Another decent game ruined by unreal engine

[NeonGrim]

For the most part, I would say this game is a decent 7/10, if I ignore the performance issues. Basically a decent game. I like the art style, music and voice acting. The world is well designed with a myriad of diverse levels which are well interconnected. I would even go as far as put it above dark souls 1 (The first 50% of that game is an 8/10, the later half is a 4/10 since its unfinished, just look at lost izalith, which lands it at a 6/10).

That said, with the performance issues, this game goes straight down to a 5/10. The constant stutter caused by asset streaming / traversal, sudden fps loss that cant even be solved by using FSR and long loading times even when using an m.2 gen 4 ssd are unacceptable. This combined with the awful sharpening that the game suffers from, rather stiff animations and weird settings menu, make it unplayable without tweaking the ini files.

I have a 7900xtx paired with a 7800x3d and 32GB of RAM running at 6000mhz CL 30, the game is installed on a 4tb m.2 gen 4 SSD, with this config I expected to at least be able to run the game at 120fps stable with a mix of mid and high settings (RT off of course).

I can forgive the stiff animations, forced TAA, weird menu settings and a bunch of other things, but not stutters.

This is also not the only game to suffer from such issues. Remnant 2, Ghost runner 2, dead island 2, Atomic heart and even lies of P (saw it on a friends PC having issues) are some of the new games which which are plagued by the same issues, especially asset stutter and general bad performance. This is also nothing new, its been there since UE 3 from my personal experience.

Of course, there are other games that have traversal issues, elden ring when it released was and still is to some extend a hot unfinished mess (NPC quest and markers missing, awful performance and stutters, no preshader compilation, unbalanced and constant crashes), It was almost as bad as cyberpunk 2077 on release (which now has been fixed for the most part). But most of those games get fixed at some point, but since this game is made in UE, I highly doubt that the stutters can be addressed.

Because of this I cant recommend this game, since the performance is just to bad. Look
HEXWORKS, I would love to see this IP succeed, it basically feels like blasphemous in 3d, adding a level of grimdark that all other souls like fail to reach in their visual style. I also love the two worlds mechanic, but with the state of the game, its unplayable. I dont know if consoles have it better, since UE tends to run better on those platforms, but at least here on PC, cause of the performance issues I would call this game a flop.

[Blacksmith77K]

Originally posted by SeekerOfAsh:

I have a 7900xtx paired with a 7800x3d and 32GB of RAM running at 6000mhz CL 30, the game is installed on a 4tb m.2 gen 4 SSD, with this config I expected to at least be able to run the game at 120fps stable with a mix of mid and high settings (RT off of course).

And THAT is exactly the problem: the expectations!

When the UE3 was released, no system was capable of delivering 120fps, when the UE4 was released no system was capable of delivering 120fps, why should it be any different with the new UE5?!

The engine is developed to supply games for the next 10 years, how nonsensical it would be if at the START of a new engine the hardware could already deliver 120fps... ideally in 4K... that's so stupid!

Your PC can easily reach 60fps in native 2k and high settings, so what's the problem?

I'm playing on 4080@7700x and have to seriously ask: what long loading times? Which traversal stutter (they are under 16ms)? Which frame drops? Certainly, if the highest frame rate is 140fps and the lowest is 55fps then you can cap the game at 60fps.


But expecting games to run at 120fps straight away with the UE5 is very strange...

EDIT:

When Crysis was released in 2007 NO ONE was talking about bad optimations of the game. NO ONE complained that the devs were incompetent, the only thing that existed: Can I run Crysis on my PC!

You were happy when it ran at 30fps in 1024x768 pixels... But today?! "Uh new engine with a lot new features, nanite, lumen, raytracing, the devs are incompetent, it doesn't run in ultra settings 4k@120fps"

come on... really?!

[königplatzen]

I have a 7900xtx on 5800XD3 and the game runs quite smooth and stable with 4K 60FPS at 60% scaling. Compared to Elden Ring, it feels very fluid.
When I go to 30% scaling, I reach fluid and stable 120 FPS, but it doesn't look very nice and I only use it for some faster boss fights.

[Commissar]

what do these 7/10 6/10 4/10 numbers mean?

