge over traditional architecture PC which is why we are going with the cheapest option on the market.

Cabinet

Lastly, there’s the cabinet which will be the Zalman Z7 NEO ATX tower priced at $80 on Amazon. It gets the job done, looks decent, and doesn’t blow out a hole in our wallet. Sweet, but you could always spring up more cash for aesthetics in a realistic scenario.

Total Budget And Conclusion

Totaling the price of our PC, the cost of our proposed CPU comes in at around $839 which is a good price considering this build should be able to hold its ground against Xbox Series X for years to come. However, it also needs to be emphasized that this PC build doesn’t include the cost of a gaming mouse and keyboard, a Blu-Ray drive, and a fresh copy of the Windows license – and adding that up will obviously increase the price by a good few dollars.

Furthermore, having a PC also gives you the flexibility of upgrading individual PC parts as you choose, better deals on games across different stores, access to productivity apps, and much more. Conversely, the Xbox Series X is much cheaper and you get access to a vast library of first-party and third-party games at a cheap rate thanks to Xbox Game Pass. Between a cheaper asking price and guaranteed support for an entire generation that typically lasts anywhere from 5 to 8 years, the Xbox Series X also comes with many compelling benefits.

But then again circling back to the point that we made at the start of the feature, a console and a PC are two machines that are fundamentally different from one another. However, it remains an interesting prospect to gauge how far the PC market has come – so do keep a lookout on similar features in the near future.

And we are happy to report that Senua’s Saga is all that we hoped for and much more with a gripping story and strong creative direction. One of the game’s defining features has to be the visuals, and this graphics analysis will dive deep into that very aspect and compare the Xbox Series X version with the PC version and how both stack up against one another.

Hellblade 2 Engine And Improvements Over Hellblade 1

The original Hellblade was built on Epic’s Unreal Engine 4, and the team made great use of its robust post-processing pipeline and other features to create a visually striking world brimming with detail and personality. For Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, Ninja Theory has bumped the base from UE4 to UE5 and that jump is nothing short of extraordinary.

The team makes great use of Unreal Engine 5’s suite of cutting-edge rendering techniques like MetaHuman, Nanite, and Lumen among other features that puts it among the best-looking games on the market at this point. Having a much bigger budget to work with shows in the production values, ranging from the quality of photogrammetry to the motion capture and much more.

Test Bench Configuration and Graphics Options On PC

For our tests on PC, we chose to run the game on a system comprising an AMD Ryzen 5950x, an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti GPU, and 32 GB of RAM. We also installed the game on an NVME SSD PCI e 4.0 to enable better comparison between both platforms and to test out loading times and related optimization.

Taking a look at the graphics menu, we get to see a swath of different options and sliders to choose from – allowing you to get the perfect balance between fidelity and performance. You can either choose to go with a pre-defined preset, or you could opt for a custom preset – allowing you to freely map out shadow quality, reflections, and global illumination among other things.

Helpful labels on the side offer valuable insights on each graphic option, and there’s also a resource tracker on the side that shows CPU and GPU response times alongside video memory consumption so you can make better-informed graphics choices and see the ramifications in a clear manner.

For our test purposes, we cranked the resolution all the way up to 4K and maxed out the settings with the high preset. We also set Nvidia DLSS as the custom upscaling implementation and turned on Super Resolution to minimize artifacts from anti-aliasing. At these settings, Hellblade 2 was taking around 6 GB of 12 GB available memory on our RTX 3080Ti which is pretty well optimized in terms of memory consumption.

PC Performance

With the current test bench specifications and aforementioned graphics settings, we started testing out Hellblade 2 across a wide variety of scenarios. The game performed pretty well with frame rates ranging in the ballpark of 40 to 50 fps which might be lower than our V-Sync target but the frame times were consistent leading to a pretty smooth experience across the board. Resource-intensive sequences like combat did result in minor hiccups resulting in a dropped frame or two, but looking at the big picture – Hellblade 2 ran pretty smoothly during our tests and brownie points for not encountering any immersion-breaking bugs or glitches.

Xbox Series X Performance

On the Xbox Series X, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 features only a single graphics mode that runs at a resolution of 4K with a target frame rate of 30fps. There’s no performance mode to speak of, and the reasoning behind this is cited for maintaining a cinematic feel in the gameplay at all times. While this is a subjective topic that could warrant a lengthy discussion on its own, we are happy to report that Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 performs equally great on the Xbox Series X. The game has little to no issues sticking to its frame target, and while there are a few rough edges and dropped frames here and there – it’s a largely smooth experience that rarely falters. Ninja Theory might have missed out on the opportunity to craft a 40fps performance mode for 120Hz displays, but that’s another discussion that’s best left for some other time.

Graphics Overview

There’s not much doubt that Hellblade 2 is one of the most visually stunning games on the market, and that status can be equally attributed to the raw levels of fidelity as well as the masterful art direction. Unreal Engine 5’s suite of effects truly shines with Ninja Theory’s rendering pipeline. Take a look at the character models, which feature impressively complex skin meshes and textures that don’t break even under intense scrutiny.

The cloth physics is also a pretty highlight of the presentation, and there are several instances of pieces of cloth meticulously swaying to the tune of the winds. Textures have a high level of geometric complexity, and are most likely created using some form of photogrammetry which is why it looks almost photorealistic at times.

