Elden Ring's PC performance simply isn't good enough

Digital Foundry : In fairness, the quality of From Software's PC ports had been improving over time. The original Dark Souls was a disaster, but from its sequel up to Sekiro, PC users received the best versions of those games. Unfortunately, this welcome upward trajectory nose-dives with the release of Elden Ring. Its issues are numerous, but most egregious of all is a persistent stuttering that ruins the flow of the game - it's a genuinely poor presentation that needs to be addressed urgently.

[Jin_Sakai]

It’s not good enough on consoles either. I’d say it’s pretty unacceptable when the only way to enjoy the game at a locked 60fps on consoles is by playing the PS4 version on PS5.

[LucasRuinedChildhood]

How did review sites not at least mention these issues?

It's like they knew that they'd look unreasonable if they explained how poor the performance is on every platform (to varying degrees) and then proceeded to award the game a perfect score anyway, so they decided to just omit it from their reviews.

It's dodgy and a bit unprofessional, tbh. A game doesn't need to be perfect to achieve a perfect score, sure, but this stuff needs to be included in the review. The PC port is terrible (it constantly stutters no matter the hardware) - review sites have a responsibility to inform customers about that.

[Tacoboto]

"unprofessional reviews that could not be objective and placed their likes above journalistic integrity"

... Reviews are literally the reviewer's subjective take on what it is they're reviewing.

[porkChop]

ACG put out an update video that sort of explained it. From what I understand the 1.01 patch reviewers used had some slight performance issues but nothing too extreme. Some small fps drops in big fights and an occasional hitch. Usually 1.01 is the day 1 patch.

When a day 1 patch is coming out after reviews the devs/pub always inform the reviewers. This is usually so they understand any performance issues should be fixed on release day.

With Elden Ring the reviewers were not told there would be an additional patch on release day. And that patch actually made the performance worse. If I'm being honest, the fact that reviewers weren't told about the patch is really sketchy. Almost like From/Namco Bandai knew the performance would be worse and would affect reviews.

What I don't understand is why even release the patch and make performance worse? Why not just fix the issues and release a proper patch later? It doesn't make any sense.

@Hatchetforce
"It isn't supposed to be subjective but rather objective and there was no objectivity."

Listen. That's not how a review works. I literally went to journalism school and worked in the print industry. I also currently run a gaming/entertainment channel with 4 other people. Objective reviews do not exist. A review is specifically about your experience and how you feel towards whatever you're reviewing. You can not review something objectively because the context of your experience is 100% subjective. How you perceive, experience, and understand any given media is unique to you. Even with movies where it's the exact same movie for everyone.

[414gamer]

There is a lot of issues people are having with the game not using their GPU. You have to do these workaround to enable the GPU and stutters get fixed

[-Hermit-]

And people wonder why review sites can't be trusted. When they ignore technical problems like this, they lose all credibility. They did the same with Cyberpunk 2077. The game is not deserving of its 97 metacritic score.

[Fonsecap]

Most reviews.are mostly the reviewer opinion and the score is decided by wether the reviewer like or don't like the game. Sometimes the same issues in two different games are used to low a score for one game but not to the other because the reviewer likes one game more than the other, I'm not saying that's wrong but is a bit deceiving...

[Abear21]

NDA prevented them from talking about performance. I read From apparently told outlets the performance would be fixed at launch. Inexcusable but NDA is normal, still, to give a game a 10/10 and recommended a buy at launch and at full price in hopes the issues will be resolved eventually is very unprofessional.

[Vegamyster]

I went on Reddit and found forcing the game .EXE to run in high performance mode and the game itself in borderless windows mode fixed pretty much all my issues aside from the odd drop in certain areas. How something like this hasn't been fixed makes no sense, also how does the pre-day one patch version run so much better lol.

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

Fromsoft has a history of releasing titles with questionable performance. Elden Ring’s performance issues should be expected as the title is still using the same engine as the Souls games.

[blackblades]

Time for them to upgrade there engine, considering demon souls remake was 60fps while looking good as well as other games.

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

Demon Souls remake doesn’t use FromSoft’s engine, it was build using Blue Point’s own technology.