[Terrifyingly Trash at Total War]

Performance issues? You already have the hardware to steamroll passed that problem, i don’t see why that’d be much of a complaint, but if you really wanted too, grab the stuttering and performance fix mod from nexus mods

[NeonGrim]

Originally posted by Blacksmith77K:

Originally posted by SeekerOfAsh:

I have a 7900xtx paired with a 7800x3d and 32GB of RAM running at 6000mhz CL 30, the game is installed on a 4tb m.2 gen 4 SSD, with this config I expected to at least be able to run the game at 120fps stable with a mix of mid and high settings (RT off of course).

And THAT is exactly the problem: the expectations!

When the UE3 was released, no system was capable of delivering 120fps, when the UE4 was released no system was capable of delivering 120fps, why should it be any different with the new UE5?!

The engine is developed to supply games for the next 10 years, how nonsensical it would be if at the START of a new engine the hardware could already deliver 120fps... ideally in 4K... that's so stupid!

Your PC can easily reach 60fps in native 2k and high settings, so what's the problem?

I'm playing on 4080@7700x and have to seriously ask: what long loading times? Which traversal stutter (they are under 16ms)? Which frame drops? Certainly, if the highest frame rate is 140fps and the lowest is 55fps then you can cap the game at 60fps.


But expecting games to run at 120fps straight away with the UE5 is very strange...

EDIT:

When Crysis was released in 2007 NO ONE was talking about bad optimations of the game. NO ONE complained that the devs were incompetent, the only thing that existed: Can I run Crysis on my PC!

You were happy when it ran at 30fps in 1024x768 pixels... But today?! "Uh new engine with a lot new features, nanite, lumen, raytracing, the devs are incompetent, it doesn't run in ultra settings 4k@120fps"

come on... really?!

Crysis 1 came out and it melted PC, but by tweaking the game you at least could achieve a stable frame rate without experiencing any major stutters. Ofcourse depending on your machine you'd be stuck at 30-60fps, but at least there was no stutter. With UE traversal / asset streaming stutter has always been an isssue. Load Bioshock infinite and you will get to experience that, even with top of the line gear like mine.

If the only issue was that my hardware cant provide the performance needed, that would be fine, I'm willing to reduce settings further or even use up scaling tech, but while this game looks good (excluding forced TAA and that horrible sharpness filter), the performance impact that it brings doesn't correspond with the fps loss, crysis 3 a game that came out in 2013 looks better than this game, which is fine, cause not many can compete with crytek. Monster hunter world came out years ago and it looks better. Remant 2, Ghost runner 2, Atomic heart and this game all suffer from the same issue which is all linked back to UE, and like LOTF the performance doesnt correspond to the visual fidelity.

A game that is well optimized is doom eternal, it not only has its uber shaders which reduces the shader counts to the hundreds instead of the thousands, but it perfectly streams in data as needed, which leads to a stutter free experience.

Finally the stutters experienced in this game cant be fixed by just upgrading your hardware or downgrading settings to low, since they're related to how the game loads in asset. Instead of continuously streaming the needed textures and geometry and using smart garbage collection to get rid of unneeded asset, the game has fix points in the level where it unloads and reloads all of the needed data, even if you installed the game in your ram, the game would stutter. We're talking about a 100ms+ frame time spike, you wont fix that with any hardware. Its like shader compilation stutter, the way to fix it is not by upgrading your hardware, but by coding it properly. You will experience these stutters regardless of settings or resolution and if you dont see that, then thats BS cause its not a matter of hardware, but software.

That said, from my experience most gamers seem to be oblivious to stutters, which baffles me. I saw this with my friends until I made them aware of it, which lead to me cursing them basically.

UE is an engine that tries to do everything, which means it fails at everything. An engine should be tailor-made for a specific genre of game, some enignes like the source engine are better for shooters, others like the red engine are better for third person openworlds, because of this I dread every time a developer drops their inhouse engine for UE.

I find it funny how Capcom, one of the worst developers out there when it came to PC releases managed to make a 180 turn with their new RE engine and make some of the best optimized games on PC.

Edit: Ofcourse you then have games like RE4 remake which suffer from traversal stutter, but from what I understand this was caused by DRM.

