Kingdom Come Deliverance on Switch - The Most Ambitious Switch Port Yet? - DF Tech Review

[Music] Kingdom Come Deliverance joins an impressive list of impossible ports on Nintendo switch and ranks among the most ambitious yet seen on the system originally developed by warhorse Studios for PlayStation 4 Xbox One and PC back in 2018 Kingdom Come Deliverance is an open world fantasy RPG powered by cry engine 3 marked by sprawling Landscapes complex towns plus the more advanced cry engine features for its time it truly pushed last gen consoles to the limits and still does in fact given that their performance struggles to always lock at 30 fps to this day so today the challenge of making such a game Run on Nintendo switch a portable machine with greater Hardware limits isn't a trivial one rising to that challenge then is saber interactive a team that's on paper is more more than qualified for the task between its work on the switch ports for the crisis Trilogy and The Witcher 3 the studio not only has close experience with cry engine on it CV but also leveraging the power of Nintendo system to handle richly detailed open world RPGs all combined does this expertise pay off in a worthwhile switch Port secondly in balancing the visual cutbacks on switch to achieve a playable frame rate how exactly does it compare to the last gen versions and lastly yes what exactly is the resulting frame rate like on switch let's find out let's be honest here even without previewing what's to come in this video you'll likely know roughly how this is going to turn out switch's 2017 mobile technology is showing its age and we're long overdue a successor in cases like Kingdom Come Deliverance or crisis or The Witcher 3 the expertise of the developer handling the ports only goes so far when facing strict Hardware limits as we have on switch a balance must always be struck between performance and visual features and we have to accept it for what it is for Kingdom C Deliverance all of the engine logic intended for PS4 Xbox One and PC systems must somehow translate to switch's Tegra X1 chipset to three active arm cortex cores clocked to 1 GHz and a lesser 3.5 GB of RAM it's no small feet and so as the saying goes expectations have to be managed here image quality is degraded visual settings are dropped and the frame rate is often lower than PS4 or Xbox One's but the fact we have the game at all on switch I think is something to be celebrated if you want the best-in-class experience at 4K Max settings you know exactly where to go elsewhere but it's still great to see this in a portable format so long as it's playable so long as the distractions are minimal it has a good reason to exist with respect to the huge challenges facing this port then let's see how it Stacks up kicking off the loading times are a surprise win on switch let's pit it against the older Xbox One version measuring the time it takes to get from each systems Front End menu to the game's title screen sadly Kingdom Come Deliverance has always struggled with lengthy loading times in booting a save reloading checkpoints or even in fast travel it's at times a real test of patients playing PS4 or Xbox One from their stock mechanical hard drives with so many loading screens lasting minutes at a time impressively then saber has managed to accelerate these transitions on switch and notably the speed of booting the game we get a 1 minute 26 second wait to get to the game's title screen on switch for example which is hardly a Snappy turnaround but still that chops well over a minute of waiting compared to Xbox One itself coming in at 2 minutes 37 seconds the install footprint of the game is potentially reduced on switch as well in texture and audio asset quality which means less data to load in overall either way first impressions are positive to the visual comparisons and the good news first this switch release does not skimp on cry engine features and in fact goes beyond what you might expect again it would be too easy to show the game next to the PC version maxed out at 4K so instead let's level the playing field by using something more comparable in the Xbox One version captured on the most updated build both run kingdom come with a 30 FPS Target and unlike the launch build in 2018 both current versions fix that 31 FPS cap issue we had back then to give a more expected 30 FPS line today in terms of resolutions the switch version has a similar setup to the crisis Trilogy saber worked on we get a 720p Target while docked dynamically dropping to 540p when the GPU is stressed temporal upscaling is used to help reconstruct the image and it does so effectively certainly image Clarity struggles to match up to the typical 900p reading on an Xbox One or PS4 for that matter it's softer facial expressions lose definition in the app scale as does the finer detail tailing across a landscape but still it looks respectable given the caliber of the hardware at hand and will no doubt be better enjoyed on switch's own display in portable mode one final point a form of sharpening is used to the switch image on grassy elements or the silhouette of distant trees the frame is sometimes oversharpened in broad daylight which isn't terribly flattering to the low Bas resolution beyond that though this is about as good as you might expect from the hardware in terms of pixels being pushed and if nothing else it's serviceable for a portable experience sticking to the positives the switch release packs in as many cry engine features as possible we get full use of SSR screen space Reflections across large water bodies plus water simulation honestly SSR could so easily have been removed in the process of optimizing for 30 FPS and yet it makes the Great here next to the Xbox One version it's very much on par in terms of quality and very impressively handled though the early Barracks area during rainfall does pair price in frame rate as we'll get to later next up we have pom Parallax occlusion mapping on switch in short this adds 3D height and depth to the floors to rocks mud tracks and the formation on castle walls switch gets a highquality implementation of pal here and by comparison is at least on power with Xbox One and finally the biggest surprise of all is that this switch version includes fogy standing for sparse boxal OCT tree Global illumination this is a real-time GI feature that is not included on PS4 or Xbox