Rise of the Ronin's PC Port Panned by Media Ahead of Release 1

Rise of the Ronin – one of 2024’s tentpole PS5 exclusives – is making its way to PC on 11th March, and a media embargo has lifted allowing press to discuss their experience.

While the core campaign is identical to what’s already available on Sony’s system, the performance is attracting a lot of criticism. To summarise the gripes from a variety of outlets, Koei Tecmo has failed to effectively optimise this port, and it demands a disproportionately powerful rig to deliver an acceptable experience.

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VICE writes: “It took a while before I could finally get to a place where my PC would actually let me experience Rise of the Ronin as it should. I met the recommended specs, but there were plenty of visits to the graphics menu to tweak things.

“If I set VSYNC to a certain parameter, my game would run at half speed. Sometimes, it looked like a watercolour painting, rather than an accurate depiction of the Bakumatsu era. And more often than not, I saw enough framerate spikes that would drive a lesser man insane. Pair this with some textures not loading in, and I was in for a slightly visually inconsistent experience.”

WCCFTech concurs, noting that it expects poor to mixed reviews on Steam when the title launches next week, largely due to its performance.

Rise of the Ronin wasn’t exactly praised for its presentation when it launched on the PS5, but it has slowly been recognised as something of a cult hit on the console, and comes roundly recommended these days.

Perhaps, if you haven’t played this yet, you may be better off sticking with the PS5 version for now. Granted, it’s not the best looking game on the console – but at least it runs reasonably well out of the box.

[source vice.com, via wccftech.com]