SAND LAND is a new action RPG that is based on the Japanese manga series that was written and illustrated by Akira Toriyama. Powered by Unreal Engine 4, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on PC.

For our benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX580, RX Vega 64, RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, NVIDIA’s GTX980Ti, RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080 and RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 552.22, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 24.4.1 drivers. Moreover, we’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.

Bandai Namco has added a few graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Anti-Aliasing, Shadows, Textures and Post-Processing. The game also appears to be using a Resolution Scaler by default, without the ability to completely turn it off. Moreover, there is a framerate limiter that allows you to lock the framerate at 30fps, 60fps and 120fps. And yes, there is also an option for uncapped framerates.

SAND LAND does not have any built-in benchmark tool. So, for our benchmarks, we used the desert area. This area appeared to be more demanding than the Main Castle, First Village and First Town that players visit.

SAND LAND is mostly a GPU-bound title, and does not require a high-end CPU. At 1080p/Max Settings, our NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 was pushing over 260fps. The game barely used two-four CPU cores, meaning that it should run smoothly on a wide range of CPUs.

At 1080p/Max Settings, our AMD Radeon RX580 came close to a 60fps experience. Not only that but the NVIDIA GTX980Ti was able to provide 60fps at all times. I don’t remember the last time that this old GPU was able to achieve something like that. I also don’t know whether this is due to the game’s Resolution Scaler (which can’t be turned off). However, the image did appear to be sharp at 1080p, without any major aliasing issues.

At 1440p/Max Settings, our top five GPUs had no trouble at all running the game with over 100fps. Similarly, these five GPUs were also able to offer over 60fps at 4K/Max Settings.

Now while SAND LAND runs with high framerates on a huge range of GPUs, it suffers from major stuttering issues. The game won’t compile its shaders when you first launch it. Instead, it will be compiling them in real-time while playing it, something that will result in shader compilation stutters. From what I’ve seen, there are a lot of shader compilation stutters. So that’s a bummer as you’ll be constantly getting stutters whenever a new effect appears on screen. The game also has some traversal stutters.

Graphics-wise, SAND LAND does not push Unreal Engine 4 to its limits. Hell, it’s not even a game that can showcase what UE4 is capable of. Still, the game has an amazing art style. And, to be honest, that’s its saving grace. Everything is pleasing to the eye.

All in all, SAND LAND does not require a high-end PC system, but it suffers from major stuttering issues. I don’t really know why Bandai Namco has not offered an option to pre-compile the shaders. Because, right now, SAND LAND can be easily described as STUTTER LAND. And that’s a shame because outside of those stutters, the PC version seems to be in a pretty good state. We didn’t have any crashes, and the KB&M controls are good (not exceptional but good overall).

Let’s hope that the developers will add the ability to pre-compile the shaders when you first launch the game via a future update!