I have a Ryzen 9 7945HX and 4070 mobile, and the game runs great once I figured out how to make it work.
* I will start with the cons:
1 - It took me about 3 to 4 days to finally understand how the settings impact game performance. For example, as soon as you load the game in the city the VRAM spikes up, and after a few minutes it goes
down.
2 - In any case, I try to lower the textures from 2GB to 1GB inside the big city and the VRAM is not a
problem.
3 - The FPS is low by nature inside the city, like 55 at best and 45 here and there, but it’s playable I guess.
4 - Took me 3 hours of tinkering with the settings to fix the shadows in the trees flickering problem by reducing shadow from max to high.
5 - For VRAM, I turned off frame generation and I am all good. Since most of the game is played outside the cities, I get a good 65 to 75 FPS consistent outdoors and the VRAM stays around 6.5GB.
6 - The general con of this game is the optimization and the VRAM spikes (if you‘re not patient enough to tinker with the settings and understand how the settings impact VRAM and FPS): it really did take a long time for me to get it to work smoothly and with high graphics (2GB to 3GB texture outdoors at 70 FPS).
7 - It is possible to make it work if you got an 8GB card and on high settings, just that you will have to spend a few hours of time experimenting instead of playing the game LOL, especially the first two days.
Pros:
1 - There are plenty of things to do in terms of side quests. While roaming around, you will find even more things to do, lots of loot pretty much like Elden Ring in every corner. Some of the side quests will lead you to a long journey in the wilderness, and long travel time with lots of discovery, and this is what I loved most about this game - not your typical fantasy side quests where you could get it done in just a few minutes by slaying a few monsters. I am 24 hours in now and I am still trying to finish one single side quest lol, but I do spend lots of time looting around, crafting, enhancing, and buying/selling stuff - I would leave aside the objective many times just to enter some random cave or dungeons so perhaps that‘s why the some of the sides do feel very long since I am doing extra stuff instead of going straight for the objective.
2 - The combat system is pretty good, but it can get easy if you have a strong party. However I am planning on repeating the game with a zero or low number of companions which could make it harder and more interesting. The combat is very satisfying overall, the skill system is not too crazy to master. The skill tree is simple and straightforward to understand. You don’t have to waste a lot of time trying to understand a complex tree of skills, you get to upgrade a few things and get straight back to the game.
3 - The story is interesting enough, but I don‘t care too much about it since I am here for a more Elden Ring kind of experience and the game does give you exactly that also. The old-school medieval English of NPCs adds to the immersion. The characters are also interesting enough.
4 - The visuals are perfect, as long as you optimize the game correctly. The biggest impact you will have when it comes to blur vs. clarity is the texture toggle; the higher the textures, the clearer everything will be. I bump it up to 2GB or 3GB texture on DLSS Balanced, no frame gen, and everything looks crisp and clear. The game is quite beautiful in its own way.
5 - It does feel like an open-world game given all the extra stuff you could do and discover as you go about completing side quests and the main story. But, it is not as open-world as Elden Ring. It does feel a little more linear than that.
6 - The dungeons are quite satisfying to go through also, and the boss fights are really very well crafted, the AI and how they move and everything. The combat is quite realistic almost; you could get knocked down and your pawn has to help you wake up if you get hit by a massive giant compared to a sword slash from a human bandit.
7 - The physics stuff is also amazing. You can grab small enemies and throw them into the water, throw all sorts of objects onto bosses, or play around grabbing those chubby, harmless pigs and chickens in the wilderness (lol).
Overall:
1 - If you get the performance optimization down, you will enjoy this game a lot. It does take time though.
2 - If you’re impatient and looking for a highly optimized game especially for an 8GB card, you’re going to hate this game because it really does require a lot of time to optimize and get right.
3 - As I said, for example every time I enter the city, and just to be safe, I would have to turn down the textures from 3GB to 1GB. This increases FPS in the city. And I would bump it up again when I go outdoors. I don‘t mind this problem.
4 - I would put it as the game is stable if you are patient enough to make it stable on your own hardware, and work with what you have. If you’re impatient, and want something right out of the box to work perfect, the settings of this game would be considered a nightmare.
5 - The shadows are unplayable except for high or max. The tree shadows flicker like crazy on medium and low to the point it‘s unplayable literally; visually it does break the immersion. I got this game for 10 bucks from AllKeyShop, but I think given the fact that the settings are confusing, time-consuming, and broken, the game is exactly worth 10 to 25 bucks and nothing more to be honest.
