Introduction
God of War releases today on PC marking the continued release of past Playstation exclusives landing out the platform. This follows Final Fantasy VII Remake which did not receive a lot of love from the PC scene but as a wholly Square Enix effort, that game has a different direction than Playstation’s PC publishing efforts. God of War is a reboot of the Playstation classic hack-and-slash game which brings Kratos from his Greek mythology era travelling to a new realm to start anew in Norse mythology realms.
This game will be first God of War main game in the series to arrive on PC and will probably the first God of War for many of our PC gaming readers. If you’ve never played the Greek demigod games of Kratos’ life, that will not be material for this game. Despite a couple of callbacks to his past, the entire bulk of which will not explored in this new reboot of sorts for Kratos.
The 2018 God of War sees Kratos starting a new life in a new realm, the Norse realm where Odin, Thor, Freya, Baldur, the Valkyries, etc. oversee the realms. And they don’t take kindly to outsiders. Kratos seemingly has lived a quiet life, now having a son, Atreus in his early teens. Kratos’ new wife is never shown in-game but the game’s core motivation is to fulfill her dying wish which sees Kratos getting tangled in the Norse gods penchant for conflict and the need to prove their might.
Kratos is now a 2-time widower and is raising Atreus to have the skills for hunting. Atreus himself is well-taught by his mother, who understands Norse runes and has historical understanding of their realm.
The game is now an action RPG, allowing players to level Kratos up and kit him out with different builds, something not present in the Greek mythology games. The game also integrates much richer puzzles to solve and an overall graphical change that sees the Norse realm rendered in rich details. God of War also introduces a new combat mechanic which involves more tactical combat but still integrates similar power moves from Kratos that made the original games such a fun and new experience many years ago.
We’ll talk more about the game in the closing part of this article and get started on what you came here for: PC performance. We’ve benchmarked the game on multiple cards so you can get a reference on what to expect.
The game is developed by Santa Monica Studios and is published by Playstation Studios, released originally for the Playstation 4 in 2018. God of War 2018 is powered by Santa Monica Studios’ in-house engine and is not publicly known what this engine is as it is the only game that uses it. As a Playstation 4 title, it was ahead of it time in utilizing its resource and managed to deliver excellent graphical details. The PC version includes similar options as Horizon Zero Dawn, offering the original graphics settings as “Original” while a Low, High and Ulltra preset is also available.
The game supports various resolutions, including ultrawide. The base game did not have raytracing and that remains unchanged on the PC version but has integrated NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR in the options. The game uses DirectX 11 and does not have a DirectX 12 option.
Screenshots
All screenshots are capture in Ultra preset in 4K resolution.
Options Menu
God of War features much of the same options as the Playstation version but includes PC-only options for Display and Graphics. The rest allows changing configurations for gameplay options, HUD settings, camera controls, audio levels, photo mode controls, as well as manual control bindings and access to the credits. (what’s good, Santa Monica!) The settings options are below for your reference:
Graphics Options
Unlike Days Gone or Final Fantasy VII Remake, God of War integrates DLSS and FSR, the first PS Exclusive port to do so on launch. Horizon Zero Dawn’s PC version now has the same support and allows lighter systems to gain more performance. God of War supports Windowed mode and Borderless Fullscreen as well as Frame Capping options. The game does not have exclusive Fullscreen mode. Under Graphics Options, detail settings can be set with preset options available as Low, Original, High, and Ultra. Under Custom, users can customize Texturre Quality, Model Quality, Anisotropic Filtering, Shadow quality, Reflections, atmospheric details and Ambient Occlusion.
Under Advanced Display Options, users are presented with options for NVIDIA Reflex which is quite surprising for an action RPG. As Reflex is a primarily FPS-centric development, its nice to see it landing on other genres. Of course the discussion here would be about how significant low latency mode is for this game. As God of War does have timing-based advanced combat within its gameplay mechanic, its not as fast-paced as most FPS.
Graphical Detail Analysis and Preset Comparison
Kratos Details: Low vs Original vs High vs Ultra
Kratos will have the most resource budget in this game and as such, it is quite improssive the manage to keep his details very consistent from Low to Ultra.
FSR and DLSS Comparison
God of War features NVIDIA Deep-Learning Super Sampling or DLSS and AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) support to improve gameplay performance. These technologies run the game lower (e.g. 1920×1080 is ran at 1280×720) and the hardware upscales the image which natively runs on the chosen resolution. We’ve chosen quality mode as it is the most uniform for both technology.
DLSS vs FSR Lowest Quality (Ultra Performance vs. Performance)
DLSS vs FSR Ultra Quality
To put context into FSR and DLSS before we present our performance charts, we tackle the upscaling technology first. At 4K and 1440p, both FSR and DLSS will be quite sharp but at 1080p, FSR is just too blurry for my taste. As both options will be available for NVIDIA RTX owners, they do have options but for GTX and Radeon owners, you’re limited to FSR. There will be some missing details in FSR as well in lower resolutions but in general, the blurriness will be the key factor for some folks.
