Neue Rezensionen von Kaldaien

Denuvo paid me to write this
Game doesn't support AutoHDR on Xbox or PC. Game is capped to 60 FPS on Xbox and PC.

Get PC version if modding these problems away doesn't bother you. Don't expect it to have any advantages over the console version (or vice versa).

AMD GPU OWNERS: Do Not Buy On PC.


I cannot dedicate any time to properly fix this game after hurricane Ian... but I at least found out why it takes > 2 hours to compile the game's shaders on AMD hardware.

The game is limiting the number of asynchronous shader compile threads to 1 as part of its install script (agsDriverExtensionsDX11_SetMaxAsyncCompileThreadCount (...)).

The first time install on AMD GPUs is being gimped by compiling 38,000 shaders one after the other on a single CPU core, while NVIDIA spawns 1 compiler thread per-core.


If you have an AMD GPU, it's quite likely you won't finish compiling shaders before your refund eligibility runs out.

Hopefully Valve is as forgiving to all AMD users as they have been to me...

This is effectively a watered down Shin Megami Tensei game. It is your standard devil summoner stuff you will be familiar with if you have played other ATLUS games, but without the annoying calendar mechanics of some of their titles. Evidently the game has a story, but feels like a distraction at best.


Technical Stuff:

Game uses an older version of the Unity engine, pre-dating Flip Model[learn.microsoft.com] support. For proper performance you need to either force Fullscreen Exclusive (yuck) through command line switches or just inject Special K and it will automatically convert Borderless Fullscreen to correct Flip Model, handle gamma, etc.

Game is not compatible with Auto HDR on Windows 11 due to the previously mentioned lack of Flip Model support.

Special K's own HDR features work beautifully and are where the game starts to shine, provided:
1. You set 'Bypass sRGB Gamma' in SK's HDR control panel
   
2. You enable 8-bit and 11-bit render pass remastering

Be Warned:

Game uses the native Steam Input API and XInput simultaneously and you will get double button presses, drifting analog stick input, input icons changing incorrectly and other wonderful bugs. You should disable Steam Input in the game settings; you should do this as a general rule in all games :)

The only reason I am not giving the game a negative review for its use of Steam Input is because if you disable Steam Input, the game correctly uses platform APIs as a fallback unlike most recent titles using the Steam Input API (*cough* Tales of Arise *cough*)

This game plays itself while your PC's not even turned on. May affect refund eligibility.


Delete Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve\Steam\RunningAppID and Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve\Steam\Apps\ and then restart the Steam client.

Unreal Engine 4 games re-write all of the sub-keys under Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve\Steam\Apps\ when they start, likely in an attempt to fix this bug.

Stay the hell away from this game. You can't go more than a couple of meters without a hitch. That wouldn't be so bad, but unlike the developers who thought it was a good idea to release the game this way, I have working eyes. I find it impossible to focus on the story they're trying to tell when every couple of seconds is a hitch and sequence of stutters.

I can only recommend this game to blind people. But I imagine all the Quick Time Events are nigh on impossible without eyes, so, yeah... this game has no viable market until it stops hitching.

Don't for a second try to blame this on Denuvo -- Denuvo is not a free pass for developers to shovel crap this broken onto PC. The actual developers deserve full credit, and Denuvo is just a distraction they benefit from when it takes attention away from them and their shoddy workmanship.

Is my weeb showing?

---

Special K (22.6.2+) fixes the following

1. Incorrect Windows 10 version check code that fails even on Windows 10 systems and prevents users from playing (error message followed by exit)
   
2. Various sources of stutter
   
   • They weren't Denuvo -- shocker!

It adds

• Arbitrary framerate support (game ships locked to 60)

I hate giving nearly every release a negative review, but here we go again :-\

Where to start?

If you were hoping for anything uniquely different than emulating -- ban me for saying the naughty word, I dare you -- the original PS1 game, you will not find it. Achievements are the only thing the Steam release does that an emulator would not do better.

Under the hood, things are ugly. The only part of the game that actually renders using D3D11 is the game's UI. They give plenty of high-res UI assets and an insanely high resolution font that won't even load on Intel GPUs (textures larger than 128 MiB are not required by Microsoft to work in compliant D3D11 drivers and of course that means Intel users get the shaft as usual), but there's zero hope of doing anything like a re-texture mod since the game isn't even rendered using a PC graphics API.

Making matters worse, the actual render rate of the game is decoupled from the UI framerate. You can use all the monitoring software in the world and you're not going to get an accurate measure of the game's actual framerate or the severity of its stuttering and slow downs. I can't quantitatively measure any of that stuff, but I can tell you it -feels- wonky as hell with definite uneven frame pacing between each UI and game frame.


Tl;Dr: I think the game's only saving grace is its price. $19.99 is just low enough that you might not care you could have bought the game used at a yard sale for less and had a better experience. Buy the game because you have never played it before, not because it's anything special.

Can't even bother to correctly initialize the D3D12 pipeline cache library for shader caching.

This port is garbage, we can hope that FROM patches it over time. While I can and have fixed a couple of D3D12 performance issues in the game, it comes at the expense of access to all online functionality. That is a step much too far.


UPDATE 3/21/22: Nightly build (v 22.3.21.2) of Special K fixes achievements not unlocking. You can use the framerate unlock, HUD toggle, HDR fixes, PS4 button mod and D3D12 performance fixes in Special K without losing achievements.

When did I buy this game? Must be great if I have never been asked to look into problems it has; two thumbs way up

Uses SteamInput and only SteamInput; cannot recommend until this dependency is removed. Game will break randomly with Steam client updates, just like Tales of Zestiria did.