Hands On: Monster Hunter Wilds Performance Certainly Isn't Perfect on PS5, PS5 Pro

We're not quite Digital Foundry (maybe one day, you never know), but we wanted to put a quick article together on how Wilds runs on PS5 and PS5 Pro. We've played it extensively on both, so it seemed like a worthwhile effort.

For what it's worth, the game's performance didn't impact my experience too negatively (as evidenced by the positive review), but I can see it being a bit of sticking point for some people, especially on base PS5.

I mostly played on the Prioritize Framerate setting, which provides the smoothest frame rate by some distance.

I can try to answer some more specific questions if anyone's got them.

I saw the DF video, Performance mode looks awful and the Series S version is a joke

Oof, sounds rough. Making me reconsider my preorder..

The game is so weirdly blurry, even on PC. Both World and Rise are much visually sharper. I guess I'll have to hold off for a couple months until it's performance and visuals are improved.

It's a shame that "isn't perfect" will be enough to launch an avalanche of negativity from gamers who seem to think the AAA game dev cycle should take 10-11 years instead of 7-8. If it's "much better" than the beta, it's good enough for a credible World sequel. Unless you prefer moaning to gaming, that is.

@Mikey856 I love Horizon but its gameplay is much simpler than MH. Apples and oranges

"Prioritize Framerate mode offers the smoothest gameplay experience, but comes at a pretty heavy cost to resolution, with a noticeably blurrier picture than either of the other two modes."

Prioritize Resolution it is then. ***** the blurry visuals, it was terrible in FF7 Rebirth and it is terrible here.

So people bought a €800 PS5 Pro so they wouldnt have to chose between performance and visuals, but still have to chose between performance and visuals. Im glad i decided to wait for the PS6.

Seemed pretty much perfect to me on the PS5 Pro on the last BETA. So this is weird to me...I played at the balanced mode I think...

@Mikey856
Nah, but Guerilla went with an in-house solution for upscaling tech and temporal AA.

Also, it seems Capcom is using FSR 1.0 instead of FSR 3.X which would give them access to better upscaling tech and better temporal AA, which in turn would let them use better looking assets in performance mode.

@Mikey856 There's a lot more to optimization than being 'crap' devs. And, indeed, a lot more to being a good dev than optimization.

Balanced with cap for Pro it is 👍 a mostly constant 40fps with RT.

ps5 pro costs as much as a GPU that can run the game much better

@ShogunRok
Really good article.

If I had one suggestion it would be to just state 'image quality' instead of 'resolution', as without pixel counting it probably isnt always clear, and image quality is more important than resolution anyway (eg I have seen on a number of occasions a lower resolution with PSSR being a much better image quality than a higher res with say FSR).

Please take this as me being positive, because the last thing I want to see is "but digital foundry said it was only X resolution different", particularly as you may not be able to count resolution, but at 100 hours you may well be in a better position than DF will be to comment on overall Image quality.
They also do tend, more and more imo, to get rather bogged down in (sometimes silly) little details rather than looking at the whole.

It still boggles my mind that we have to choose between performance or frame rate on a machine that costs $700.

I don't buy games there were designed for hardware that won't be released for 3 years.

When the PS6 is released, I might consider such games, which by then will be £7.99 in a sale.

If they are online games and old news/obsolete by then, I just won't buy them at all.

Only way these people will learn. If you keep buying these titles, they will keep doing it.

@CVCubbington @Nalim
Its an easy choice for me unless the devs have really messed up (or left a legacy mode in from base that has no point on a Pro)

• always Performance mode, with uncapped 120hz mode if available, and leave PSSR on if there is a toggle (it always looks better overall, particularly in motion).

@Icey664 exactly what I said.. Looks like I should’ve bought this on Steam but I didn’t have a lot of faith in my 3070ti because of the 8GB of vram. This one should’ve been a wait and see type of deal but I love MH so it is what it is…this one time 😩

Edit: watched the DF analysis and will be waiting for after release of this before handing over my money

@Rich33 same. I cannot stand 40FPS in this game tbh. Loss of RT is sad but I think its good without. Pushsquare did not mention PSSR or am I wrong? Maybe they patch this in the future. Still... the RE Engine is old as you can see in DragonsDogma2.

