*This article is compiled from IGN US and is not reproduced without authorization.
Aldon's Ring of Law has been released on PCs as well as the latest generation of consoles, and the title has set off an unprecedented sensation. Arguably, the game retains elements that gamers who love FromSoftware games are familiar with and loved, and our Eldon's Law Loop review gave it a 10 out of 10. This game has added some huge changes to the previous formula, which not only brings an impact on the gameplay, but also has a great impact on its performance. FromSoftware does its best to balance game design and performance, and while it performs much better than previous titles (thanks to current next-generation hardware), it's for this reason that it still has a lot of issues with performance and controller input.
The biggest difference between Eldon's Ring of Law and previous FromSoftware games is that the map is a huge open world from start to finish, and you can even travel quickly between discovered save points and load quickly. There's even a mount that allows you to move quickly between maps. This huge change also makes it easier for players to go back from checkpoints and fight again after losing the boss battle. The negative impact of this system design is that the load time and reading data make the game's engine and running hardware load huge.
Another major update is the addition of a dynamic weather system as well as a day and night cycle. At sunrise, the world is shrouded in a red hue; bright daylight increases the player's visual distance; and the dark night makes the light of the torch and the fear of the unknown more intrusive. The sun, raindrops, strong winds, and fog all make the game's graphics even more exciting. The branches sway wildly in the wind, and the thick mist floats in the air. However, this also puts more load on the engine, the shadows are constantly stretching and deforming, the game screen is changeable, and the materials and lighting effects in the game cannot be loaded in advance. While this design isn't cutting-edge in the gaming world, it's a huge step forward for FromSoftware, meaning that Eldon's Ring of Law is the most technologically advanced they've ever built. There is even a significant impact left by works such as "Blood Curse" and "Only Wolf".
When it comes to resolution versus frame count, all three host platforms have two callable modes. As always, you can choose according to your preferences: high frame rate or high quality. On each host most of the time it means sacrificing a certain amount of resolution. Picture details, tree foliage, ambient occlusion, etc. are almost uniform in both modes of each platform (except for the impact of resolution itself on the picture). The only thing outside the column is that series X and PS5 have higher shadow resolutions and shadow filtering than on Series S. Originally, only the PS5's frame-count mode retained radial blur based on each item and lens depth, but this feature also came to the Xbox Series X | with the 1.02 patch S on. However, there are some areas that will not enable this feature, maybe this is a bug, but no one can say for sure.
Image quality and frame count
The difference in resolution between the two modes is very noticeable. In quality mode, both the PS5 and Series X target a fixed 3840x2160 resolution, which makes the image much sharper for the fine, tiny, and high-speed moving elements on the screen. From foliage from trees and some close-up highlights, to particle effects and material details, more pixels improve everything on the screen, giving Eldon's Ring of Law the best possible lighting. And because there is no overly mandatory TAA solution, the graphics are particularly clear in specific scenes, making the game's material details particularly prominent.
Our evaluation of Eldon's Ring of Law
It's no exaggeration to say that Eldon's Ring of Law is FromSoftware's most extensive and ambitious game to date, and the game's ambitions have lived up to everyone. In 87 hours of bloody battles, I experienced the most challenging battles I had ever played and received countless surprises. Even so, there are still bosses waiting for me to challenge; secrets to be discovered; side quests to be accepted; and a large number of weapons, spells, and combat skills to use. Throughout the game, although the basic battle design has not changed much from the previously familiar recipe, a large number of fierce enemies and bosses that are difficult to deal with but can still defeat take the battle to new heights. Even though I didn't get to experience everything in a week (I certainly had to play it for weeks), the work that came to me was undoubtedly one of the best open-world games I've ever played. Just like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wilderness, Elden's Ring of Law will be an outstanding work among the future game population to single-handedly promote the evolution of its own category.
Saltzman February 23, 2022
Total score: 10 points
The frame-count mode uses dynamic resolution. The Series S has a maximum resolution of only 1440p... And this resolution is maintained only when looking up at the sky, often only 2080x1170 or 1080p in combat, and sometimes as low as 1792x1008 in some areas. Therefore, the target resolution from 1440p must be upgraded by 51%. On 4K screens, the picture quality is more pronounced, with performance/sharpness being higher than without the quality mode.
The resolution targets of the PS5 and Series X appear to be the same: the sky is 3840x2160 and as low as 2688x1512 in combat, although the resolution of the PS5 is often higher than that of series X, and in some scenes the Xbox Series X is as low as 1512p, while the PS5 is 1620p in the same scene. This means that in certain scenes, PS5 performs 12-15% more in places where tree branches and leaves are more dense and shady. However, in practice, the difference between the two can be ignored, even if it is difficult to see the difference in magnification, especially in battle, it is even more difficult to see the difference. Before the patch was released, it was easy to see that the game lacked per-object-based motion blur, but some players should choose to turn off this option in the menu, and other effects such as color difference that could cause blurred graphics will also be turned off. The game will eventually look softer, making these noises stand out more on the screen, there will be some flickering pixels next to moving trees, and the screen space ambient light will occasionally obscure the foliage in the distance, sometimes even forming a faint aperture near your mission's head. Unless there is less activity on the screen, frame-count mode rarely achieves 4K resolution. This mode has less impact on image quality, but the naked eye can still detect the difference.
Performance
To make sure we were able to truly reflect the performance of Eldon's Ring of Law when it was released, we waited until the first day of the patch to go live and test it again. This means that we tested before the release, in versions 1.01 and 1.02. Therefore, we think that both modes can reach the maximum frame number of 60 frames, but the frames mode can better achieve this goal.