Performance Testing
Test Setup
Processor: Intel Core i9-12900K
Motherboard: ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme
Memory: Kingston FURY Beast DDR5-5200 32GB
Storage: KLEVV CRAS C920 2TB
PSU: FSP HydroG Pro 1000W
Cooling: ROG Ryujin II 360 AIO
Monitor: ROG PG27UQ
VGA: Various cards
Games are tested with the pre-launch version of God of War on Steam provided by Sony Playstation Asia. AMD and NVIDIA drivers optimized for launch of the games were used in this review.
DLSS and FSR are tested using Quality mode. Percentages shown are performance improvement over stock card performance.
Benchmarks Results
Conclusion
Gameplay
God of War is a new experience for old players that grew up to Kratos smashing Olympian gods heads on stone pillars or ripping of their limbs but will be a refreshing new take on the game for new and old players alike. The game swaps out the linear, arcade hack-en-slash format of the original and trades it in to an action RPG and now PC gamers can now experience a new start for the God of War franchise.
The gameplay for God of War now revolves around Kratos’ primary weapons, mainly the Leviathan axe, but Kratos unarmed is still a capable fighter. The Blades of Chaos (pretty sure those got lost and these are the Blades of Athena) make a return which should please fans of the older games but given the new combat mechanic of the game, doesn’t allow some of the over the top maneuvering that the Blades of Chaos allowed e.g. traversing landscape using the blades. Kratos also has a shield handy which acts much like the Golden Fleece or Sun Shield from the older games which allows Kratos to parry and deflect oncoming hits. Do note that some moves will cause knockback so its best to dodge them. Kratos can stutter-step and roll in this game to maneuver allowing more dynamic combat possibilities.
Combat in itself is more deeper thanks to the new combat mechanics as well as the weapon upgrade system allows various builds to compliment varying playstyles as well allow faster or easier vanquishing of enemies. The random grunts in this game will prove to be irritating as they usually come in packs but is a great starting point as boss fights in this game, while sometimes 1v1, will see players muster their combat skills.
Outside of combat, RPG elements like forging armors, developing weapon upgrades will be key to effectively deal with enemies as you progress. The endgame enemies will be some of the hardest but most mechanically rewarding in any game and you probably have seen videos of people being thrashed by the Valkyries with Sigrun, Queen of the Valkryies, easily one of the most challenging fights in recent game history.
This fight is woven together with a beautiful narrative and excellent voice acting. Atreus is a nice way to coax player into where they should go and subtle visual cues are present to help further guide the players as they traverse the landscape.
Our original review of God of War for the Playstation 4 sees us remarking how the game smashed the preconceived notion of how bad the game would be. Players were quick to dismiss the new concept before launch, with many dismissing Kratos’ new father-and-son adventure. Nearly 4 years later, and Santa Monica Studios and Playstation did a great job with this launch, presenting a polished game to a new audience.
PC Port Report
God of War on PC runs on DirectX 11 and has been optimized with higher resolution textures which allows points of interest to really pop in-game. Santa Monica Studios smartly manages the scene resources by using good area segmentation which allows each visible are to achieve good framerates without taxing the system. Some effects do eat up CPU but the game in general will run fine on modest systems and even with lower detail presets, is still a beautiful game.
The game avoids loading screens and its quite rare to see detail pop-ins in the open world. Freya’s Sanctuary forest was a great benchmark area but surprisingly wasn’t as taxing than the foothills area. As the majority of the game will be in area similar to the foothills, especially combat, I’ve elected this as the benchmark area. The game switches from indoors to outdoors frequently but players will rarely notice how Santa Monica Studios chooses which assets get higher detail and which don’t. Most of the highly detailed assets in games are the enemies on oh boy are they detailed. There area subtle details and traits that some characters will have and its a nice nod to the design team in how they make the characters unique.
As for general performance, the game performance quite linearly and with low preset being an acceptable experience, even GTXÂ 1050 Ti owners will find the game easy to run. FSR and DLSS helps but at 1080p, FSR is just a blurry mess but helps a lot on older systems so if you can deal with that, its a manageable experience. The game will quite playable at 30FPS but enemy groups in combat could be harder at this frame rate.
The game hits the CPU hard in certain areas especially with more intricate particle effects. Its advised that players try tweaking the settings to limit these situations. I also highly advise that players try the Rendering Scale. In general, this will be the only issues players may notice in-game with FSR and DLSS already known for their own limitations but that’s offset by the significant boost in performance that we see in-game which should allot players a great overall experience in God of War for PC.