Four years after its initial PS4 release, Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima comes to PC, ported by Nixxes Software. Initial impressions of the port were favorable, but after spending a week or so with the game, we’re able to give you a much more detailed evaluation of the conversion, suggest some optimized settings, and offer those all-important PS5 comparisons.
It may be a new engine that Nixxes has to deal with, but the overall framework of the game has a lot in common with previous ports – which is generally a very positive thing. This means you get a settings menu that allows you to tweak however you want, your changes will take effect in the background in real-time – no need to reboot! And as usual with Nixx, there’s support for dynamic resolution scaling and all major upscaling technologies, along with FSR 3 and DLSS 3 image generation (although the new FSR 3.1 spatial upscaling upgrades aren’t included). Nixxes also freed the FSR 3 frame-gen from the need for FSR 2 spatial upscaling, which is a welcome change.
As for the quality of the upscalers, we see the usual hierarchy, although DLSS has some problems with depth of field effects in this title, with some unsettling judder. This shows up with XeSS, but to a lesser extent, while it’s not a problem at all with FSR. It would be nice if this could be fixed in due course.
When it comes to fluidity and smoothness, I have good news and bad news. On the plus side, there’s no shader compilation stuttering, but even so, the smoothness of the presentation is compromised by a peculiar camera issue that causes the motion update to be out of sync with the frame rate. I find it distracting with v-sync and the game doesn’t feel smooth. This doesn’t happen in the PS5 version as far as I can tell and gives Ghost of Tsushima PC a less stable look. I hope this can be looked into for future patches.
Also problematic is how Ghost of Tsushima manages to saturate PCI Express bandwidth – the key interface between the system and the GPU. Basically, the higher your bandwidth, the more stable your frame times. PCI Express 3.0 at 8x has very poor frame-time performance compared to 16x. So if you have a modern GPU that only works with eight lanes, and you’re using an old board that only supports PCIe 3.0, you may have problems. However, even PCI 3.0 at 16x – tested on an RTX 3070 – has problems. This is a pattern that other users have noted and seems to apply to Nixxes PlayStation ports and I think it needs to be addressed.
Another improvement Nixxes needs to look at is performance with limited memory graphics card. If you have an 8GB GPU with the display and texture resolution set too high, you will have sporadic performance that is hard for the user to deal with. At the very least, I’d recommend that Nixxes implement a VRAM meter in the settings to inform the user what’s going on, or simply handle VRAM more intelligently. For example, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora doesn’t even have a texture setting. The game itself handles mip streaming quality and uses DX12 resources in an automated way based on available GPU memory. This minimally degrades textures if needed and never allows the user to reduce their performance or frame rate.
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When it comes to PC vs PS5 comparison, the most obvious differences are in image quality and frame rate. Cutscenes on PS5 are locked to 30fps and can run at any framerate on PC, dramatically increasing their fluidity at 60fps and above. However, not all elements of the game have been upgraded to run at any frame rate, as a number of particle effects are awkwardly animated at low frame rates, such as dust along the ground or other distant particle effects, which can sometimes crash the game. awkward look.
The image quality is also much better as the PS5 version has a TAA style ghosting effect that the PC doesn’t have. However, the biggest IQ win comes from the PC’s access to more modern upscaling solutions compared to the PS5’s checkerboard rendering. Nvidia DLSS performance mode and even DLSS offer a substantial improvement – considering that the latter uses half the native pixel count of the checkerboard solution.
Unlike Horizon Forbidden West, Ghost of Tsushima upgrades other aspects of the presentation in meaningful ways. One of the biggest is in the foliage LOD, where on the PS5 the greenery moves closer to the camera so you can see bare hills in the distance. The PC pushes it much further, even at just a high setting, preventing pop-up. Based on the comparison to the PC settings, the PS5 version has a lower draw for distance than the mid-range PC, but a density similar to the high setting for narrow grass clumps. On PC, this setting for drawing sheets is annoyingly handled by the general LOD setting, which also affects the LOD of opaque geometry. These elements make the PS5 look similar to a PC. I’d love to see how Nixxes separated the foliage from the existing LOD setup.
| PS5 “Higher Resolution” settings. | Optimized for PC (60fps target) | |
|---|---|---|
| Texture quality | High/Very high | High (8GB GPU up to 1440p+) |
| Texture filtering | 4x anisotropic | 16x anisotropic |
| Shadow quality | High | High |
| Level of detail | Tall (lower than medium leaves) | High |
| Terrain quality | High | High |
| Bulk fog | High | High |
| Depth of field | High | High |
| Screen space reflections | High | High |
| screen space shadows | High | High |
| Ambient occlusion | SSAO quality | SSAO quality |
Another more obvious upgrade over the PS5 version is in the shadow quality. Console shadows get pretty mushy near the camera with obvious shadow map cascading, but you can push it higher on PC. I’d say the PS5 is equal to the high shadow settings on the PC, beyond that they are very high and ultra. For mid-range GPUs, I generally recommend high settings to keep VRAM under control and save performance where possible. Screen space reflections are also upgraded on PC, with the PS5 matching the high setting, which looks good. I wish there were raytracing reflections to eliminate the standard SSR issues.
After these more visible upgrades, the visual improvements on PC are harder to spot. For example, screen space shadows at very high settings have a more complete half-shadow effect, where high settings (equivalent to PS5) distinguish them in a more diffused way. It’s not much of a difference, although it does cost a bit to use the very high setting on PC for minimal return, so I recommend high instead. It’s the same story with volumetric quality, where the PS5 looks like a high setting. You can go over it, but the visual payoff isn’t that impressive.
One area that hasn’t seen a huge upgrade over the PS5 is texture quality – here the PS5 handles the same texture quality as high or very high, which appear to be the same in the views I’ve found. This is a shame as the texture quality is probably the weakest aspect of the game next to indirect lighting, where many of the game’s textures are blurry, especially those used in terrain. Another issue is that on PC, the anisotropic filtering setting doesn’t seem to significantly affect terrain texture quality at a distance – even if it maxes out at 16x at 4K. Either it’s not working or something else is going on.
Another dubious upgrade comes with ambient occlusion – like other Nixxes ports, there are additional AO options available, but the game art doesn’t seem designed around them, as they more conservatively apply AO to the environment. Because of this, I can’t recommend using XeGTAO or HBAO+, as they cost more than the quality SSAO option that the PS5 uses, and don’t provide a quality increase beyond minor aliasing. Again, RT could help immensely here.
With all these optimizations working, we can see big performance gains in certain scenarios – anything up to 33 percent in our tests over the default ultra settings. This can be further improved by using DRS or DLSS, which I definitely recommend for older and slower GPUs.
In short, I think we’re looking at a generally competent PC port of this game. I especially like how it has meaningful graphical improvements in key areas of the graphics like the foliage LOD, which was definitely missing on the PS5. The removal of the checkerboard rendering in favor of more modern reconstruction techniques is huge. Otherwise, it has many Nixxes characters that generally provide a quality experience. That said, this is the studio’s fifth PC port since the acquisition, and perhaps it’s time for some more general improvements – a VRAM counter, or better yet an automated system, along with addressing the PCI Express bandwidth issues I pointed out. I feel like this is a GPU intensive game at ultra settings for visual payoff, although I think most will be happy with a high preset or a very similar optimized setting alternative.