Taking the quality mode as an example, the Series X and PS5 failed to achieve 60 frames in the test scene, with a maximum of 45-47 frames and a minimum of 30 frames. This is usually a red flag, but FromSoftware's engine is notoriously poor frame rhythm, always outputting frames at an average rate. It's like a drum, each drum sound is consistent with the interval between other drum sounds – so as long as it's constant, the battle screen feels fluid. However, once this rhythm changes, it will have a negative impact on the time of the controller input and the picture on the screen. So even locking 30 frames will have some stuttering and things won't get much better. This means that the quality mode should have locked 30 frames, but there was no restriction on the game to run at its best.
The situation is similar for series S, but the overall performance is worse. Turn on quality mode, barely exceeding 40 frames in some of the emptyest places in the scene. Most of the time the frame count is 32 or lower, and there are places where the latest patches can even drop 30 frames. Similarly, the experience of the Series S is still a game that is mostly 30 frames, but because the theoretical maximum frame count is still 60 frames, it seems that the performance of the game is still better than locking 30 frames.
Frame rate mode increases frame rates by 45% on top of this, allowing the game to run at 60 frames, but it rarely maintains this level, sometimes falling below 30 frames at 1080p. The impact on image quality is more pronounced than the increase in frame count. So the choice here depends on your screen, if your screen is 1080p, then the resolution impact is less, and it is more cost-effective to improve the smoothness of the game. On 4K screens, which are generally relatively large, it is easier to see the reduction in image quality from a resolution of less than 1080p to a resolution of 4K. My advice is to play Eldon's Ring of Law in quality mode. Although the performance improvement brought by the frame-count mode is good, it is still not enough to compensate for the loss of image quality. However, there are always two options to choose from, so it's good for everyone to choose according to their needs.
The challenges faced by the PS5 and Seriex X are almost the same, but the quality sacrificed for fluency is much less than that of the previous generation of consoles. Looking at it this way, even on 4K screens, the increased smoothness of the frame-count mode is the best compromise. Because players can keep the resolution above 1440p most of the time, which is also the exception of the Series S, we can see that the performance and resolution are higher. We can see that in the same scene, the maximum frame count of the PS5 is increased by 4-7 frames compared to the maximum frame count of series X, and 13-20% higher in quality mode.
Again, this distinction is hard to detect with the naked eye. In addition to knowing this in the data analysis, with the blessing of combat and various scenes, the experience of getting started with the game is closer to 30 frames than 60 frames. However, as a test result, it is more accurate, because the resolution and effects are fixed, and the only thing that will change is the frame rate performance. On top of that, neither console has been able to achieve a stable frame rate, but it's a significant improvement over FromSoftware's previous 30-frame locks.
The frame-count pattern at the expense of image quality means it can reach the maximum frame count more stably, but neither host can maintain the effect of locking 60 frames, and in my tests it will fall to 40 or even 30 frames. Because resolution upgrades are also one of the factors that affect frame-count performance, the frame-count gap between Xbox Series X and PS5 has reached 10-15 frames in some places where trees, shadows, and particle effects are abundant. In other scenarios, the frame rate gap is only 3-5 frames, and the final frame rate of PS5 in frame rate mode is 10-20% higher than the xbox Series X on average, which is consistent with the test results we got in quality mode.
The PS5's performance is the best of all consoles, but it's not much ahead, and it's not a big difference. Cutscenes have the greatest impact on performance, but since they are passive experiences, they are not a big problem. One of the benefits of the PS5's backward compatibility mode is that it can play the PS4 version, and this game can play the PS4 Pro version, the image quality is lower than the 3200x1800 (probably the same image reconstruction solution as "Only Wolf" is used), and the picture quality is also somewhat reduced. The ultimate bonus is a perfectly stable 60 frames in all test scenarios. If you value performance, this is undoubtedly the best way to play on all platforms, because the current version has too much stuttering and dropped frames on PC.
Finally, there is the read speed, and the PS5 is once again leading in this field, and it has opened up a big gap. Loading into the same storage point from the main menu is almost 3x faster, with PS5 taking only 6.3 seconds, Series X 17.8 seconds and Series S half a second behind. Test results were consistent in terms of fast travel and most importantly, respawn load times. Because the game is huge and there are too many different areas to read, the loading speed varies from scene to scene. However, the result of many tests is that PS5 always loads the fastest.
summary
Eldon's Ring of Law has made improvements in model materials, scene density, lighting effects, and special effects, which are more obvious than FromSoftware's previous game progress. From a technical point of view, this game is the most technically produced by the team, even if the frame rate cannot stabilize at the upper limit of 60 frames it expects to reach. The Series S did lose in a game that desperately needed graphics performance, as the game's engine wasn't good at basic detail removal. Distant buildings are not replaced with low-definition models or removed from rendering, but remain visible in high detail. Half-speed animations also occur from time to time on all platforms in long-range scenes. The erratic performance means that the frame rate mode and quality mode experience are not much different, and they should be more polarized.
If you have a choice, then the PS5 is the best choice in all game areas and in all screen modes. Series X also delivers a significant performance boost over previous-generation consoles, and it doesn't lag too far behind the PS5, and the gaming experience is almost the same, so there's no need to worry. Although by modern standards, the graphics of this game are not smooth, if you have played Dark Souls on PS3 and Xbox 360, then the performance of this game can be called silky smooth.