As for the lighting and reflections, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 doesn’t seem to be making use of ray tracing in either its global illumination or reflections. There aren’t any graphics options on PC corresponding to ray tracing and there aren’t any visible signs in the presentation either, and this is a bit strange considering Senua’s Sacrifice actually implemented ray tracing with a post-launch patch.

That being said, Senua’s Saga is a linear game and it can use a mixture of baked lighting data and screen space reflections to create some really convincing views – which is very much the case here. Not having the accuracy in the puddle reflections might be off-putting for some, but that doesn’t harm the overall presentation by a significant margin.

Animations are also a strong element of Hellblade 2, and the team has used a lot of motion capture data to translate real-life movements into the game. Senua has an appropriate heft to her movements, which add a layer of physicality to the moment-to-moment gameplay. Animations truly shine in combat where you can almost feel the desperation as she swings the sword with all her might. The animations also blend in well with each other, and there are no awkward clipping motions to speak of.

As for the post-processing effects, Hellblade 2 makes strong use of volumetric fog in its presentation and the particles interact with the lighting in a really convincing manner. Motion blur and depth of field are also used in a generous fashion, and these techniques don’t produce many artifacts along the edges which help in achieving that photorealistic look.

Xbox Series X vs PC

Now talking about the differences between the two versions, Ninja Theory has done a good job of taking the console version as the base and the PC version as the more premium experience of the two. Both versions share the same rendering pipeline, but the PC version allows players to go a bit ahead of what’s possible on the console.

The most visible difference between the two is in terms of image quality. On PC, Hellblade 2 looks noticeably sharper thanks to Nvidia’s Super Resolution and DLSS upscaling. Xbox Series X might be using some sort of an inferior quality MSAA or TAA-based solution for anti-aliasing which is why it looks softer in comparison.

Animations also feel a lot smoother on the PC, thanks to a higher framerate than the Xbox Series X – and combat works a lot better as a result. Draw distances and reflections are almost identical across both platforms, and we couldn’t make out much differences between other aspects.

Finally, there are the load times. On Xbox Series X, loading from a past save took around 10 seconds while on the PC it takes marginally less time at around 6 to 8 seconds in our testing. Given Hellblade 2’s linear nature, there aren’t any fast travel options – so we don’t have any metrics for that. Either way, it’s important to reiterate that we have installed the game on a PCI e 4.0 SSD, so your results might vary if you are playing off of an inferior SSD or HDD.

Conclusion

Hellblade 2 is a visually striking game that uses its immaculate presentation to invoke strong emotions within the player. It makes excellent use of Unreal Engine 5, and despite the game not featuring technologies like ray tracing – Hellblade 2 manages to create an extremely pleasing visual image that comfortably ranks it amongst the best-looking games on the market.

In addition to the splendid visuals, Hellblade 2 also impresses with its performance across both platforms. Ninja Theory has ensured good optimizations for video memory consumption, and the slew of graphical sliders make this a great port for tinkerers such as myself who like to play around with options.

But Ghost of Tsushima was always built as a console-first product with its proprietary game engine and related tools, so how has the transition to a foreign platform been for the developer? How does it perform on our test hardware and how consistent does the performance remain across different test conditions? To that end, we present a comprehensive graphics analysis of Ghost of Tsushima on PC.

Test PC Specifications and Graphics Options

Ghost of Tsushima’s PC version requires at least a Core i3 7100 (or equivalent) CPU along with Nvidia’s Geforce GTX 960 4GB and 8 GB of RAM, and it recommends a Core i5 8600, RTX 2060, and 16 GB if you wish to run it at a mix of medium and high settings at a respectable resolution. These requirements might seem to be a bit on the higher end considering the game came out in 2020 for PS4, but they aren’t too computationally expensive either for the port to be called unoptimized. And you also have to consider the fact that this is a port of the Director’s Cut which was released for the PS5, so there’s that too.

As for our test bench, we tested the game on a system comprising an AMD Ryzen 5950X, an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti, and 32 GB RAM which is well over what the game recommends. We also took note to install the game on an NVME PCI e 4.0 SSD to ensure a more balanced comparison for loading times between PC and PS5.

Starting things off with the graphics menu, Ghost of Tsushima on PC provides a slew of different sliders to tinker around with and find the perfect balance between performance and stability for your hardware. Everything from the level of detail to the texture quality and SSR can be adjusted according to your requirements, and you can check out the subtle differences on the fly in the background rendering of the sword and the flower field.

Nixxes Software has done a fine job adding quality-of-life features like a FoV slider, DLSS upscaling options, and frame generation options to make enjoying the game more feasible across a wide variety of hardware. Given our test bench specifications, we were able to crank our settings on ultra at a resolution of 4K. We switched on VSync to minimize screen tearing, and we also set Dynamic Resolution Scaling to 60.

PC Version And PS5: What’s New?

In addition to our PC maxed-out version, we also tested the game on PS5 running in Resolution mode to spot the differences. Unsurprisingly, the game largely remains the same across both platforms – but you will be able to notice a few differences here and there if you take the time and effort to peep in closely.

Take a look at the starting cutscene where the Mongol ships are marching into the homeland of Tsushima. The level of detail across both platforms is the same, but the PC version inches ahead in terms of the dynamic range with moonlit areas being darker while the Mongol ships adorned with torches are brighter than on the PS5. This could be a direct result of higher quality bloom on PS5 or better ambient occlusion (we are using the XeGTAO implementation).

