Rise of the Ronin’s PC launch isn’t off to a good start at all, debuting on Steam to “Mixed” reviews and myriad complaints about performance and optimization.
If this sounds like deja vu to you, it isn’t. It’s just that that many AAA console games play like crap when they make their way over to PC. Capcom‘s Monster Hunter Wilds is just now starting to recover from its rough PC launch last month, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 committed a similar offense in January, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 did it in October, I could go on and on. Point is, it’s pretty much expected that PC ports of big games are going to be skewered at launch, but unfortunately it’s also expected of me to report on stuff like this.
Yes, Rise of the Ronin is taking a beating in Steam reviews, mostly due to poor performance, technical issues, bugs, whatever you feel like calling it. It just doesn’t seem to be optimized very well at the moment. Of the 715 reviews currently on Steam, only 44% of them are positive, and almost all of them are either centered on performance issues or make mention of them. The review at the top of Steam’s “Most Helpful Reviews” column reads: “Is it really that hard to not make bad PC port? Stuttering on a 4090 is just… no.”
“Breaks my heart to do this, but I just can’t recommend the game in its current state,” reads another user review. “The optimization is as bad as everyone is saying. If you played Wo Long at launch and remember the optimization problems that plagued that title at launch, this is actually worse. It really is a bummer. Likely going to refund and wait for a patch.”
“The fact that the game performance is INSANELY bad is unacceptable,” reads another.
Obviously, your mileage will vary when it comes to PC performance on any game depending on the hardware you’re rocking, but it’s pretty damning to hear that some 4090 rigs are struggling, especially considering Rise of the Ronin isn’t a particularly graphically intensive game.
It’s a shame, because Rise of the Ronin’s open world is an underrated gem of last year.