"Crouching Dragon: Skyfall" is probably the most controversial game in recent times, this ARPG game operated by the Honorable Ninja Group, with the dark Three Kingdoms style and close to "Nio" gameplay, as well as a good publicity force, can be said to have attracted a lot of players' attention.
However, after the game was officially launched, due to poor optimization and adaptation problems, many PC players brushed bad reviews on Steam, and the game's praise rate so far is only 44%. However, fortunately, the ninja group also quickly launched the PC version of the patch, and repaired problems such as keyboard and mouse configuration, splash screen, and flashback. PC gamers can finally experience the game.
Putting aside the game's poor optimization issues, in terms of gameplay, Wolong: Skyfall is an action game worthy of a game. The plot of the game is set in the early stages of the Three Kingdoms, and players play as a brave soldier who travels to various battlefields with the well-known famous generals of the Three Kingdoms to solve the chaos caused by the "elixir".
Action design has always been the strength of the ninja group, "Crouching Dragon: Skyfall" did not disappoint us in the action design, the game's bosses are distinctive, and with the game's unique resolution system, it can indeed bring players an extremely smooth combat experience.
And unlike the complex and huge game system of "Renwang 2", "Wolong: Skyfall" has also been greatly simplified in terms of equipment, skills, plus points, etc., making the difficulty of the game more moderate, even if you have not touched such games. In terms of game difficulty, "Crouching Dragon: Skyfall" is also well balanced, through morale and flag planting, the difficulty of the game is cleverly balanced dynamically. Whether it is a week-end experience plot or a high-week in-depth exploration, it has good playability.
Of course, today we are not going to discuss the playability of the game "Crouching Dragon: Skyfall", but to focus on the hardware requirements of this game. To be honest, the game optimization of the PC version of "Wolong: Skyfall" is relatively general, although it has now optimized the keyboard and mouse configuration and flashback, but compared to the equally hot "Atomic Heart" some time ago, the optimization is really a sky and an underground.
In this hardware test, we mainly tested the performance of the RTX4070Ti in the face of "Wolong: Skyfall". Why choose the RTX4070Ti? The reason is actually very simple, because this is currently the highest intention and highest priority for players to change graphics cards.
Test bed
For graphics cards, we chose the recently launched RTX4070TiX-GAMINGOC Opal White version from ZOTAC. In terms of platform, we chose the i9-13900K plus MSI MEGZ790 motherboard, the memory is a pair of DDR56400 Zhiqi Fantasy Halberd, with Yingchi HOFEXTREMESSD as a game board, and the power supply adopts Huntkey's 1200W platinum power supply Huntkey MVPP1200X. Basically, this is a very high-end gaming platform that ensures that the graphics card maximizes its performance.
Graphics card performance testing
Entering the game, we first look at the screen of the game, in the overall scene design of the game, the performance of "Crouching Dragon: Skyfall" is actually average, many places are lacking, and the overall difference is quite large. But the performance in key character modeling and key details is by no means ambiguous.
However, for a game that focuses on action, most players will not pay special attention to the graphics performance of the game, and pay more attention to the smoothness of the game's battles, that is, the frame rate of the game. "Wolong: Skyfall" this time provides FPS priority and resolution priority options that are usually only available on consoles.
So this time, we tested the low, standard, and high image quality when FPS priority and resolution priority are turned on at 2K and 4K resolutions, with a total of 6 different settings for the game frame rate.
The game test process selects the first level of the game Zhang Liang BOSS Station, runs from the flag point to the BOSS station position, enters the BOSS station, and defeats Zhang Liang in the first stage. Record the frame rate curve of gameplay with CapFrameX.
Let's look at the test results, first look at the 2K resolution, under the FPS priority gear, even the highest image quality, the RTX4070Ti can run at 120 frames all the time. After turning on the resolution priority, under the highest image quality, the RTX4070Ti cannot stabilize 120 frames, and the picture quality needs to be lowered by one level.
When it comes to 4K resolution, the pressure is obviously much greater, in the case of resolution priority and highest quality, the average frame of the game is basically around 50, barely playable, but the experience is relatively average. When you encounter a boss like Bull Demon and Zhang Rang that will trigger a frame-dropping attack in the back, the experience is quite bad. Even if FPS is preferred, it can only maintain a performance ratio close to 120 frames at the lowest level, and once the image quality is raised, the average frame rate will be adjusted below 100.
A careful comparison will actually find that FPS priority is selected for 4K resolution, and resolution priority is selected for 2K resolution, and the frame rate performance of the two is very similar. It should be that after selecting FPS priority, the game will automatically reduce the resolution by one stop, so 2K turns on FPS priority mode, and the game should be rendered and run at a resolution lower than 2K.
However, it is very strange that if the game resolution is set to a lower resolution than the monitor resolution in the resolution adjustment, the game screen will be noticeably blurred, and it will be improved regardless of whether you choose resolution priority or FPS priority. (The figure below shows 4K resolution on the left and 2K resolution on the right).
In general, ZOTAC RTX4070TiX-GAMINGOC Opal White can easily run the game "Wolong" to a frame rate of more than 100 frames at 2K resolution, and if you want to play in 4K resolution, you need to go to RTX4080 or even RTX4090. Of course, do not pursue high resolution or high frame rate, for example, then a graphics card like RTX3060 can basically meet the smooth playing experience.
Additional hardware testing
In addition to the graphics card, we also looked at the requirements of "Wolong" for other hardware, more officially given configuration, "Wolong" minimum needs i5-8400, Ryzen3400G level of CPU, recommended configuration i7-8700 or 3600X, memory needs more than 8GB.
We actually tested it, using i9-13900K such a 16-core 24-thread flagship CPU, "Wolong" mainly occupies the performance core cable, occupying about 8 threads, the support for multi-core processors and the latest mixed-price processors is still relatively good.
In terms of memory occupation, it can be seen through the system process that the memory occupation of the game process of "Wolong" is about 4.6GB, and 8GB memory can still be used, of course, if there is no lack of this budget, it is recommended to go to 16GB of memory.
In terms of storage space, "Wolong" officially requires 60GB of storage space, and the actual game's local file occupies about 40GB, which is still not small. Coupled with the stuttering of the game cutscene loading process, if you don't want to wait for half a day for image loading, it is recommended to choose a better SSD.
summary
"Crouching Dragon" this game, the author has also been a week cleared, aside from the problem of game PC optimization, "Crouching Dragon" is indeed an action refreshing game worth playing, excellent action design, excellent character modeling well show the ninja group production skills, coupled with a simplified game system and just the right difficulty, so that "Crouching Dragon" will not dissuade too many novice players like "Nioh 2".
Of course, the premise of a game that makes players feel fun must be to be playable, and the slightly bad PC optimization of "Crouching Dragon" does not seem to be so distracting, and it also drags the game backwards. So for PC players, want to have an excellent gaming experience, a good graphics card is very necessary, my personal recommendation or choose RTX4070Ti, after all, buying a graphics card must be more than a game, in the face of the next 2 years of game masterpieces, RTX4070Ti performance does not have to worry too much.
If you want to buy the RTX4070Ti, then this 6799, outstanding ZOTAC RTX4070TiX-GAMINGOC Opal White is an option worth considering.