Character models also look marginally crisper on the PC than on the PS5, and that difference seems to be stemming from a higher polycount budget on the PC than on the former. Post-processing effects like alpha particles coming from sparks or fire ashes are also better looking on the PC than the PS5’s Resolution mode, and you can find similar iterative differences across both versions. World streaming works pretty well with an appropriately high draw distance that’s comparable to the PS5 version, and the level of detail swapping happens smoothly without much visible artifacts.

Ghost of Tsushima doesn’t feature any radical changes in terms of the rendering pipeline on the PC version. Ray tracing is noticeably absent here (as was the case with the PS5’s Director Cut), and we get to see the same screen space reflections and GI implementation as the base release. Not to suggest that it looks bad by any stretch, far from it. You see, the beauty of Ghost of Tsushima’s world is largely derived from its striking art direction and not just from the raw technical grunt of the underlying hardware, and it looks just as stunning right now as it did a couple of years ago.

We also noticed a weird bug on the PC version where cutscenes can have an element of blur, but hopefully, that should be fixed with a post-launch patch. Taking a brief comparison in terms of fast travel load times, the PS5 version of the game takes about 1 to 2 seconds to fast travel from one point on the map to the other thanks to Sucker Punch’s masterful use of the PS5’s SSD. On the other hand, the PC version takes just about 2-3 seconds in between fast travel which ensures a similarly snappy user experience. Nixxes Software seems to be making great use of Windows DirectStorage API to save up on load times, so your experience might vary depending on the storage device you use for the game.

How is the performance on PC?

Coming over to the performance side of things, Ghost of Tsushima on PC provides a pretty stable experience overall. Given our test bench and maxed-out settings, Ghost of Tsushima performed extremely well across a bunch of different scenarios ranging from free roam across picturesque landscapes to intense combat encounters and everything in between.

During our tests, the frame rate stuck pretty closely to the 60fps target, and drops below that threshold were pretty rare. Our RTX 3080Ti was able to hold its ground pretty well in terms of rendering, and we didn’t notice any aggressive resolution setbacks during our tests.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Ghost of Tsushima on PC is yet another excellent port from the team over at Nixxes Software. Despite being optimized on proprietary tech originally built for consoles, the team was able to create a solid PC version complete with the options and flexibility that one would want out of such an experience. Ghost of Tsushima on PC flaunts some impressive scalability, and it performed really well in our tests.

While the improvements are of an iterative nature as opposed to radical, Ghost of Tsushima on PC does come with new options like DLSS support and frame generation to help with performance. It’s also a testament to Nixxes’ acumen in building PC ports that it was able to avoid common pitfalls such as long shader compilation and inefficient load times which is something that has plagued some previous PlayStation ports like Horizon Zero Dawn and The Last of Us Part 1.

It’s certainly closer than we thought it’d be, but still not quite there yet. Before diving into the current state of modern GPUs and recent PS5 Pro leaks, let’s look back on the PS5 architecture itself. Built on an AMD RDNA 2-based GPU with 10.28 teraflops, the PS5 utilized its SSD to supply super-fast loading times and 4K graphics. Console gamers are aware of the performance versus graphics mode dilemma that accompanies every game log-in, and that’s one area where we see a bottleneck preventing games from achieving photorealism. If the PS5’s four-year-old AMD tech isn’t up to the task of generating 4K ray tracing at 60 FPS, it sure isn’t able to generate any kind of photorealism.

That brings us to 2024. The most powerful consumer graphics cards today still can’t reliably produce photorealistic contexts beyond static scenes or tech demos. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 is widely considered the best gaming graphics card as of 2024, yet a vast majority of games haven’t caught up to its 80-teraflop potential. You’d be even harder-pressed to find a CPU that can operate such demands at full capacity. Top-tier GPUs like the RTX 4090 come close to photorealism, but the $1,600 price point, high energy consumption, and lack of photorealistic games on the market make their potential greater than what they can currently run. Even so, the RTX 4090 still needs to make compromises now and then to consistently run games like Cyberpunk 2077 at 100 fps with 4K ray tracing: it’s close, but still not there yet.

Photorealism in gaming may be out of reach today, but there is an especially promising feature present in modern graphics cards that anticipates photorealism – and that’s AI upscaling technology. Nvidia’s DLSS is an AI-powered process that artificially enhances visuals to free up computational processes. AI can ease up the bottleneck problem with instantaneous speed, freeing up the CPU and GPU to render higher and higher-resolution 3D environments without excessive strain. Currently, GPUs with DLSS frame-generation enabled, such as the RTX 4090, still bottleneck occasionally when 4K ray tracing is pushed on high-end games, but that should be mostly solved when the next generation of graphics cards releases in late 2024. Machine learning AI solutions are a step in the right direction toward realizing photorealistic gaming, even if it’s not all there yet.

PlayStation’s partnership with AMD likely aims to master these machine learning AI solutions starting with PS5 Pro and culminating with the PS6. Reliable PS5 Pro leaks from Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson say the updated console will run on the same Zen 2 CPU from the base PS5, however new AI upscaling in the form of PSSR and an upgraded 33 teraflops also power the PS5 Pro. Digital Foundry predicts that the PS5 Pro’s 8K PSSR upscaling “could be just as transformative for Sony as it has been for Nvidia DLSS.” The PS5 Pro’s 33.5 teraflop size is nothing to sneeze at, being over twice the size of the base PS5’s 10.23. Back in 2016, Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney said that 40 teraflops would be enough to generate photorealistic scenes in games, and we seem to be reaching that point with the PS5 Pro, if the leaks are accurate.