@Rich33 That's some good feedback, thanks! You're right, a more general description of overall image quality would probably serve most people better.

@ORO_ERICIUS Yeah, we're not quite sure about PSSR here. We think that the game looks sharper on the Pro — particularly in the performance mode — which could be PSSR's doing.

But there's no mention of PSSR in the game's graphics settings, so we can't be 100%.

I just don't think the RE Engine is particularly well suited to open worlds. I've not played the full game but it was clear from the benchmark tool that the consoles were going to be in for a rough ride and I found it to be more demanding than the visuals justified. I also wouldn't be sad about the loss of RT as this isn't a strength of the engine either

I really appreciate this effort and I would like to see more „analysis“ of performance on all big titles from now on. Performance matters so much these days, as games are getting more on more expensive it should be a polished experience from day one.

@carlos82 From everything I've read, Wilds suffers from the same CPU-related stress as Dragon's Dogma 2 — and that's where the engine's really starting to stumble.

Basically, both games are doing a lot of stuff with dynamic interactions, animations, and AI routines. They're just really busy, and asking a lot of the hardware's CPU.

Capcom did manage to optimise DD2's CPU usage through updates, but it's still not perfect. I'd argue Wilds is in a slightly better state overall, but it's clearly got similar issues (and looks noticeably worse than DD2 from a graphical standpoint).

It'll be interesting to see how Capcom tries to improve Wilds, especially since I'm sure there'll be a lot more complaints on release.

@Cerny We've done similar articles for games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Dragon's Dogma 2 in the past — games that have had issues running on PlayStation.

But we can certainly cover more games like this if people want to see it.

@ShogunRok thank you for clarifying. Cannot wait to play this.

@ShogunRok yeah on that benchmark run it dropped my 5800X3D below 60fps for a sustained run during a section in a village with a handful of NPC's, which is why I feel the engine is perhaps just better suited to the small environments of Resident Evil and Devil May Cry.

That said, hopefully they continue to optimise it, as I still like to see developers using proprietary engines than just relying on Unreal which has its own issues

@ORO_ERICIUS

Ah, sorry for the confusion - as per @ShogunRok , I havent read/heard anything about PSSR in this game - My comment was more generalised using PSSR as a (playstation centered) example of something that makes resolution very, very, hard to determine by just looking at the image.

Even DF has difficulty telling if PSSR has been used sometimes, and they look for certain tell tale signs.
Eg from my experience, one area where PSSR excels is image detail in motion, whereas FSR for example is usually much worse in motion and can have an image ghosting effect not seen in many other upscalers.

I put most of this down to developer optimisation.
Sony will show them the way when they’re in house AAA start arriving with Ghost 2 this year.
Producing on a single platform the PS5 and Pro also will help the Sony studios.

Did mark cerny say something about not having to pick between performance and fidelity anymore? I seem to remember that being a thing once…. I got a pro because I prefer framerate but would like to get the best out of the games I buy. Starting to feel like I got snake oiled a bit.

I might start with resolution to see if I can stomach the frames, otherwise I'll take the muddy screen. You really need those better frames for the tougher fights.

And yet in your review you gave the game a 9 out 10, ultimately encouraging this type of behaviour.

It's a great review and quite comprehensive, but if you and other reviewers keep brushing these issues aside, you're harming the consumer by making little of games being released in inexcusable states.

After the hot mess that is Dragon's Dogma 2, this was very much expected.

Capcom are responsible for what is hands down my favourite game of the generation (heck, probably my favourite game this century) - Street Fighter 6 - but I won't reward them with a sale when the likes of this aren't entirely fit for purpose.

@nomither6 Yes, because as we know, a GPU is all you need to run games. All this talk about CPUs, compatible motherboards, PSUs, SSDs, cooling and even a case also being required is utter nonsense.

Just a psa on details left out of the push Square performance article.
Resolutions for the 3 modes:
Resolution : 1650p
Balanced: 1200p
Frame rate: 720-900 p

All modes are using the now 4 year old Fsr1, the worst upscaling option on the market to try and get this blurry washed out gray mess to look current Gen. Colors are flat and mostly. Brown and gray (also like dd2).

