After promoting Hundreds of thousands of copies on PlayStation and bagging a number of awards (with a Sport of the 12 months right here and there), Santa Monica Studio’s God of Battle Ragnarok lastly lands on PC by way of 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 today, each by way of gameplay and visuals. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to name it one of many best-looking titles on PS5 – a side which carries over into the PC model.
In contrast to a number of different PS5-to-PC ports, God of Battle 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 a great job bringing God of Battle (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 if you happen to dreaded the earlier title’s concentrate on Temporal Anti-Aliasing, it returns as soon as extra. You may alter the modes with Native, Balanced and High quality accessible, and there are different scaling choices accessible, 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 appears gorgeous could 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 gentle coming into the cave and the campfire inside, is extremely real looking.
PC Efficiency
In fact, for an action-adventure title with a giant concentrate on fight, the way it runs is equally essential. The excellent news is that God of Battle 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 by way of the wintery Midgard, battling enemies because the snow realistically deforms below your ft, the body fee is fairly strong 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, akin to it’s, solely actually emerges when touring to Svartalfheim. Upon exiting the Realm Between Realms, the atmosphere might be seen in low-polygonal kind – even the clouds are absent for just a few frames. Whereas each are briefly noticeable and rapidly fastened, 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 fastened in brief order as effectively.
It’s removed from a dealbreaker – odd to see this on PC however not on PS5. Nonetheless, we additionally observed the body fee taking just a few dips throughout fight in the identical space, even when it wasn’t a very intense sequence. The body fee was secure when venturing out onto the water by way of boat and when climbing the dilapidated buildings. Maybe these dips are because of the space’s measurement 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 appears completely beautiful and delivers some strong efficiency general.
PS5 vs. PC
On the PS5, God of Battle Ragnarok gives two modes – High quality and Efficiency. The previous delivers native 4K whereas the latter targets 60 frames per second, operating pretty strong all through. Nonetheless, the Efficiency mode’s decision is dynamic, averaging round 1872p. Apart from the body fee, each modes are comparable in high quality and particulars, differing solely in higher LOD and lighting in High quality Mode. Decision and body fee will range even additional if you happen to go for High quality Mode at 40 FPS or Extremely-Excessive Efficiency Mode.
With the PC model and the fitting {hardware}, you get the most effective of each worlds – native 4K and 60 frames per second (or increased). That is arguably how the sequel needs to be skilled and having further choices for additional refining the picture high quality or enhancing the constancy past the PS5 model is noteworthy. In fact, that’s not even factoring in options like Extremely wide-screen help. Apparently, we did expertise one crash, which occurred when the GPU utilization all of the sudden shot as much as one hundred pc. It’s possible because of a bug since the remainder of our expertise noticed no related points or hang-ups.
Loading Occasions
You’d be hard-pressed to seek out any “true” loading screens for God of Battle Ragnarok on both PS5 or PC. The sport jumps proper right into a cinematic and into gameplay shortly after the principle menu pops up, with no cuts in between, sustaining the cinematography and presentation of its predecessors. If something, the “loading” is masked by way of situations the place Kratos has to squeeze by way of crevices, and even when traversing the Realm Between Realms.
When initiating quick journey between the realms, there’s a two-second flash earlier than coming into the Realm Between Realms and one other one-second transition earlier than venturing into Svartalfheim on PS5. The “loading” instances in these situations are roughly the identical on PC, although you might spot just a few milliseconds of distinction. Both manner, it’s spectacular, even with a number of the rougher edges seen within the PC model.
Conclusion
A lot has been stated about God of Battle Ragnarok and the way it concludes the Norse saga. From rants about the way it might have ended in another way to alternate story instructions. Regardless, only a few have argued towards the sport’s technical capabilities or inventive 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.
Taking part in 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 superb. 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 measurement of the expertise (particularly when factoring within the expansive end-game in comparison with 2018’s reboot), Jet Pack Interactive has achieved a superb 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 Battle Ragnarok is an unforgettable expertise and nonetheless among the best action-adventure titles in gaming historical past.