Though, if even the RTX 4090 (which features a whopping 80 teraflops) still lacks the surrounding infrastructure to run anything more than photorealistic tech demos, I wouldn’t bet on the PS5 Pro achieving it either. Late 2024 is shaping up to be a milestone time for computer graphics as the latest generation of GPU cards from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel have their sights set on a holiday 2024 launch. This new wave of technology will be the test bed for the PS6 when its development inevitably begins in earnest. PlayStation console cycles have reliably lasted about seven years, so we expect the PS6 to arrive in the 2027/2028 window. As such, expect the PS6 to feature next-gen AMD tech and the latest enhancements in PSSR AI upscaling, but don’t expect absolute photorealism across the board.

Rendering a photorealistic scene and a playable photorealistic sandbox are two vastly separate things. At present, the computational cost required to run photorealistic graphics with complex gameplay isn’t possible for consumer GPUs. DLSS AI upscaling sure does help mitigate the extreme computational cost of running ultra-high-resolution graphics with a smooth framerate, but the visuals are still a ways from photorealism.

Epic has been a key player in the graphical race with its launch of Unreal Engine 5 in April 2022. Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite and Lumen systems help automate the 3D rendering of high-resolution objects so that when your character looks at environments, all the angles of the object maintain their fidelity and complex lighting features without bottlenecking computational power. These are game changers in the 3D rendering space, but they still require an ultra-powered GPU along with CPU thresholds that don’t currently exist to fulfil their maximum potential. So, yes, it is likely that the PS6 will approach photorealistic 3D imaging, but whether or not the games will perform and animate such photorealism smoothly is questionable.

One problem to consider is the high enthusiast price that an 80 teraflop GPU costs to manufacture for consoles. PlayStation usually aims to price its consoles at a reasonable point. At the end of the day, the PlayStation is a hassle-free gaming box intended as an alternative to high-end PCs – it simply won’t feature the most powerful CPU/GPU due to the reality of console price points. Second, games require much more than mere graphical fidelity to function, leading to an inevitable bottleneck of computing power that hasn’t quite been solved yet. Machine learning AI advancements are going a long way toward offloading some of that CPU strain, but it’s unlikely we’ll be slaying dragons in dynamic photorealistic worlds with just DLSS or PSSR upscaling alone.

Lastly, gamers want experiences that run and perform smoothly, even if it comes at the cost of peak resolution. What’s your initial response upon seeing a PS5 benchmark screen? Probably to turn on the 60 FPS performance mode to sacrifice the graphical mode’s 4K ray tracing (unless it’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth). When it comes to fast-paced action games like Sekiro or relaxed explorative experiences, gamers generally prefer a cohesively rich art style to mere graphical fidelity.

So, while photorealism will fit certain game aesthetics, the majority of stylistic games won’t bother sacrificing the effort and strain for the extra fidelity. Still, the advancement of AI upscaling and higher processing power can benefit any art style, so the more the merrier. We predict that photorealism still won’t be featured in many games during the PS6 generation, but it may be more common in 2030 when the potential PS6 Pro releases. What we’re seeing out of the RTX 4090 and PS5 Pro leaks are hopeful, but they still can’t reliably provide photorealistic experiences outside of tech demos and glorified photo modes.

One of the more interesting parts of Stellar Blade is the visuals, which look pretty crisp. It’s honestly a surprise that a team with such little experience in AAA development is able to create something so compelling, and to that end – we present a comprehensive graphics analysis of Stellar Blade.

Stellar Blade – Engine And Overview

Stellar Blade uses Epic’s Unreal Engine 4 to bring its imaginative fantasy world to life. One could be mistaken to think that the game is running off Unreal Engine 5 or some other proprietary current-gen tech, but that’s a testament to the quality work that the team was able to achieve with this release. Stellar Blade makes great use of the available features of the engine and paints a dystopian world that’s brimming with detail.

Perhaps one of its most surprisingly endearing elements is that it doesn’t make use of conventionally cutting-edge rendering techniques, but rather focuses on creating a familiar rendering pipeline with a quality implementation of last-gen techniques. We will be discussing more on that in further sections, but this is the primary reason why Stellar Blade can achieve such convincing performance numbers with this level of fidelity.

Character Models

Stellar Blade features some pretty good-looking character models that exhibit a high level of detail. Right from the skin meshes to the polycounts on each character, Stellar Blade doesn’t fail to impress with its character rendering pipeline. Skin meshes do generally look pretty smooth which lends a sense of artificiality to it all, but that is more of an artistic decision than a technical inefficiency.

Hair physics in particular looks pretty impressive despite the hair textures themselves showcasing signs of artifacts when you peep in too close. Given the high-intensity nature of the combat, it’s also paramount that hair movement should never feel too distracting – and Stellar Blade strikes a good balance in that regard.

Environment, Lighting And Reflections

Switching gears over to the environmental side of things, Stellar Blade features the use of some high-quality assets that are brimming with geometric complexity and detail. Be it the broken pieces of a bridge, blowing sand, or the inside of an alien spaceship – Stellar Blade’s textures look really gorgeous. A lot can also be attributed to the art direction here, but equal credit goes to the high resolution of the assets that are used here.

