After promoting Hundreds of thousands of copies on PlayStation and bagging a number of awards (with a Recreation of the Yr right here and there), Santa Monica Studio’s God of Warfare Ragnarok lastly lands on PC through Steam and the Epic Video games Retailer. For a cross-gen title that launched in 2022, the story of Kratos and Atreus, as they await the battle of Ragnarok, holds as much as this present day, each when it comes to gameplay and visuals. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to name it one of many best-looking titles on PS5 – a aspect which carries over into the PC model.
Not like a number of different PS5-to-PC ports, God of Warfare Ragnarok isn’t dealt with by Nixxes Software program of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered and Miles Morales, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Aside, and so forth fame, however Jetpack Interactive. The studio did job bringing God of Warfare (2018) to PC, however how does Ragnarok fare?
Graphical Choices and Settings
Our check bench consisted of an AMD Radeon 5950x, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, 32 GB of RAM, and an NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD. There are 4 graphical presets to select from – Low, Medium, Excessive, and Extremely – with choices to change the standard of Fashions, Textures, Lighting, Anisotropic Filtering, Shadows, Reflections, Atmospherics, Tessellation and Ambient Occlusion.
Options like Latency Discount, unlocked body charges, and Body Era are additionally current however should you dreaded the earlier title’s deal with Temporal Anti-Aliasing, it returns as soon as extra. You possibly can modify the modes with Native, Balanced and High quality obtainable, and there are different scaling choices obtainable, like AMD FSR 3.1, Intel XeSS, and Nvidia DLSS with DLAA.
For our check, we went with Extremely settings, AMD FSR Body Era enabled and DLAA at 4K decision. To say that it seems gorgeous can be an understatement. Simply from the opening alone, the pores and skin texture high quality of Kratos and the way it’s illuminated, each from mild getting into the cave and the campfire inside, is extremely sensible.
PC Efficiency
In fact, for an action-adventure title with an enormous deal with fight, the way it runs is equally essential. The excellent news is that God of Warfare Ragnarok on PC is initially no slouch. Shader compilation is a fast 15 seconds, and the opening sequence showcases nice draw distance (which might be aided by the fog) and destructible components with no slowdown.
Traversing via the wintery Midgard, battling enemies because the snow realistically deforms beneath your toes, the body price is fairly stable all through. Even when Kratos and Thor are battling out, the transitions between fight and cutscenes with all of the atmospherics and lighting nonetheless look nice.
The issue, resembling it’s, solely actually emerges when touring to Svartalfheim. Upon exiting the Realm Between Realms, the atmosphere will probably be seen in low-polygonal kind – even the clouds are absent for a couple of frames. Whereas each are briefly noticeable and shortly mounted, it takes a second or so longer for the foliage within the foreground to load. Some pop-ins are additionally seen additional away however that is mounted in brief order as effectively.
It’s removed from a dealbreaker – odd to see this on PC however not on PS5. Nonetheless, we additionally seen the body price taking a couple of dips throughout fight in the identical space, even when it wasn’t a very intense sequence. The body price was secure when venturing out onto the water through boat and when climbing the dilapidated buildings. Maybe these dips are because of the space’s dimension and sheer quantity of graphical constancy, from the environmental textures and water to distant particulars and backgrounds. Whereas it’s due for some optimization, the PC model nonetheless seems completely beautiful and delivers some stable efficiency total.
PS5 vs. PC
On the PS5, God of Warfare Ragnarok affords two modes – High quality and Efficiency. The previous delivers native 4K whereas the latter targets 60 frames per second, working pretty stable all through. Nonetheless, the Efficiency mode’s decision is dynamic, averaging round 1872p. Other than the body price, each modes are comparable in high quality and particulars, differing solely in higher LOD and lighting in High quality Mode. Decision and body price will fluctuate even additional should you go for High quality Mode at 40 FPS or Extremely-Excessive Efficiency Mode.
With the PC model and the best {hardware}, you get the very best of each worlds – native 4K and 60 frames per second (or greater). That is arguably how the sequel needs to be skilled and having further choices for additional refining the picture high quality or bettering the constancy past the PS5 model is noteworthy. In fact, that’s not even factoring in options like Extremely wide-screen help. Curiously, we did expertise one crash, which occurred when the GPU utilization immediately shot as much as one hundred pc. It’s seemingly as a result of a bug since the remainder of our expertise noticed no related points or hang-ups.
Loading Instances
You’d be hard-pressed to search out any “true” loading screens for God of Warfare Ragnarok on both PS5 or PC. The sport jumps proper right into a cinematic and into gameplay shortly after the primary menu pops up, with no cuts in between, sustaining the cinematography and presentation of its predecessors. If something, the “loading” is masked via situations the place Kratos has to squeeze via crevices, and even when traversing the Realm Between Realms.
When initiating quick journey between the realms, there’s a two-second flash earlier than getting into the Realm Between Realms and one other one-second transition earlier than venturing into Svartalfheim on PS5. The “loading” occasions in these situations are roughly the identical on PC, although chances are you’ll spot a couple of milliseconds of distinction. Both method, it’s spectacular, even with a number of the rougher edges seen within the PC model.
Conclusion
A lot has been mentioned about God of Warfare Ragnarok and the way it concludes the Norse saga. From rants about the way it may have ended in another way to alternate story instructions. Regardless, only a few have argued towards the sport’s technical capabilities or creative benefit. There have been no doubts about the great thing about its environments or the way it’s leveraged the PS5 {hardware} to ship a visually spectacular expertise.
Enjoying it on PC evokes the identical magic as first taking part in it on consoles, and the optimization, full with specialised options and extra choices, is excellent. Sure, some areas could possibly be improved, particularly when venturing to Svartalfheim, together with no matter occurred when exiting a portal into a brand new realm. However, contemplating the elevated scale, and sheer dimension of the expertise (particularly when factoring within the expansive end-game in comparison with 2018’s reboot), Jet Pack Interactive has accomplished a wonderful job translating all of it to PC.
If you wish to expertise its visuals in native 4K, the PC model is the winner by sheer advantage of constancy and choices. Nonetheless, whether or not you play on PS5 or PC, God of Warfare Ragnarok is an unforgettable expertise and nonetheless among the best action-adventure titles in gaming historical past.
