Games Happy

After I had the prospect to play Granblue Fantasy: Relink for our closing Preview final month, I had the prospect to ask the builders some questions concerning the sport – so, I took the prospect to pre-emptively prope some information concerning the sport’s Steam launch, which up till that time had seen remarkably little data shared from official channels. It was throughout this preveiw that I realized that the sport would help as much as 120 FPS on PC, and that Steam Deck wasn’t simply formally supported – however that the staff had supposedly put within the additional work to make sure that it was an incredible expertise on the platform. Whereas each had been nice to listen to coming from the developer’s personal mouths, I used to be hopeful that I may have the prospect to confirm these claims – in addition to the port’s total high quality – previous to the sport’s launch. Fortunately, Cygames opted to do exactly that, and I’ve managed to drop about 60 hours into the PC port within the weeks previous launch.

To get the disappointments out of the way in which early; whereas usually perrformance and stability has been simply nice on PC, some gamers will doubtlessly be disenchanted to study that Relink is a relatively barebones port. Graphics choices are restricted, with solely Texture, “Rendering” and Shadow High quality being toggleable exterior of decision and framerate. Clearly, whereas Texture and Shadow High quality are each self-explanatory – the variations that “Rendering High quality” brings to the desk is way extra opaque. Since you may’t truly change these settings in-game, it has been remarkably troublesome to establish precisely what this setting adjustments, too.

Fortunately as a result of sport unlocking a chapter choose upon the story’s completion, and shout-out to ResetEra person Xils who noticed a distinction in hair physics within the sport between the PlayStation 5’s High quality and Efficiency presets, we had an thought of what to look out for – and a method of hopefully figuring out which of the sport’s presets may match up with the PlayStation 5’s settings.

Sadly, any variations between the three presets had been minimal. Shadows had been essentially the most noticeable one when evaluating Customary to Excessive or Extremely, however in any other case the scenes appeared remarkably comparable – and, strikingly, the hair physics all appeared to seem close to equivalent to efficiency mode on PlayStation 5. Nonetheless, it is price noting that these screenshots had been all taken from my desktop, operating the sport at 120 FPS. Capping the framerate at 30 FPS within the settings resulted within the image embedded under.

The sport nonetheless appears nice with the framerate set above 30 FPS, however it’s clear that hair and fabric physics had been examined with 30 FPS in thoughts. Because of this gamers choosing Efficiency mode on PlayStation 5, or PC gamers concentrating on increased framerates, could have extra subdued physics results in-game as a aspect impact.

As for precise efficiency on PC, I examined the sport on 3 programs; my Steam Deck OLED, my Desktop with a Ryzen 7 7700x, 64GB of RAM and an RTX 4090, and my laptop computer with a Ryzen 7 5980HX and an RX 6800M. Whereas it is nonetheless a restricted set of {hardware}, it ought to provide a normal thought for a way the PC port performs throughout a spread of programs, from absolutely the minimal supported spec, to one of many strongest PCs you may construct.

Beginning with Steam Deck OLED; Cygames’ declare that the sport ought to work nice on the system is well-supported. Whilst you’ll must default to the Customary graphical preset, the sport appears nice on the system itself, and works out for a stable 30 FPS exterior of particular cutscenes in cities the place the framerate may dip; in precise missions, it is a lock 99% of the time, and performs nice. I ended up placing at the very least a dozen hours into the sport this fashion through the postgame, and even throughout what ought to be technically demanding endgame fights, issues maintain up simply nice. The one factor to notice is that through the pre-release interval we needed to power Proton Experimental for the sport in addition; after that, we had no points.

On my laptop computer, I solely put a couple of hours into the sport – however 1440p and with the Excessive preset, I used to be in a position to get round 80~ FPS throughout quests. A stable sufficient displaying, all issues thought-about. Cities would have dips nearer to 60FPS as they’re essentially the most demanding areas of the sport, however I nonetheless felt it was price conserving the sport set to a 120 FPS cap as a substitute of dropping it all the way down to 60. I would think about on a desktop 6700XT system gamers ought to count on nearer to 90~ FPS in most quests with the identical settings.

As for top-of-the-line {hardware}; unsurprisingly, my desktop was good for 4k/120 at max settings. I had completely no complaints with the sport’s efficiency, and I would be shocked if gamers wanted something greater than a 7800XT or an RTX 4070 to realize 4k60 efficiency, minus some dips in cities. Whereas the sport lacks any type of upscaling – like FSR2, XeSS or DLSS – baseline efficiency appears robust sufficient throughout {hardware} that it actually should not be wanted for many gamers, even when it will be a welcome addition. 

So, efficiency is ok; nonetheless, it is not misplaced on me that the sport’s settings appear to do remarkably little for the sport’s presentation. Whereas the frustration may sting rather less with the sport operating simply nice, it is nonetheless a missed alternative to see little or no scalability when it comes to visuals; particularly with how little choices that gamers have within the graphics settings.

Fortunately, there are a couple of extra PC-specific choices obtainable, together with Key Rebinding each inside and outdoors of quests; nonetheless, gamers can solely accomplish that for Keyboard and Mouse in-game. For controllers, the sport does have help for Steam Enter; nonetheless, at the very least on the time of this writing the sport will solely use Xbox button prompts in-game. That is regardless of the builders claiming that native Steam Deck button prompts had been explicitly supported somewhat below two months in the past; a nitpick, for certain, however it will actually be good if customers may have PlayStation button prompts on PC in the event that they had been utilizing their Dualshock 4 or Dualsense controllers.

Whereas I can not converse to everybody, I do not suppose I used to be alone in caring for the PC port of Relink – and whereas it is actually not excellent, I am glad to report that it is from a botched port. It ought to nonetheless find yourself being the definitive strategy to play the sport, whether or not that is perhaps at residence in your desktop, or on the go on a Steam Deck. Granblue Fantasy: Relink performs nice on PC, and regardless of the relative silence you should not have to fret concerning the state of the port. Whereas it won’t be excellent, it is greater than able to getting the job achieved.