Texture swapping happens pretty smoothly with little to no visible signs of pop-in, and that lends a really crisp quality to the image itself. This also applies to the sprawling open environments where the world streaming system works without any hiccups. On that note, it’s also important to mention that the draw distance here is pretty high too. Stellar Blade has no shortage of graphically impressive vistas to gawk at, so players will find themselves soaking in the sunsets and smelling the roses at multiple points throughout the campaign.

As for the lighting, Stellar Blade doesn’t seem to be utilizing a ray tracing implementation – as can be deduced from how light bounces around the environments. Rather, it most likely uses some sort of screen space reflections that we are used to seeing in most eighth-gen games built on Unreal Engine 4. That being said, it definitely looks good thanks to the quality implementation and high-resolution reflections on display, and it seems to be using some pre-computed lighting data that can help the team save up on precious computing resources. The lack of ray tracing means indirect lighting isn’t the most realistic, but it looks pretty good regardless.

The shadow implementation here might be one of the weaker elements of the visual presentation since shadows can also exhibit artifacts along the edges – especially for finer textures like hair. But apart from that, it works well for its purposes since shadows are cast for distant objects, and self-shadowing also looks pretty good in action.

Post Processing

Much like other aspects of its presentation, Stellar Blade’s post-processing effects is generally the same that you would find in any Unreal Engine 4-based game. Motion blur and depth of field are used to great effect to give a cinematic quality to the presentation, and there are pretty much no quirks with shimmering artifacts or shutter speed for the same. Smoke volumes and light shafts can also be found throughout the world, and they react realistically with dynamic lights.

Finally, there are the particle effects and explosions. Particle effects are generously used in combat and even traversal since sparks do fly as you wall-run against a rough surface, and these effects flaunt some high-quality alpha particles. Explosions are also an important part of Stellar Balde’s visual makeup, and outbursts of fire in the environment are accompanied by generous heaping of dark smoke volumes.

Different Graphics Modes on PS5 And Performance Parameters

The PS5 version offers 3 distinct graphics modes to choose from – a Prioritize Resolution mode, a Prioritize Performance mode, and a Balanced mode. Starting things off with the Prioritize Resolution mode, it targets 30fps while targeting a native 4K resolution. Balanced mode on the other hand targets 60fps with dynamic 4K, which offers a good balance between fidelity and performance. Finally, there’s the Performance mode which offers a 1440p resolution with a performance target of 60fps.

The differences between the three modes aren’t as pronounced as one would expect since they share the same visual makeup in terms of rendering techniques. Prioritize Resolution mode preserves the best of graphical features, and marginal drops in fidelity can be experienced in Performance and Balanced modes in certain areas like draw distance or texture quality. Apart from that, Stellar Blade remains the same across all modes in broad strokes – and the temporal anti-aliasing pass does a good job of covering up low-resolution artifacts albeit with some smoothing that comes inherently with this particular solution.

As for the performance, all three graphical modes perform pretty well for the most part. During our experience, we did notice some occasional frame dips especially when the combat gets too busy- but that wasn’t much of a problem in the grand scheme of things. Regardless, Stellar Blade is best experienced in Balanced mode where you get the best of both worlds. Given the fast-paced nature of the combat, it doesn’t make much sense to compromise on the performance for a marginal increase in fidelity.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Stellar Blade is a technically sound game that makes good use of Unreal Engine 4’s visual features to paint a world that is brimming with detail. Despite not making use of cutting-edge technologies like ray tracing, developer Shift Up has delivered a quality experience through and through. The performance does exhibit occasional dips in the framerate department, but it generally does a good job of holding its targets – which rounds out this surprisingly polished experience from a previously unproven developer.

The transition from PS5 to PC in terms of the gameplay is obviously pretty smooth, but how does it fare on a technical level? How far can you push the game on PC? And what are the performance metrics? With this technical analysis, we take a look at Horizon Forbidden West on PC and how it compares to the PS5 release.

PC Requirements, Test Bench Specifications, And Graphics Settings Menu

To run Horizon Forbidden West on a PC with low settings, you need to at least have an Intel Core i3 8th generation with a GTX 1650 4 GB and 16 GB of RAM. However, if you would like to bump the settings up to medium or high, you would need an Intel Core i5 8th generation with RTX 3060 and 16 GB of RAM. 

Additionally, you would also need to have 150 GB of available space and a PCI e 4.0 SSD is recommended for the best performance since the game takes advantage of Windows’ DirectStorage API. For our tests, we ran the game on a PC comprising an AMD Ryzen 5950X, Nvidia RTX 3080Ti, and 32 GB of RAM. This is well over what the game recommends, so we had the liberty of cranking the settings to maximum without compromising on the resolution. 

Starting off with the settings menu, Horizon Forbidden West gives a vast breadth of graphical sliders to choose from ranging from texture quality to anti-aliasing and much more. Helpful labels do a good job of informing what these settings actually do, but having corresponding screenshots or clips that actually demonstrate the visual differences between these settings would have been a lot more convenient. If tinkering with settings isn’t your thing, you could always skip the individual sliders and choose from high, low, and medium presets depending on your configuration.

