In just five days, KOEI TECMO will publish Rise of the Ronin on PC. The action roleplaying game was originally launched nearly a year ago as a PlayStation 5 exclusive, published by Sony itself on the console. That's nearly the same amount of time that passed between the PlayStation and PC launches of Nioh, which evidently featured a similar timed exclusivity deal.
Rise of the Ronin clearly has a lot in common with Nioh, although it goes for a different type of experience, more akin to something like Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed. For a full review of the game, check out Kai's original article. Here, I'll focus on the technical aspects of the upcoming PC version.
Developer Team Ninja once again used KOEI TECMO's proprietary Katana Engine, a technology already seen in previous games like Dynasty Warriors 9, Wild Hearts, and Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. All these games had something in common: huge technical issues. Unfortunately, Rise of the Ronin is no exception. Even on a top-of-the-line PC configuration, the game struggles to provide smooth frame rates, to say nothing of the mediocre visual quality.
On the surface, the developer does offer support for modern features like support for the DualSense controller's Adaptive Triggers, High Dynamic Range mode for HDR displays, NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Resolution (DLSS) or Deep Learning Anti Aliasing (DLAA), AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 3, Intel XeSS, NVIDIA and AMD Frame Generation, and even ray tracing, though only for the reflections. There are also several graphics settings that can be used to customize the experience, including the ability to turn off annoying filters like vignette and chromatic aberration, which is appreciated. The frame rate can only go up to 120 frames per second (60 in the cutscenes), which is a shame, although Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced was guilty of the same before Rockstar removed the 120FPS frame cap. Modders are likely to remove it here as well if the developer doesn't, anyway.
What's really disappointing is the performance. On a rig equipped with the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, a game like Rise of the Ronin should run fast and smooth, but that's not the case at all. Simply roaming around the city of Yokohama averages just 64 frames per second at 4K resolution with every setting maxed out and NVIDIA's DLAA plus Frame Generation enabled. Worse, it feels quite stuttery, too. According to FLAT (Frame Latency Analytics Tool), over 14% of the frame time during the benchmark was spent under stuttering conditions.
This is easily the worst performance I've seen since I set up this PC, and it's not like it comes with some sort of visual spectacle, either. Sure, Rise of the Ronin looks better than KOEI TECMO's previous titles and also has a larger explorable world, but that's not saying much. Even with DLAA turned on, shimmering and aliasing are still noticeable, an issue that I spotted in Nioh and Wo Long, too. Moreover, several assets are evidently in very low resolution despite the game taking up 151.6 GB of your drive's space after the installation.
I wouldn't at all be surprised to see the game launch to very mixed user reviews on Steam, with technical complaints sure to be cited in the comments. It's a shame because the game itself is interesting enough, but from a technical standpoint, Assassin's Creed Shadows looks set to slaughter it. Usually, I would tell you to wait for the developer to improve the game's performance through patches, but KOEI TECMO doesn't exactly have a great track record of doing that. Of course, I'd be happy to see that trend change. On GeForce RTX 50 GPUs, it would definitely help if NVIDIA whitelisted the game to take advantage of the NVIDIA Override capability to use the latest DLSS transformer model and possibly Multi Frame Generation.
However, that would just brute force through the game's worst issues. Judging from the repeated technical disappointments offered by the studio's latest games, I would recommend they switch to Unreal Engine as they did for the Ninja Gaiden 2 Black remaster. Granted, Epic's game-making technology is not without its problems, but it's certainly far more advanced than what they have.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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