[NeonGrim]

Originally posted by königplatzen:

I have a 7900xtx on 5800XD3 and the game runs quite smooth and stable with 4K 60FPS at 60% scaling. Compared to Elden Ring, it feels very fluid.
When I go to 30% scaling, I reach fluid and stable 120 FPS, but it doesn't look very nice and I only use it for some faster boss fights.

You must be doing something wrong, since you should be able to get 60fps at 100% scaling with a 7900xtx. My friend with a 7900xt is able to get 60fps with 90% scaling and disabling RT.

Either way, you will experience frame time spikes regardless, since they're caused by asset streaming, not settings. Also In what world is it ok to use 60% resolution scale and call that good performance with our level of hardware?

Finally, I agree, ER is a horribly coded game, which is why I mentioned it. I like Froms games, I played most of them excluding most of their AC games, but that wont stop me from criticising the horrible performance in their game. When the best running version of your game is the PS4 version running on the PS5, closely followed by Linux with proton, you know you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up.

[NeonGrim]

Originally posted by Commissar:

what do these 7/10 6/10 4/10 numbers mean?

Just me rating the game, I call it a LOTF is a 7/10 but goes down to a 5/10 cause of the performance issues. DS1 is a 6/10 cause its only 50% finished.

[königplatzen]

Originally posted by SeekerOfAsh:

Originally posted by königplatzen:

I have a 7900xtx on 5800XD3 and the game runs quite smooth and stable with 4K 60FPS at 60% scaling. Compared to Elden Ring, it feels very fluid.
When I go to 30% scaling, I reach fluid and stable 120 FPS, but it doesn't look very nice and I only use it for some faster boss fights.

You must be doing something wrong, since you should be able to get 60fps at 100% scaling with a 7900xtx. My friend with a 7900xt is able to get 60fps with 90% scaling and disabling RT.

Either way, you will experience frame time spikes regardless, since they're caused by asset streaming, not settings. Also In what world is it ok to use 60% resolution scale and call that good performance with our level of hardware?

Finally, I agree, ER is a horribly coded game, which is why I mentioned it. I like Froms games, I played most of them excluding most of their AC games, but that wont stop me from criticising the horrible performance in their game. When the best running version of your game is the PS4 version running on the PS5, closely followed by Linux with proton, you know you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up.

The GPU is at 70% load mostly, but some areas have higher load. Maybe I could pump it up a bit, since they improved performance.
Anyway, I rather have stable 60 FPS without dips and It's good enough for me, while I agree, that it could be better. Those frame spikes are quite minuscule and seldom for me.

[Commissar]

Originally posted by SeekerOfAsh:

Originally posted by Commissar:

what do these 7/10 6/10 4/10 numbers mean?

Just me rating the game, I call it a LOTF is a 7/10 but goes down to a 5/10 cause of the performance issues. DS1 is a 6/10 cause its only 50% finished.

What metric are you using to rate the game?

[strangerism]

you are very judgemental. Unless you have real numbers and statistics to show how many people have been affected with save bugs, progress and corruption we are only talking of hearsay.
Not denying there were bugs, I was not at release only bought the game this xmas on sale, despite some inherent jankiness thankfully I have not experienced any of the sort, maybe they managed to fix these things. Mistakes can be made but these devs showed some commitment, they did not cash in and left you dry. It's also their first game and a big budget game nonetheless, it is not that easy to turn a big project into a coherent final product as this one and with so many people involved. The credits list is more than thousand people.
It's a shame that publishers have to rush games at release with issues but at the end of the day it's their money in the pot and developers have to do what they have been told to do.

Edit, on a side note you have all the rights to be upset of this sort of issues just experiences varies and maybe the game is not that bad right now

[NeonGrim]

Originally posted by Commissar:

Originally posted by SeekerOfAsh:

Just me rating the game, I call it a LOTF is a 7/10 but goes down to a 5/10 cause of the performance issues. DS1 is a 6/10 cause its only 50% finished.

What metric are you using to rate the game?

Just based on my gut feeling. If a game doesnt have anything that I would call offensive and decent gameplay with somewhat interesting story, atmosphere and or aesthetics, then its automatically a 7/10 which in my book is solid. If anything I rate gameplay the highest followed by art direction and OST, which this game checks pretty well. Performance is also a huge factor. But Its nothing objective, just my subjective opinion portrait in a score system.