PC performance

Given our test bench specifications, we were able to run the game at maxed out settings. We turned the resolution up to 4K, turned V-Sync and Nvidia Low Latency on, and turned dynamic resolution scaling to 60 percent through DLSS upsampling. Unlike Horizon Zero Dawn and other Sony first party ports that require shader compilation, Horizon Forbidden West has finally solved this issue and it starts up without any annoying compilation. That being said, there are a few seconds of shader compilation that happens during the transition from a skipped cutscene to gameplay, but it isn’t all that impactful in the grand scheme of things.

Coming to the performance, our test PC was able to handle Horizon Forbidden West on its maxed out settings without any issues. Frame rates were averaging around anywhere from 60fps to 65fps, and the experience was pretty smooth across the board. Guerilla Games has done a fantastic job of transporting the beauty of Horizon Forbidden West’s post-apocalyptic world to PC, and everything from the lush jungles to clear waterfalls and bright flower fields looks absolutely gorgeous on the PC. 

The character models also exhibit a ton of detail with complex skin meshes and physically based materials that react appropriately to light, and the same goes for the immaculately detailed machines that we get to fight during our adventure. The movements and fluid animations shine at 60fps, and our test rig was able to chug along just fine. Horizon Forbidden West was able to maintain the frame rate even during intense fight sequences without breaking a sweat. Not to say that there weren’t any frame rate drops at all, but they were rare enough to not be much of an issue. 

How Does The PC Version Build Upon The PS5 Release? 

Horizon Forbidden West on PC features some excellent quality-of-life improvements over the PS5 version, with two of the most notable features being support for multiple displays and ultrawide screens. Players with compatible displays can play through the entirety of Forbidden West in a 32:9 aspect ratio, and the developers have taken care to ensure that the stretched-out ratio doesn’t cause any rendering issues. 

Furthermore, you also get to see an uncapped frame-rate option, meaning you can run the game well over 60fps provided you have the required hardware. There are also better texture filtering options, the ability to switch between the PS5’s impressive sky systems or the PS4’s comparatively rudimentary implementation. Interestingly though, Horizon Forbidden West on PC doesn’t feature support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. Much like the console version, all reflections are of the screen space kind, but it does feel like a missed opportunity given that it could help in making the PC version a lot more graphically stunning.

Horizon Forbidden West also makes good use of Windows DirectStorage API to quickly load game assets into memory and reduce the time spent looking at loading screens. During our tests, loading a save takes only about 15 seconds or so from the main menu and fast travels were equally snappy as well. 

Taking a moment to compare the Favor Resolution mode on PS5 with the PC version at max settings, there aren’t too many major differences to spot. Both versions of the game are identical in broad strokes, but there are a few places where the PC version takes the lead over its PS5 counterpart. Thanks to 16x anisotropic filtering, the textures look marginally better on the PC than on the PS5. Similarly, the level of fidelity in distant objects is also higher on PC than on PS5, and internal rendering resolution also looks to be higher. Again, these are mostly iterative upgrades as opposed to radical changes over the PS5 version. All in all, Horizon Forbidden West remains a beautiful game regardless of whether you play through it on a PC or a PS5.

Conclusion

Nixxess Software has done a great job with this port allowing PC players to witness the next chapter of Aloy’s journey without any hassles. It’s clear that PlayStation has learned from its past mistakes with the PC port of Horizon Zero Dawn, as this translation is a lot smoother with no rendering inconsistencies or long shader compilation times. All in all, Horizon Forbidden West on PC not only looks good but also performs great with little to no frame rate drops during our tests. If you didn’t get the opportunity to play Horizon Forbidden West on PS5, this edition of the game should serve you pretty well too should you have the PC hardware to back it up.

Game Engine 

The RE Engine has proven to be a more than capable tool for rendering complex worlds brimming with imagination, and it’s also a pretty flexible engine capable of delivering not only survival horror games but also semi-open-worlds as seen in Monster Hunter and Street Fighter 6. Dragon’s Dogma 2 also uses the same engine to power its large open-world environments, but it’s safe to say that this specific use case showcases the limit of the RE Engine. 

The RE Engine might excel in terms of micro-level fidelity, but it mostly falls flat when it comes to the macro-level rendering of large-scale worlds like this. Certain elements like character models and global lighting look pretty good, but other rendering parts like asset quality and world streaming pale in comparison to contemporary open worlds. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a current-gen game, but its technical makeup makes it feel like it’s still stuck in the past in certain aspects. 

The Rendering Pipeline, Textures, Lighting, And Effects

The game flaunts a surprisingly detailed character creator that lets players make their own characters through a wide variety of sliders and options. It’s an extremely flexible system with options of multiple skin colors, body types, and even different kinds of fur to choose from – and suffice to say, players have been having a lot of fun just experimenting with it all and sharing their stuff online. 

On a technical level, the in-game character models look good with a high polygon budget. Skin meshes are pretty detailed, and characters are donning clothes made out of physically rendered materials that appropriately reflect light according to the materials. For instance, shiny armor plates will obviously reflect more light than other pieces of clothing. 

Hair rendering feels like a pretty standard affair in Dragon’s Dogma 2, which is to say it’s not really impressive in terms of current-gen standards. Thick locks of hair prevent artifacting, but it doesn’t look all that good in action. Hair physics is also pretty primitive, not to mention that there’s also plenty of lip sync issues that make for some pretty awkward cinematics.

Much like the case with most RPGs, there’s also a stark difference in the level of detail between random NPCs that roam across the world and the ones that are crucial to the narrative. The former of these NPCs have lower polycounts, occasionally blurred textures, and clothes that don’t have the level of fidelity as critical characters. 