Unfortunately this looks to really be a Capcom problem as Dragon's Dogma 2 still genuinely looks and runs like garbage because it's just pushing their aged and unoptomized tech too far as it can't handle larger spaces. It almost feels like some of these games were sitting Half Baked for a long time in development because it does not make sense at all to be using fsr1 in 2025. it is widely accepted as the worst upscaling option and has made many many games look terrible in motion.

I think Capcom needs to do the same thing from soft needs to do which is actually in best in upgrading their engine.

Games with this level of visuals shouldn't require a high end pc to brute force acceptable performance and vocal fidelity. Especially coming from such large development operations, time frames, and accompanying budgets.

Unfortunately, if DD2 is anything to go by, the hope that performance will be significantly improved post release is unlikely.

@VaultGuy415 lol exaggerate and victim blame a lot?
Have you actually seen it? Performance mode looks like it's running on the switch. Blurry textures and low resolution. It looks awful. It's not really acceptable for a AAA game and i am sure Horizon doesn't look like that.

@Nalim Hilarious, isn't it? Couldn't make this stuff up

@SASnake Because i factored in already having those assets. with PC you save more money long term than console.

So a big win for Pro players then as expected.

Sooo it's Dragon's Dogma all over again, got it.

@Nalim Non Pro people love repeating this BS, Cerny never actually said choice is being removed. Anyway enjoy your blurry mess on base PS5 i shell be playing the game at a more consistent 60fps with far less blur.

@HRdepartment He never said that, go back to the video and listen to his exact wording.

@ryanburnsred will wait for the DF ps5 pro analysis, but I may cancel my preorder too..

I plan on playing the game on PC so I'm the outlier here, but even then I feel my CPU will likely brute force a lot of performance due to it being way above recommended, but I don't think it'll be perfect there either.

I did see a lot of comparisons on DF's video, and performance is pretty rough in the visual department. Shame that so much visual fidelity has to be tossed to hit 60 fps.

The performance mode looks like ass tbh

Decima and CryEngine be praised.

Everything else seems to have big issues this generation and devs are really struggling.

@DennisReynolds Where did i write Cerny said that? Im not even mentioning Cerny in my comment, learn to read. And i wont be enjoying a blurry mess, bc im not paying for a game that doesnt perform as it should. Im fine with keeping my money, just like i did with DD2.

@ShogunRok does this include the day one patch or no?

@twitchtvpat
If I remember correctly, I think in the review comments they said it does.

Console gamers shouldn't have to choose in my old opinion. Have the game running in it's best possible state for each system, leave the graphs and charts to the PC gamer crowd.
If you want choice, the best frame rates, etc build a PC. If you want to plug and play (to an extent), get a console. All this nonsense has turned console gamers into frame rate & resolution snobs, it's exhausting.
Capcom still own this generation though.

@Nalim Learn to read your own comments. You were repeating a very misquoted quote from Mark Cerny that non Pro players love repeating. The choice between graphic settings was never going away its just now easier for Devs to make the divide smaller or in the case of games like Kingdom Come 2 remove the divide all together. Ultimately its all up to what the Devs want and its why a lot of Devs are using the extra power to pump up visuals on quality modes hence why Wilds has Ray Tracing on quality and balanced mode on the Pro as the extra power allowed it.

Exactly, what resolution is referred to as 'high', 'medium', 'low'. Is it 4K for 'high', 1440p for 'medium', and 1080p for 'low'? As I have the base PS5, I guess choosing the Balanced Performance Mode as the article mentioned is best, but I think I can handle 30fps Prioritise Resolution Mode, unless the Monster Hunter game doesn't suit that.

@DennisReynolds Let me ask you again, where did i quote Cerny or where did i mention Cerny at all? Its a simple question, isnt it?

I thought it was just the desert and the tone but no, the HDR, lighting or whatever to give off a dusty look but no even in other footage it looks terrible in the more dark cutscene inside a house or the jungle looks just as eh.

Even that image, it should look fine and it probably suits but eh I prefer a more clear draw distance because it's just me. But it probably looks more natural then the rest of the game does in motion.

