{"id":1079,"date":"2023-04-15T00:20:05","date_gmt":"2023-04-15T00:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=1079"},"modified":"2023-04-15T00:20:05","modified_gmt":"2023-04-15T00:20:05","slug":"nioh-pc-settings-and-performance-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=1079","title":{"rendered":"Nioh PC Settings and Performance Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nioh<\/i> is a really, really<\/i> good game. I played it on PS4, so I\u2019m fairly confident in saying that \u2013 as far as Dark Souls<\/i>-esque games go \u2013 it\u2019s probably the best that wasn\u2019t made by From Software, and one of the few that evokes the Souls<\/i> feel of gradual progression, exploration, creeping dread, and \u201chow the hell am I meant to kill this\u201d, only with slightly more action-y gameplay and its own little twists on combat, equipment, and levelling.<\/p>\n

Nioh<\/i>\u2018s PC version is, uh\u2026 rather more problematic.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As problematic as fighting knights while dressed as a guard from the Tower of London.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s go through this in the usual manner. I\u2019m running on an i7-3820 with 16GB RAM and a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. I can run pretty much anything. Remember this, because it\u2019s going to matter a bit later.<\/p>\n

I had a mild heart attack on noticing that Nioh<\/i> required 75GB of hard drive space, but surprisingly, it\u2019s incredibly well compressed. The download is a (relatively) mere 29GB, which is far more reasonable \u2013 and 75GB, while large, isn\u2019t too<\/i> bad for an edition that contains the game plus its three DLC expansions.<\/p>\n

After that, we\u2019re into the settings. Most of these are also available in game, but we\u2019ll cover them in the launcher instead.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Screen Resolution:<\/b> 3840\u00d72160, 2560\u00d71440, 2048\u00d71152, 1920\u00d71080, 1600\u00d7900, 1366\u00d7768, 1280\u00d7720<\/p>\n

Rendering Resolution:<\/b> High, Medium, Low<\/p>\n

Shadows:<\/b> High Quality, Medium Quality, Low Quality, Off<\/p>\n

Frame Rate Cap: <\/b>60, 30<\/p>\n

Display Mode: <\/b>Windowed, Borderless, Fullscreen<\/p>\n

Ambient Occlusion:<\/b> On\/Off<\/p>\n

Camera Motion Blur:<\/b> On\/Off<\/p>\n

Dynamic Reflections:<\/b> On\/Off<\/p>\n

In game, you\u2019ve got all of these except for Screen Resolution and Rendering Resolution. You do<\/i> also have the presets, but I\u2019m not sure if these only change the visible in-game options, or if they also fiddle with the rendering resolution and the like.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cCustom\u201d aside, there are also four presets. Lowest quality puts everything at absolute minimum; Highest quality maxes everything out (except Camera Motion Blur, for some reason). Then there are \u201cActions\u201d and \u201cCinematic\u201d, which mimic the slightly odd PS4 options: \u201cActions\u201d (which I\u2019m assuming is meant to be \u201cAction\u201d) lowers the quality but sets the framerate to 60, while Cinematic raises the quality and sets the framerate to 30.<\/p>\n

This being a Souls<\/i>-like, save points (and having to quit out of the game to change rendering resolution) makes getting comparison screenshots a bit of a pain, so here\u2019s a shot of a save point at the highest and lowest quality settings. As ever, you\u2019ll want to click for bigger to really see the differences.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

High.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Low.<\/p>\n

Inevitably, the biggest difference is Rendering Resolution. Presumably, setting this to Low renders the game in a lower resolution and then upscales it to whatever your display resolution is; likewise, setting it to High does the opposite. I\u2019m not sure of the exact details of the rendering resolutions, but as the comparison makes plain, it\u2019s pretty noticeable.<\/p>\n

So yeah, not too bad, although not very many options. Aaand now we get into Koei Tecmo port territory.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start off with the controls: this is yet another game which believes that mouse and keyboard is a fad, and basically directly maps controller inputs to the keyboard. Only<\/i> the keyboard. There is no mouse support at all<\/i>. Here\u2019s a screenshot from the PDF manual unintentionally explaining why you should never, ever touch the keyboard controls. Ever.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

U, H, N, and semi-colon for the camera. Yeeeeup.<\/p>\n

As far as I can tell, there\u2019s also no way to redefine the keys. You can switch to various \u201ctypes\u201d of control, which changes which controller button does what, but I\u2019m pretty certain these leave the keybinds where they are and just change what each keybind does<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t worry, though. If that\u2019s not enough to convince you not to play without a gamepad, there\u2019s a fucking baffling<\/i> bug which utterly kills the framerate if you don\u2019t have a gamepad plugged in.<\/p>\n

I started Nioh<\/i> up without a gamepad plugged in, and suffered stuttering and freezing every second. I quit out, lowered the settings, restarted, and discovered that the framerate had actually dropped further. I quit out, set the framerate cap to 30FPS, and was still<\/i> getting the stuttering, meaning that the framerate was now technically lower. Plug in a gamepad and start up the game? Silky smooth 60FPS.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Ah, yes, the famous keyboard D-pad and trigger buttons.<\/p>\n

I mean, I\u2019d argue that you shouldn\u2019t touch this game with a pole if you don\u2019t have a gamepad, but apparently Koei Tecmo agree so much that the framerate makes it even more<\/i> unplayable if you try. Also, Alt-F4 brings up an \u201care you sure you want to quit\u201d text box, but it\u2019s in Japanese. Which probably says something about the attention to detail paid here.<\/p>\n

Odder still is that, while PS4 pads work fine all of the in-game prompts are for Xbox controllers. I wasn\u2019t expecting any keyboard prompts because ha ha Koei Tecmo, but considering Nioh<\/i> was originally a PS4 game, I figured there might be an option for PS4 button prompts. Apparently not.<\/p>\n

Oh, and occasionally the launcher settings don\u2019t actually save, or they do<\/i> save but the game ignores them. It\u2019s\u2026 odd.<\/p>\n

These are just the issues I\u2019ve encountered, for what it\u2019s worth; a bit of internet browsing brings up yet more issues. There are those who have framerate issues regardless, and those who claim that having the shadows set above Medium basically destroys your framerate. So do a bit of browsing and hunt for more information, but buyer beware.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Yeah, that\u2019s quite Dark Souls<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In short, Nioh<\/i> is a hard console port, and not a very good one at that. The concessions to PC are a constant 60FPS (assuming you\u2019re using a gamepad, because\u2026 reasons) and 4K resolutions, but other than that, you\u2019re basically playing the console version.<\/p>\n

Great game \u2013 really! \u2013 but Nioh<\/i>-t a very good port. With a decent PC, a gamepad, and suitably low expectations for port quality, you\u2019ll hopefully be able to enjoy this genuinely wonderful game. With a constant 60FPS and all three expansions included, this is also arguably the best version of the game, but only if you can put up with the many flaws and shortcomings of this port.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nioh is a really, really good game. I played it on PS4, so I\u2019m fairly confident in saying that \u2013 as far as Dark Souls-esque games go \u2013 it\u2019s probably the best that wasn\u2019t made by From Software, and one of the few that evokes the Souls feel of gradual progression, exploration, creeping dread, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1397],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}