But what about the world itself? Dragon’s Dogma 2 features a sprawling open world with plenty of large environments brimming with enemies, encampments, and other points of interest. The world streaming works pretty well for the most part, but a big issue with Dragon’s Dogma 2 is the inconsistent asset quality at play. Certain textures like vegetation look pretty good, but other textures like the terrain or encampments don’t flaunt equally impressive texture quality. However, one particularly interesting touch is how blades of grass react to the swinging of swords and player movements alike, which makes the combat feel pretty impactful. 

As for the lighting, Dragon’s Dogma 2 on PC features a ray-traced global illumination solution that does a good job of simulating direct lighting and indirect lighting in a wide variety of different conditions. Reflections also seem to be utilizing a similar technique, but it’s also possible that we might be seeing cube map reflections instead. You see, there aren’t many purely reflective surfaces in Dragon’s Dogma 2’s world, so, it can be pretty difficult to ascertain from just looking at ponds and shields to understand the actual implementation of the reflections. 

Switching gears to the post-processing side of things, Dragon’s Dogma 2 features a rather mediocre set of effects to adorn its base rendering pipeline. Plenty of particles can be seen flying across the screen at any given time during the combat, but the actual quality of those particles isn’t all that impressive, and the same goes for elements like smoke or water effects. On the other hand, volumetric light shafts caused by pockets of light look pretty beautiful in action. So, it’s pretty much a mixed bag in this department.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 PC Settings: Test Bench Specifications And Performance Parameters

Dragon’s Dogma 2 on PC features a pretty comprehensive suite of options when it comes to choosing the best balance between visuals and performance. A quick look at the settings menu reveals a bunch of options ranging from ray tracing to ambient quality and even options related to DLSS and FSR 2.0. There’s also a handy meter at the bottom that shows utilized memory from your graphics card, so you can make more informed decisions on which settings to max out and which to not. 

Our test bench comprises an AMD Ryzen 5950X CPU, an Nvidia RTX 3080Ti, and 32 GB of RAM. We also took note to install the game on a PCI e 4.0 SSD to make sure load times are optimized well. Given our specifications, we were able to crank up the game to the highest possible setting with ray tracing enabled and DLSS Super Resolution set to quality mode at 4K. The performance was mostly mixed at around 45 to 50fps. In order to run the game at 60fps we had to drop Mesh settings to medium and Texture limit to 2GB. After this change, the performance was largely stable running anywhere from 60 to 65 fps.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 PS5 Version – Graphical Modes And Performance

Dragon’s Dogma 2 on the PS5 offers a singular graphics option – a Fidelity mode that runs at 4K with an uncapped 30fps. Going with an uncapped framerate is definitely a risky option in terms of performance stability, but Dragon’s Dogma 2 ran mostly well throughout our tests. The framerate isn’t completely stable, and you will notice considerable dips below the target in certain scenarios but those aren’t too grave to be a dealbreaker. That being said, it would definitely have been really great to have a 60fps option on consoles since Dragon’s Dogma 2 is an action-heavy game and that added responsiveness would have made the gameplay a whole lot better.

PC And PS5 Version – Head to Head Comparison

In our analysis, we observed that Dragon’s Dogma 2 largely has a similar core graphical feature set across the PS5 and PC versions. Both look similar in broad strokes, but upon further inspection, one can definitely spot a few differences here and there. For instance, asset quality on the PC is marginally better than we saw on the PS5. The same can be said for reflections and draw distance, but these are just very minor differences that don’t really mean all that much when you look at the larger picture. 

Draw distance across both platforms is largely the same, though you can crank up distant detail a bit higher on PC than what it’s on the PS5. Shadows and reflections are almost identical across both versions, and we saw little to no artifacting across edges.

Loading Times 

The RE Engine makes good use of current-gen high-speed storage which quickly loads relevant assets into memory. On PC, it takes only 5-10 seconds to load into a save which is pretty quick  and it makes me believe that the game is taking advantage of the Windows DirectStorage API. The PS5 takes a bit longer to load into a save with loading times coming in at around 15 seconds.

Conclusion 

All in all, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is largely a graphically sound game that looks and plays well on both platforms. It might not make full use of current-gen rendering techniques which makes it somewhat inferior to its contemporaries, but that’s just the technical side of the experience. Furthermore, it performs well enough across both platforms, although the addition of a performance mode for the PS5 would have been appreciated. Plenty of attention has also been given to the PC version which is chock full of options and sliders making for a scalable experience across different hardware.

Rise of the Ronin also marks the first time for the developer to enter into an open-world space, so how has Team Ninja adapted its technical expertise to better fit into this box? And how has the developer utilized the power of current-gen machines? We try to answer this and many other questions with this comprehensive graphics analysis of Rise of the Ronin.

Game Engine

Team Ninja has been using its proprietary engine for its previous releases like Nioh 2 or Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, and Rise of the Ronin is also based on the same engine. This engine was previously used to render linear environments with its impressive lighting and animation work, but in Rise of the Ronin, the rendering pipeline has been changed to incorporate an open-world setting. 

It all works on a surface level, but it’s safe to say that the transition is not the smoothest. Despite being a current-gen only game, Rise of the Ronin doesn’t really impress with its texture work, character models, or world streaming technology. While those shortcomings don’t amount to a bad game by any means, Rise of the Ronin wouldn’t go down as a current-gen showcase by any stretch of the imagination. 