One making it a real breakthrough on switch indeed saber pushed for fogi in the crisis switch Port as well with a similar result it runs in a scaled down form at a much lower resolution than what we'd get on PC plus there's a limit to the effective distance that rays are traced it means we get a lower Precision version of the effect causing a slight shimmering artifact as light hits surfaces but it's still impressive to [Music] see overall the inclusion of SSR Parallax inclusion mapping and fogy is far beyond what I'd expected of a switch release it's impressive too that density at range is identical to Xbox One while much of the geometry is a match as well light shafts are also included albeit at a low resolution flitting between the trees at sundown to create this picturesque image however the cutbacks are clear as well withraw distances being the first main issue on switch there's simply more pop in of Shadow Maps grass foliage and geometric elements during any quick movement notice how all of these elements pop into view as we run down this hill at a range much closer to the player than Xbox one it's perhaps inevitable given the power difference between them though to an extent the low resolution on switch does help mask the resulting Popin here also in terms of close-up detail switch runs with lowquality shadows the turnout looks respectable with a similar bokeh pattern to the Shadows that we saw in crisis but undeniably it's running at a lower resolution elsewhere grass density is dropped while certain texture assets are also lowered in resolution notably on character clothing what's the turnout for performance then on switch the bottom line is that switch struggles to cap at 30 FPS and that's evident from the very first Village on the upside first we do get a fully vsync locked 30 FPS at points open Outdoors areas with zero MPCs nearby with only yourself and the grassy fields in view run at 30 FPS especially well credit where it's due the fact saber has optimized these broad open areas to hit 30 FPS is respectable the snag is and unlike the Xbox One or PS4 versions today frame pacing issues are present regardless on switch even in the best case at 30 FPS there are these occasional frame time spikes to 16 milliseconds on the leftand graph it's not overly aggressive and certainly not to the extreme level of bloodborne thank goodness but it does still at points detract from the perceptual smoothness of movement if all we want to do is go sightseeing around Woodland areas this would be fine but Kingdom Come Deliverance is an RPG built around bustling Town areas as well we have battles we have cutcenes and sadly much of this is able to plummet switches frame rate into the 20s and [Music] lower the cuse for these sub 30 FPS drops is usually pretty clear the reality is in playing on switch you must brace yourself for a 20 to 30 FPS range where there's any High concentration of NPCs or building structures Town centers are a major culprit obviously and so just running down a High Street like this at any real Pace takes us well into the mid-20s as geometry shadows and NPCs drawing quickly potentially this is a classic CPU related bottleneck switch which stands out most with hitching at times as detail streams in during this Barrack sequence for example we even get brief moments that hitch down to 15 FPS so there is a wide range here from the very best case at 30 FPS Outdoors to the situation around inner cities speaking on the cutcenes anything rendered in engine also struggles thankfully a lot of the main story beats are presented in pre-rendered cut scenes that are perfectly capped at 30 FPS no problems there obviously it's all just video but anything rendered in engine running from that Tegra X1 silicon will'll see performance dive well down into the mid-20s and lower to put this into perspective neither PS4 or Xbox One were immune to these drops each had their fair share of hitches and stress points but they're exacerbated here in the move to switches more CPU and memory Limited Hardware in direct comparison there's a mixture of Fortunes here complex scenes around towns run much better on an Xbox one no question the last gen Xbox hits the market 30 FPS more consistently and likewise around taxing points beyond the city walls switch delves into the mid-20s around these points by comparison interestingly though the cutscenes are Against All Odds often comparable in frames delivered per second between the two certain close-ups of our lead man Henry run better on switch while other points show an Xbox one lead put this down to the pruning back and resolution on switch and the dialed back visual settings but switches often more performance in this early encounter with the bandits however typical gameplay is obviously the priority and is still often under the 30 FPS line on switch and all of that despite the many visual cutbacks put in place 6 years on from its original release the switch version of Kingdom Come Deliverance is a fascinating exercise in squeezing the most from the now aging Tegra X1 chipset of course we know going in that switch isn't aiming to offer the best big screen experience we have consoles or PC for that as with the switch ports for The Witcher 3 and crisis though this one is much more about the sheer joy of seeing if it's at all possible it's about the hypothetical scenario whether a careful balance between visual features and and frame rate is possible to hand in a decent portable take on the game in the end it does appear the ambition to lock at 30 FPS loses some ground to its visual features the dynamic 540p to 720p range is an acceptable pixel count given the resolutions used on PS4 and Xbox One and equally the inclusion of cry engines SSR Parallax occlusion mapping and fogy are miraculously all in place on switch here for the tech Enthusiast then this is is an impressive release to behold and all of that despite its obvious limits in frame rate but that's all for me today if you did enjoy this video feel free to like or subscribe and don't forget to hit that Bell for instant notifications as any new video lands to get a highquality version of this video and many more check out our Patron at digital

Channel: Digital Foundry

Views: 150,042

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Id: JmsXhJV4FOs

Length: 14min 32sec (872 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2024