[NeonGrim]

Originally posted by königplatzen:

The GPU is at 70% load mostly, but some areas have higher load. Maybe I could pump it up a bit, since they improved performance.
Anyway, I rather have stable 60 FPS without dips and It's good enough for me, while I agree, that it could be better. Those frame spikes are quite minuscule and seldom for me.

They happen often enough that its a huge distraction for me, since I've very sensitive to such things. 1-2 min of level traversal leads to a stutter, thats one stutter to much.

I'm able to get around 80-90fps in the hub area, which is one of the heaviest for some reason. If you want I can send you my settings. Also there is a config file on nexus mod that fixes some of the issues in the games, which I found to actually work, I could also link you that mod.

[NeonGrim]

Originally posted by evil#unite:

No no no, dont blame the engine in first place, because it cant think. Blame the people who have witnessed the issues of this engine and still decided to use it anyways.

In the first 2 weeks, there was a report of a corrupted save file every 10 minutes and that is just the main issue. There were and there are countless others aswell. Yeah its true, the developers pushed out a lot of patches. But ask the people who have lost dozens if not hundreds of hours and all their progress. Who now face a complete diffrent game and cant play on with their first character.

Look at the playernumbers, this game was actually expected to be played a bit more and longer with its coop mode. But many refunded or simply dont look back after they lost their progress. For them, its like they have thrown their money out of the window and now comes the real absurd and shocking part. This game ist still advertised as a finshed product and every day you can see a new or even multiple reports about corrupted save files.

The people see this game in the store and think "hmm a finsihed game for 60 bucks" and buy it. Who would think that in a game for 60 bucks, the save function would not work as it should? Yeah right nearly noone and they play and play and play. After some hours ... bam, they are hit by the save file corrupion bug and lose all their progress. They then come here and ask "what, this is an ongoing issue since day one, how ist that even possible, i paied 60 bucks for this s**t".

Thats whats going on here since day one without a word from the developers about an upcoming proper solution for this issue. There is no warning in the store, they just let cutomers run into this trap, one after another. If you do somehting like that in another business ... try it (dont).

I did not know of this issue. It seems that now days no game is free of game breaking bugs. ER had the same issue and I was a victim of that, its not pleasant even after you finish your play through.

Yeah this is unacceptable.

[NeonGrim]

Originally posted by strangerism:

you are very judgemental. Unless you have real numbers and statistics to show how many people have been affected with save bugs, progress and corruption we are only talking of hearsay.
Not denying there were bugs, I was not at release only bought the game this xmas on sale, despite some inherent jankiness thankfully I have not experienced any of the sort, maybe they managed to fix these things. Mistakes can be made but these devs showed some commitment, they did not cash in and left you dry. It's also their first game and a big budget game nonetheless, it is not that easy to turn a big project into a coherent final product as this one and with so many people involved. The credits list is more than thousand people.
It's a shame that publishers have to rush games at release with issues but at the end of the day it's their money in the pot and developers have to do what they have been told to do.

Edit, on a side note you have all the rights to be upset of this sort of issues just experiences varies and maybe the game is not that bad right now

UE stutter is a well known issue that has plagued the engine for years. You can see digital foundry review on the game and see a clear frame chart displaying traversal stutter. Me and a friend of mine (I run linux he runs windows), experience the same stutter while playing solo or in coop. And yes, drivers are up to date and the game is installed on an M.2 gen 4 ssd, on both machines. I currently cant provide any numbers when it comes to how many players are affected, but if I had to guess the number is around 100% since this is an issue with the game, not hardware.

When it comes to the save bug, I just learned about that. But if this is the case, its an unacceptable bug. ER had the same issue where I lost my 100h character (had to spend 10-15h rebuilding her) and its not a pleasant experience.

[strangerism]

Sure frame stutter is annoying but it something I can easily close an eye if at the end of the day whats in the game is good enough. Not going to loose sleep because of it or go raging about in every forums.

Of course it's reasonable to point it out to customers or developers about the issue but is not something that I will put as a red flag for buying. Different case if the game would run at sub 30 fps on mid range pc, in that case I would say it's trash don't buy it.

I talk for myself, of course, where I can run the game at 60ish fps most of the time