Character Models, Lighting And Reflections 

Starting off with the character models, Rise of the Ronin features adequately detailed models with middling polycounts. Skin meshes aren’t as detailed as one would like and the hair rendering implementation is similar to what we have seen in many last-gen games (there are no fine strands of hair that flow to the tune of the winds). 

As for the body armor, we get to see use of physically based materials with occasionally impressive texture work. Much like its previous games, the visual appeal of Rise of the Ronin stems from its art direction and not raw visual fidelity. As such, even if it might not be able to stand shoulder to shoulder against current-gen games in terms of the technical details, it looks pretty good in action regardless. 

As noted earlier, one of the biggest ways in which Rise of the Ronin differs from the developer’s past works is the addition of an open-world setting. Players are free to explore a large virtual space consisting of bustling settlements, lush forests, and much more. Environments look good thanks to plenty of detailed geometry, but asset quality definitely leaves quite a bit to be desired. It’s rather easy to spot a blurry texture while exploring its vast world, and rendering of trees looks rather primitive if you peep into its details. 

The streaming system isn’t perfect either, and there are a couple of problems that quickly become evident after just a couple of hours of play. For instance, the draw distance is visibly low and you can easily make out low poly assets out in the distance. Interestingly, the developer hasn’t made good use of volumetric fog to mask distant details since that would have been a good workaround to hide the inefficiencies of its world streaming system.In addition to this, the level of detail swapping isn’t the smoothest which can make for some choppy gameplay segments as higher poly variants of the same assets are loaded into memory just when you reach that point. 

As for the lighting, Rise of the Ronin uses a ray traced global illumination solution in its RT graphics mode. Apart from that, it seems to be using an image based solution that probably utilizes cubemaps or probably some form of screen space methodology. The lighting data can change depending on the time of day or weather conditions, and the lighting solution does a fairly good job of lifting the scene in different conditions. Indirect lighting obviously works more effectively in ray tracing mode, but the image-based solution does a mostly fine job of simulating bounce lighting albeit in a primitive fashion.

Switching gears on the reflections side of things, the reflections are also most likely utilizing screen space reflections in non RT graphics modes. The accuracy of these reflections is fine, but it definitely lacks a bit in terms of the actual resolution of the reflected surfaces. Notice how the reflections of surroundings in the water change with your perspective, but the actual resolution is somewhat blurry for a current-gen game. 

Graphical Modes And Performance 

Team Ninja provides not one but three distinct graphics options to choose from. There’s a Graphics mode that likely runs at 4K 30fps complete with all the graphical bells and whistles minus ray tracing. Then we have the RT mode that drops down the resolution but adds ray tracing to the mix. Finally, there’s the performance mode which runs at a lower resolution but targets a 60fps target instead. The critical graphical parameters mostly remain similar across all three modes, but the addition of ray tracing makes the reflections, lighting, and shadows a lot more crisper than other modes. 

As for the performance, the Graphics mode is the most stable out of the bunch. It might run at a lower framerate, but they aren’t too frequent to be much of an issue. The ray tracing mode on the other hand has better visuals, but that comes with the cost of inconsistent frame times that result in a choppy gameplay experience. Lastly, there’s the performance mode which makes for a smoother combat experience but the graphical compromises don’t make a strong case for this mode. 

Loading Times And Conclusion

Built exclusively for the PlayStation 5, the loading times are pretty snappy. Team Ninja makes good use of current-gen storage options to quickly load players into the game. Fast travel only takes a couple of seconds to teleport you to a new area, while loading into a save can take around 10 seconds. It’s not the quickest out there, but it’s fast enough to not be a glaring problem.

How Does It Stack Up Against Ghost of Tsushima?

Ever since Rise of the Ronin was first revealed, players immediately took note of the similarities between it and Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima,  so it’s only fair that we compare the two in technical terms as well. Despite being a last gen game, Ghost of Tsushima takes the upper hand in terms of the character models which are a lot more detailed than we get to see in Rise of the Ronin. 

Similar findings can be seen in other departments, and while Rise of the Ronin might make use of ray tracing for GI or reflections, Ghost of Tsushima is a more polished game that looks a lot more gorgeous. Of course, a lot of that can also be attributed to its world design as well. Where Ghost of Tsushima tries to portray a beautiful virtual escapade, Rise of the Ronin’s world is deeply ravaged by war and conflict. Sucker Punch makes good use of bright colors for its world which makes it instantly appealing to the eye, while Rise of the Ronin’s world is largely composed of macabre colors. 

Obviously, Ghost of Tsushima had the full backing of PlayStation, so it’s a given that it would look better than what Team Ninja have delivered with Rise of the Ronin. But given that Ghost of Tsushima was released back in 2020 on the PS4/PS4 Pro with the Director’s Cut releasing in 2021, one would expect Rise of the Ronin to at least come close to Sucker Punch’s offerings in the technical department but this is clearly not the case. 

Conclusion

From a technical perspective, Rise of the Ronin feels like a first open world draft for Team Ninja. After all, it’s the developer’s first outing in this space, and there are definitely quite a few problems when it comes to the technical transition involved here. But despite those technical quirks, Rise of the Ronin is an okay looking open-world game with plenty of merits thanks to its great art style. But, from a pure technical perspective, Team Ninja still has ways to go if it wants catch up to the industry’s leading visual behemoths.