Also Pro not doing enough because they didn't support it well, sigh what is with the eh marketing push for everyone even casuals to get in on it and we have an eh release that's the programmers/artists going a bit far with the visual techniques and making them look terrible.

Marketers need to calm down and let the devs work out the project better it's getting ridiculous.

I'm not even going to play this one but know people that will later on, but yeah I didn't care for the ads and the footage is a bit grainy, dusty or off. I think they should have handled it better. Even the prior trailers weren't visually appealing either.

If it's film grain, HDR and more too many placed over it is just a joke, they should know this by now, they need to use them better not just heap them on an call it a day. XD

World looks better honestly without all the garbage visual features, so Wilds with them on looks horrible.

If it was a different resolution like Forspoken had it's odd resolution maybe but I assume it isn't that either.

For tone or trying to be 'realistic' when it doesn't or look visually different but visually worse by the visual techniques is just so stupid of them.

I don't mean oh we prefer saturation so that is better, I mean it looks terrible how they have applied them or we don't even need them in the first place and performance shows as well.

SW Outlaws was the same bad HDR, eh lighting, too many eh particles and things it doesn't make it look natural it makes it look terrible. XD

@DennisReynolds I’m not going to split hairs over exact wording. I’m just saying. It was sold as a marriage of performance and fidelity. And I feel like it under delivered. Not saying it isn’t better. It is. Just not enough. But it is what it is. I bought it. So I only have myself to blame.

@Nalim "So people bought a €800 PS5 Pro so they wouldnt have to chose between performance and visuals, but still have to chose between performance and visuals. Im glad i decided to wait for the PS6."

You're repeating the whole "remove choice" thing people misquote from Cerny. You're not saying his exact words (no one ever does) but you're repeating the idea people got into their heads when they never listened to what he actually set.

@HRdepartment Cerny says "removing that decision, or at least narrowing that divide is one of the key targets for PlayStation 5 Pro."

That's what he said and that's exactly what we got.

@DennisReynolds Im not referring to what Cerny said, but i already said that twice now. Im referring to people who actually bought the Pro and said they did so because they no longer had to chose between fps or graphics ( literally what i wrote ) on the countless articles on every gaming site. And yet here we are having to pick between fps and graphics. So im not quoting Cerny or referring to anything Cerny said, and nowhere did say Cerny said or promised this.

@DennisReynolds Yeah, even if the Pro was twice as powerful and $1400 you'd have this situation where some devs will continue to offer multiple graphics modes. You just can't enforce a policy for games to only have 1 mode for Pro.

@Orpheus79V Also there's so many different TV's now that having a choice for different visual options matter. My friend still has a 1080p screen from 2008, he never upgraded because he doesn't care about 4K or OLED and stuff so because of that when a game offers say 720p or 900p res he doesn't feel it like i do with my 4K screen. To me a quality might be more appealing but to him it offers nothing because its main appeal his TV can't take advantage off and the blur of the performance mode isn't so strong for him.

I don't know what people are complaining about tbh "I thought we didn't have to choose on the Pro". You don't. The only thing that's missing is RT. It was never said you'd get performance, resolution and RT all in one. A 4060ti is only getting 1080/60 and that's without RT and with a better CPU. So why is the Pro version looking as it does bad?

That being said, I'm still getting the game & am very excited about it!

I actually enjoy having the options to choose which mode I want to play my games on my display that i spent money on. Seem like some people want to go back to the days of locked framerates and resolution on a console..yeah, right. With modern tv supporting all sorts of specs: 1080p, 2160p, 60hz,120hz, hdr/non-hdr, vrr/non-vrr..etc etc... That's just not going to happen.

Might try the balance and the framerate. Comparing each and see which is better for my eyes. Of course frame rate is my main priority but i do love the game look so gorgeous at the same time 😅

Hopefully a patch will coming soon. No matter what,this game definitely day 1 for me. Huge fan since psp

Thank God for some good reporting... now I can sleep easy at night knowing that in performance mode on PS5(vanilla) the resolution is low. Phew... coz I was worried it might be comically low... low by comparison is perfectly fine by me.