[EmperorDalek]

Let's not act as though Demon's Souls has anywhere near the same scale as Elden Ring. The PS5 version isn't entirely smooth in the larger areas, hopefully they'll do something about it, but it isn't bad.

[blackblades]

I know that's why i mention them and others. If there souls game and other soul types games can have no problem with performance from software shouldnt and time for them upgrade it to fix that problem if all or most there games has that problem.

[Michiel1989]

wait what? performance issues should be expected? to what low standards have you sunk?

[Sciurus_vulgaris]

I have played the Dark Souls series, Bloodborne and Sekiro. All the previously mentioned titles used the same engine and had performance issues on console and PC. FromSoft’s doesn’t make the most optimized games. And yes the studio has gotten free-passes.

[HeliosHex]

To be fair there's a bit of intermittent stuttering on Xbox as well. Game just needs to be optimized and patched. Overall it's not cyberpunk levels of shame.

[Flawlessmic]

Console too, inconsistent frame rates and not to mention the autosave not working on ps5 losing hours of progress!!!

Hopefully they sort thia out soon as other wise the game is awesome.

[jznrpg]

All you need to do is visit a grace they’re everywhere

[Flawlessmic]

https://www.google.com/amp/...

Even that doesnt guarante it saved, my bro has lost his progress 3 times due to this and the game is no cake walk so as u can imagine its incredibily frustrating, espc as i need to help him with the bosses again

[jznrpg]

Souls games have never been well optimized . This runs great compared to other games so it is fine and I’m enjoying it .

[TrueMetal]

Same here lol

[Lionsguard]

This is why I always wait for a few months worth of patches.

[Father__Merrin]

Most reviewers just opened the box and slapped a 10 because it was trending. Performance is horrid

[boing1]

To me, there is also this intangible 'thing' between this genre of souls-like hard games and reviewers. It's like they are scared of giving those type of games lower scores because otherwise they wouldn't be recognized as real gamers.

[Stanjara]

When a chef editor comes to your office and says: here, give this a 10.

Oh yeah an this one too..

[DoubleYourDose]

What's on the menu?

[Rimeskeem]

So they released a reviewer version that was more optimized than the newest version?

The reviews are a joke at this point imo. 97 on metacritic and the game runs this poorly and is missing a ton of optimization on PC.

[phoenixwing]

it is somewhat buggy for me but i didn't mind that. what i don't like is the stutters and then things speeding up to compensate. literally lost a boss fight because of it. and i'm not particularly skilled at elden ring to the point i could do that run again with the same boss and win. i had him down to like a sliver after probably 70 tries and i thought i had it for once then the game just stuttered or slowed down then sped up and he hit me with a 1 hit kill because half the moves a boss has in elden ring are one hit kills it seems like to me

[Furesis]

Yeah that has happened to me few times as well, i have never seen that bug in previous souls games either. And you can do it dude, i know that must have sucked but you got it once so you will do it again, that's how these games are, you slowly start to get better. You got this!

[victorMaje]

Forget hype, what is real at this point is reviewer BS.
Playing on PS5, game is great sure, but with all the visual & technical issues happening it’s not a 10, not a masterpiece. I’ve had object pop-ins, shimmering, low frame-rates, & enemies hitting me without doing the move animation, they’d be standing still & I get hit. & Demon’s souls has proper & way better dualsense implementation.

97 on metacritic tells me there’s something seriously wrong here.

[GoodGuy09]

Fromsoft games usually perform technically bad. Idk how they haven't been able to optimize well at this point.
My suggestions:
-Turn off Depth of Field in game setting.
-Download the fps unlocker mod if using a >60hz monitor.
-Turn off Vsync via gpu settings for the specific game(nvidia control panel/AMD settings).

Game works a ton better for me. Still some stutters and low fps at times but much more playable for me.

[ANIALATOR136]

That engine is nearly as bad as Bethesdas

[Gianoni33]

Guys, honestly?

Bugs and performance can be fixed. Game design cant.

The game Its the new Skyrim.

[Abear21]

Since 2020 I never buy day one, no company is immune to the issues and it seems most want to keep their launch day and patch the fixes in later. Makes more sense than ever to wait a couple months and buy a game that’s been fixed and costs less than it did at launch. To buy the hype and then complain is pretty dumb now considering all the disaster launches that have occurred in the last couple years.