Four years after its original release on the PS4, Sucker Punch's Ghost of Tsushima has been released on the PC. Nixxes Software took care of the porting of the game.
Digital Foundry has taken a look at the PC version closer look and after the first impressions were already positive, the overall conclusion of the implementation is now positive. Although there is still potential for improvement in future ports.
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Technically improved
The PC version features a customizable settings menu, dynamic resolution scaling, and support for all major upscaling technologies, including FSR 3 and DLSS 3. In terms of upscaler quality, the usual hierarchy is evident, although DLSS in this title has issues with depth of field effects that cause annoying jitter.
The same issue occurs to a lesser extent in XeSS, while it is non-existent in FSR. Nixxes should take another look at that. Another issue concerns the fluidity of the game, as the camera movement does not update in line with the frame rate, which is particularly noticeable when V-Sync is active and makes the game seem less stable on PC than on PS5.
Another problem is the PCI Express bandwidth overload, which leads to unstable frame times, especially with PCIe 3.0 with eight lanes. Even PCIe 3.0 with 16 lanes shows problems with an RTX 3070, which is also confirmed by other users and is more common with Nixxes' PlayStation ports. Additionally, performance suffers on GPUs with limited memory if the screen and texture resolution is set too high. Nixxes should integrate a VRAM counter into the settings or manage memory more efficiently, similar to Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, which automatically adjusts texture quality to available GPU memory.
When comparing PC and PS5, the most obvious differences are in image quality and frame rate. While cutscenes on the PS5 are limited to 30 fps, on the PC they can run at 60 fps and more. Image quality is better on the PC because the PS5 version has a TAA-typical ghosting effect that the PC does not have. In addition, the PC offers access to modern upscaling solutions such as Nvidia DLSS, which offer significantly better performance than the PS5 checkerboard rendering technology. In addition, the PC significantly improves the representation of vegetation and shadow quality.
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Some graphical improvements on PC are more subtle, such as screen space shadows on the highest setting, which have a more complete penumbra effect, and volumetric quality. Texture quality on the other hand remains similar on PC to PS5, which is disappointing as many textures, especially those for terrain, are blurry. Another issue concerns anisotropic filtering, which at maximum setting does not provide a significant improvement to terrain texture quality in the distance. Ambient Occlusion (AO) also does not show any notable improvements by using other options outside of SSAO, such as XeGTAO or HBAO+.
In summary, according to Digital Foundry, Ghost of Tsushima on PC is a competent port that delivers meaningful upgrades in some graphical areas, such as vegetation detail. The elimination of checkerboard rendering in favor of modern reconstruction techniques is a big win. Still, there is room for general improvements, such as implementing a VRAM counter and a solution to the PCI Express bandwidth issues. Overall, it's a GPU-intensive game on ultra settings, but most players should be happy with high presets or optimized settings.