Now... just a small question... how low is low (just in case we don't have the same yard-stick)?

Edit - and no, I dont go to PushSquare for techincal details... but given you tabulated it, I couldn't resist.

@DennisReynolds I'm not going to get into "who said what - what did they imply" argument... I just want to know, is it just me, or when did you have such an oddly 'jarringly off' animated gif for your avatar? Maybe you've always had it... but the slight jittery movement comes across more disturbingly manic than interesting... but perhaps that's just my mood (tonight for me).

Apologies if it's always been thus... it just suddently hit me... that's weird.

@Oz_Who_Dat_Dare Its just a gif and always been like that. Its shot like that in the show hence the movement.

@DennisReynolds I'm just a little disturbed because I never saw it move... but (and don't take it the wrong way) I guess I just never spent enough time to notice. It's kinda subversively subtle... as I said, slightly instilling a sort of manic energy to what is otherwise a static image.

But - that's me most probably (meaning definitely) over-thinking it.

@Ravix Id Tech is fantastic too. Whatever CoDs engine is as well.

The weird part for me is the game looks a lot more dull artistically (the colors are so muted) than World's biomes. It all feels so PS3/Xbox 360.

@breakneck I agree the game palette looks a little flattened. It seems HDR isn't really catered to. I find it odd that you choose PS3 and 360 as your comparison though, that gen had fantastically colourful games. I think it might have been when we started to see some grittier titles but that's then snowballed each generation IMHO.

Pre-ordering it - but I do have a bad feeling about this one.
I can't cope with less than 60FPS in actions games - so I'll be putting up with the very low-res blurry version of it, unless I ever decide it's worth upgrading to a PS5 Pro one day.

The beta was terrible performance-wise - very low quality image, and even then didn't feel like it was hitting 60fps at all while I was playing it.

The perfomance reviews suggest it's mostly hitting 60fps in performance mode in the final release - I just hope they didn't achieve this by downgrading the visuals even more than the already low quality visuals in the beta.

@CamPatUK Oh I meant the grey brown shooters that were most popular then.

Fantasy games were great during that period.

So DF just dropped their Pro video and yeah its the best way to play the game. 1080p with PSSR on performance mode that hits 60fps nearly all the time and the image is way less blurry.

As per @DennisReynolds post above the DF review for Pro version is up (PS5 was yesterday) and the basics of it, as I read it, are that they and this article agree with each other more or less, so good job @@ShogunRok , and as I said its great to have an opinion / mode detail on a site like this which considers how the game looks / runs overall.

Pro does indeed have better resolution in all modes, but more importantly, much better image quality in all modes, RT in the 2 sub 60fps modes, and better framerate in framerate mode than base PS5.

It does use PSSR, but not always fully - which sounds a bit odd to me, but thats what they say. I said it before above - but no way do I expect pushsquare to comment on this, nor is it really relevant to an article like this - the end results image quality it what counts.

The caveat I get from reading their reviews is that whilst it looks/runs a "lot better" on Pro, the overall look of the game on all systems is not to the level you would expect from 'comparible titles' on that system, so it doesnt look good compared to other Pro games, on Pro, or other PS5 games on base PS5.

Their mode of choice was the framerate mode on Pro.

@Rich33 Thanks for pointing this out, I've given the DF article a read myself and it seems totally in-line with my own experience on the Pro.

We'll be covering their findings in an article tonight if all goes to plan!

@ShogunRok
Yeah, not the best look as it appears as though they sort of used Pro to 'fix' it, though I suspect we will see a fair bit of that going forwards.

Lets hope they are busy working on some post launch optimisations for all versions!

Blah blah blah. Graphics blah blah. The game is gonna be awesome.

After seeing the quality and frames on PS5 so glad I got the PC version. I only have a Ryzen 5600X and 4060ti (8GB), but hit 60-80fps on 1440p with DLSS (balanced) and Frame Gen mine you that's with texture Resolution on High and Filtering on Highest. Looks fine on 4K monitor (probably look better on a 1440p monitor though). Still have issues with Texture loading when turn around even with one of the faster Samsung NVME SSD. Probably Capcom fault.