Last week, KOEI Tecmo released its new action RPG, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. However, the game initially had major mouse issues, which is why we’ve decided to slightly delay our PC Performance Analysis. Thankfully, a couple of days ago, Team Ninja released the first PC update which addressed the awful mouse deadzone issues. As such, it’s time now to benchmark the game and see how it performs on the PC platform.
For this PC Performance Analysis, we used an Intel i9 9900K, 16GB of DDR4 at 3800Mhz, 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 531.26 and the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 23.2.1 drivers.
Team Ninja has added a few graphics settings to tweak. However, the game still suffers from all the menu issues we mentioned in our previous article. For instance, it still won’t allow you to change the resolution while playing. Furthermore, it still has the Best Quality/Best Performance “console” presets.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty does not feature any built-in benchmark tool. Therefore, for both our CPU and GPU benchmarks, we used the following scene. According to reports, the game’s fire/lighting effects can be quite demanding, which is why we used this particular scene.
In order to find out how the game scales on multiple CPU threads, we simulated a dual-core, a quad-core and a hexa-core CPU. At 1080p/Max Settings, our simulated dual-core system was able to offer an acceptable gaming experience with Hyper-Threading. Ironically, our simulated quad-core system (without HT) performed worse than our simulated dual-core system (with HT). We’ve triple-checked our results and the game had fewer stutters on our simulated dual-core system. By enabling HT, our simulated quad-core system was able to offer a 120fps experience (though there were some minor drops to 116fps).
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty requires a high-end GPU for gaming at 1080p/Max Settings. The only GPUs that were able to offer framerates higher than 60fps were the RTX2080Ti, RTX3080, RTX4090, RX 6900XT, and RX 7900XTX.
At 1440p/Max Settings, the aforementioned GPUs were able to provide a 60fps experience. However, things are not that great for the RTX2080Ti, as the game has both traversal and shader compilation stutters. Thus, this particular GPU can sometimes go below that 60fps threshold.
It’s also worth noting that the RTX3080 is faster than the RX 6900XT. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty does not feature any Ray Tracing effects, and uses the DX12 API. In theory, AMD’s GPU should be faster. However, this is the game that favors NVIDIA’s hardware.
Lastly, at native 4K/Max Settings, the only GPUs that were able to offer a smooth gaming experience were the NVIDIA RTX4090 and the AMD RX 7900XTX.
Graphics-wise, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty looks fine. While it’s pleasing to the eye, it does not push anything particularly spectacular on screen to impress you. Its main characters are full of detail and look great. On the other hand, its lighting system is dated and some areas can look really flat. The game would certainly benefit from RTGI and RTAO. However, since this is a fast-paced action game, I don’t expect to see such visual improvements anytime soon.
Before closing, we should note that the game’s speed is tied to its framerate. As such, the game will slow down whenever your framerate drops below 60fps. I don’t know why Team Ninja resorted to something like this. Due to this slow-down/speed issue, gamers will need consistent framerates. Furthermore, the in-engine cut-scenes are locked at 30fps. Not only that, but the game currently suffers from a lot of crashes. There are also numerous scenes in which the framerate drops for no apparent reason.
All in all, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty performs better than its initial version but it’s still a mess. The game has some shader compilation and traversal stutters, though they are not as annoying as those found in games like the launch versions of The Callisto Protocol or Sackboy: A Big Adventure. Thankfully, the mouse controls are great right now, especially if you use high DPI values. However, due to its numerous technical issues, this is among the worst PC releases we’ve seen in 2023!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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