Optimize Settings for Rise of the Ronin

Hello i'm going to give you some optimize settings for this game, and we are going to analyze them one by one 😊.

TLDR - Recommended Settings

With the first settings you are barely going to lose fidelity and you are going to have a more consistent image quality, even improving ultra settings in some aspects, remember that most of this game settings are broken (Explanation in "in Depth" section)

Recommended Settings:
-Shadow Quality: Select Standard unless you experience the issue where trees shadows keep shifting or moving out of place continuously, in that case Ultra is the only setting that fix that.
-Ambient Occlusion: Low
-Model Quality: High
-Model Texture Quality: Standard
-Number of Models Displayed: High
-Wind Sway: Standard
-Anisotropic Filtering: Off (activate it through Nvidia Control Panel, not in the game), or just use X4 in the game (Not recommended).
-Effect: Standard
-Motion Quality: High
-Global Illumination: Low
-Screen Space Reflection: Standard
-LOD Distance: Standard, although you can use high or ultra if the pop-in is distracting for you, sadly this setting is broken, higher you go the worst the grass is going to look in motion.
-Terrain: Standard
-Grass Density: High
-Subsurface Scattering: On
-Volumetric Quality: Low
-Event Quality: Standard
-Crowd Density: High

Next we have Post-Effects, this one are for personal preference in my case i prefer this settings:
Post-Effect Resolution: High
Motion Blur: Off
Depth of Field: Off
Chromatic Aberration:Off
Vignetting: Off
Noise Filter:Off
Lens Flare: On
Bloom: On
Mach Band Noise: On
Color Precision: On

RayTracing:
Ray-Traced Reflections: Off ( Barely noticeable in most cases, and in some cases makes some aspects looks worse)

In Depth

First of all always select your screen native resolution even if it's a high resolution, after that you can use upscalers, i recommend using DLSS at Quality level. if you don't have a Nvidia card use FSR3 instead. And please never use native resolution without upscalers, if you want to use native just use DLSS with DLAA or FSR native quality, this options renders the game at Native Resolution but with improvements in AntiAliasing.

Use Framegen if you can (RTX 40 and RTX 50 series) with Nvidia Reflex ON. don't use on with boost ( this can lower your fps)

Explanation of the game settings:

-Ultra setting of Shadow Quality is the only one that prevent the shadow of trees to shifting from it's place. So that's important because that's pretty distracting to see shadows moving so unnaturally.

-Global Illumination: i suggest low because there's no improvement after low and you are going to lose fps anyway.

-Ambient Occlusion: Low is the best i don't recommend standard because you are going to lose almost 10fps in some cases, and the same thing as before, no visual improvement after that.

-Number of models displayed and Crowd Density you can use high unless you are highly cpu bound. If you are not cpu bound you are going to gain like 1-2 fps with lower settings so is not worth it, leave it on high.

-Model Texture Quality: is pretty broken as i said before it makes the ground looks blurry but makes the trees looks better the higher the setting, i prefer a consistent and stable choice so i suggest Standard.

-Model Quality, Wind Sway, Motion Quality are broken, you are not going to notice any changes while modifying those settings, feel free to leave them at high or ultra because is barely notice the fps gains. And is the safest choice.

-Screen Space Reflection: is a weird situation. From low to high there are subtle changes in water, But ultra setting barely improve reflections on metallic surfaces but makes the water looks way worse in certain specific camera angles but better in some others, its a personal preference, i think standard is the best due to stability.

-Anisotropic Filtering: This setting is broken and is going to reduce your fps considerably in game not because is expensive this is due is not well implemented. So i suggest to leave it off and activate it through the Nvidia Control Panel (X16 option). If you can't do that then just select x4 option from the game.

-LOD Distance: i suggest standard for stability, because is pretty broken in general. In some cases the higher the worse or better (depends on the case). This setting makes the quality of the grass looks horrendous in motion that's why i prefer standard.

-Terrain: i suggest standard, this settings elevates the ground but improve the Lod distance quality of terrains too, but reduces the fps a lot in ultra, so i think standard is the best.

-Grass Density: High because this setting is very noticeable, and going lower than high is going to reduce the quantity and density of the grass a lot.

-Subsurface Scattering, this improves how the light works on the skin, is barely noticeable when you play, is more noticeable in a close-up inside cut-scenes so leave it activated.

-Volumetric Quality: i suggest low or standard at the best. This is for the fog, steam or volumetric light. Is barely noticeable after low.

-Event Quality: Leave it on Standard because this reduce effects and FPS of the cut-scenes if you use low.

The Post Effects options on default tries to give a more cinematic look to the game, these are purely personal preference, although they can reduce or improve your fps but not so much.
In general if you want a more cleaner image disable this effects: Vignetting, Chromatic aberration, Noise Filter and Motion Blur.
If you want to improve your fps a little bit you can disable Bloom effect, i think this is the more demanding option of Post Effects.
Anyway i recommend you to go back to Recommend settings section and copy the Post effect settings from there