We're a little late with our Nioh: Complete Edition review; we know that. All (good?) things come in time. But before that particular piece solidifies, I'd like to take some time to address any concerns would-be players have about this particular console-to-PC transition following some of the damning forum topics showing up on its Steam page as of late.
Having reviewed a number of KOEI TECMO's PC ports over the last year or so, they certainly have a spotty track record. Japanese 'Windows Dialogue' boxes still being present in review and/or release copies, frequent crashes, launcher issues and unexplainable FPS drops have made themselves apparent in a number of their recent ports, and we suspected Nioh to share similar build quality.
But whether there was a significant 'Day One' patch for the title or we had an unlucky first experience, everything has been smooth sailing on our side bar a missing launcher and some major graphical glitches pre-release.
Running a pretty mediocre mid-range build, I'm easily able to drive the game at a consistent 60fps at 1080p with 1440p averaging around 55FPS with Shadow Quality turned down a notch and Ambient Occlusion turned off.
If you're rocking a Freesync display, you can leave these on and enjoy a smooth gameplay experience that never drops out of that freesync range. You can lock the framerate limiter at 60 of 30fps to fit your preference, but don't expect to go higher. 21:9 ultra-wide aspect ratios are not supported either, but if you're using one of those screens, this won't be the first title to have that 'problem'.
- Review PC Specs
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1500X @3.5GHz
- GPU: AMD RX 480 8GB
- RAM: 32GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4
- HDD: 240GB Crucial BX300 SSD
- Resolutions Tested
- 1920 x 1080
- 2560 x 1440
- 3840 x 2160
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If you're willing to knock things down to a still absolutely playable 30fps for some extra visual clarity, 4K is even attainable on this setup with the same settings. We've captured footage of each resolution with Steam's own FPS monitor hiding in the top-right corner for you to see for yourself.
YouTube loves to compress footage, so disregard some of the visual artefacts in the background. It's a fairly muddy game on its own, though, so don't be expecting gorgeous visuals throughout. It never was a looker.
We don't have any fancy graphs for you, but all the can do is attempt to defuse some of the hate directed at KOEI TECMO's latest port. Blue Reflection absolutely had crashes that halted progress for everyone at launch but was quickly fixed once the issue was proven to be present in the retail version. Atelier Firis was fairly well-rounded but did have some noticeable FPS dips in some peculiar places. When it comes to Nights of Azure, nothing really springs to mind; although it has been a while.
Nioh: Complete Edition might not fit into this 'perfect port' PC players tend to expect due to its lack of graphical options (there's a general preset, but little in the way of AA, AF, Texture Quality settings) but it works. You can play it. It's smooth on fairly generic hardware but may not scale to make proper use of high-end gear. But at the same time, it doesn't really need to.
It runs fine at the most common resolution and doesn't have to offer anything to those with more impressive rigs. It's sad that you can't even change graphical presets or resolution in-game, but the external launcher fires up before the launching the game itself, with the aforementioned settings being easily tweaked within.
Nioh: Complete Edition is arguably one of the company's better-performing ports of the last 12 months. Considering they typically charge £50 for an average JRPG with no DLC, having Nioh: Complete Edition - a game that released exclusively on PS4 earlier this year - at £40 with all its DLC included is, honestly, something of a breakthrough for KOEI TECMO. Even UK retailers sell the base PS4 game for around that price - and that's without any DLC. Could it be better? Absolutely. But it's entirely playable and inexpensive for what it is.
Use the footage posted here to make a slightly more informed purchasing decision. This is running on a GPU that cost around £180 back in February and a £100 CPU I purchased 5 years ago to this day. I'm many hours into the game at this point and have yet to see a reason to drop below 1440p. If it ever does dip below 60fps, it isn't noticable.
At launch, the PlayStation 4 version of Nioh allowed plays to run the game at 60fps at 720p or 30fps at 1080p. With this lacklustre setup, you can play at a near locked 60fps at 144p or 4K at 30fps. I can't comment on how high-end gear tackles this at 4K, but I'm pleased with how it performs.
