Recent reviews by Panakamanana

23.09.23 edit: after many hotfixes and patches, on my 5th playthrough, the biggest difference I've noticed is that CPU load is now only around 40-50% on average. GPU and RAM load is the same. However, I've cranked up the level of detail settings and some of the texture ones to ultra with everything else mostly on high, with not much of a difference compared to my previous playthroughs fps wise.

Some of the seemingly random areas where I'd get frame drops in the past, are now fine. I'd say they definitely improved the game, but then again I wasn't one of the people having issues. I can live with the crashes that still happen every now and again, because the settings I'm currently playing on require slightly more VRAM than I have, so I'm not surprised when the game does crash. The GTX 1080 is god tier nonetheless. So is this game.

TLDR initial review:

If you have sort of an outdated but still solid rig like I do – 9700k (not overclocked), GTX 1080, 16 gigs of RAM, 60 hz monitor, playing at 1080p with V-sync on – and you’re on the fence about buying the game, here’s my experience.

I bought it two days after launch, after the second hotfix was released, after going through several hundred reviews, plus a few reddit threads and some gameplay videos. Shaders took 45 mins to build (it sped up after 40-50%), I didn’t try playing it during this time. Once done I spent another 10-15 mins tinkering with the settings and kept the VRAM at 99% of the 8 gigs that my GPU has (6422 MBs allotted, with the rest going to OS + other apps, according to the game). This left me with an hour of playtime to decide if I wanted to refund it or not, which was enough, and I ultimately decided to keep it.

Settings were a mix of medium and high:
- Animation quality – high
- Geometry settings – all high except draw distance which I kept on medium
- Texture settings – all high
- Lighting settings – mostly high with a handful on medium, based more on what the game’s explanations and example screenshots were
- Reflections settings – on/75, except real-time reflections quality on medium
- Shading settings – on/full resolution
- Post-effects settings – off (depth of field and motion blur, no thanks), bloom resolution on half
- Visual effects settings – volumetric effects on medium, lens flare on half
- Resolution scaling was on default, 100.

Even with these settings, this is the best-looking game I’ve ever played. And as much as I’d want to play it on ultra settings to see if it makes a big difference, I can’t justify upgrading my rig for one single game, when I can still play anything else on usually high to max settings.

According to the game’s performance stats which I had enabled for the entirety of the playthrough, CPU load was anywhere between 40% - 70% and GPU 89% - 99%. VRAM used on average was between 6.4 - 6.5 gigs, with a max of 6.6.

Framerate was mostly between 50-60, except inside buildings where it would sometimes drop to mid 40s. I had 2-3 major stutters which seemed random, and also had 3 crashes, again random (after 8, 12 and 18 hours). Extremely rarely it dropped to mid-30s (the only time I remember actually feeling it was when passing through a church with one of the main characters).

The game is made to be more realistic, and with resources being scarce, as well as having slow movement, it forces you to approach it in a slower or stealthier manner. This is to say that not playing with a stable 60 fps wasn’t as much of a bother as I would’ve expected, since I normally get annoyed at anything under 50 fps.

I didn’t have the jittery mouse movement that some people talk about (never had it in Uncharted either while people still report having it there as well), I didn’t bother with the oodle dll as it was already updated to version 2.9.9 after the second hotfix, and I also didn’t bother changing anything in the Nvidia control panel.

As for game bugs, nothing of note. There seems to be a bug where during quick time events the floating key icon signifying you’re supposed to press something doesn’t actually say what key that is (by default it’s F). I didn’t know if I was supposed to tap it once or mash it repeatedly, I did the latter and didn’t have issues. Texture bugs I didn’t have any. Character model bugs – I had a random NPC do a T-pose for a couple of seconds, and Ellie glitched through an open door at some point. Didn’t notice anything else.

Overall, more than playable, and I was happy with my decision to not refund it. I’d say at least half of the negative reviews are unwarranted. There’s a lot of people not waiting for the shaders to build (though I guess once you install a game, you’d want to be able to play it immediately), people new to PC gaming, people that don't even own the game but are trolling the game's discussions section, but also people with genuine issues on much better PCs than mine. If it weren’t for the latter group, I’d call this a solid port. Load seems to be high on both CPU and GPU regardless of the rig people have, and those with RTX 30 series cards are more likely to have trouble running the game (confirmed by both Nvidia and the devs, as it’s a driver issue, which has apparently been fixed in the latest hotfix).

So, if you have specs similar to mine, and you really don’t want to wait any longer after already waiting 10 years (I couldn’t), I’d say give it a shot. If the shaders take within an hour to build, you should get enough playtime to get a feel for the game before the 2-hour refund window, to then decide if you want to carry on or not. This is the only game that I bought so close to launch and at full price, and I don’t regret it at all.

But of course, make as much of an informed decision as possible before buying. I was sceptical of the large amount of negative reviews, and it turned out well for me.

Outside of performance, there’s nothing to say about the game that hasn’t been said in the countless reviews during its time as a PS exclusive. It is indeed one of the best single player experiences you can ever have.