Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is best played on PC

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is impressive on all consoles, let down only by a wobbly 30fps on base hardware, and an uneven, unlocked frame-rate on their enhanced counterparts. The brilliance of the game itself still shines through, but the PC version is something else: a locked 60fps at 1080p is trivial on mainstream graphics cards, while community mods have enabled ultra-wide display support and consistent performance at up to 144 frames per second. Sekiro runs best on PC, with clear and obvious benefits for gameplay.

The nirvana delivered by the PC port is most evident by switching back to the console versions - Xbox One X being my console of choice - and boy, was that a rough transfer. The console builds are more confusing visually, and gameplay is far less consistent and actually harder. For me, the biggest difference between the versions is that when I die on PC, I feel responsible as I am more in control. On Xbox, it feels like my inability to judge how far ahead of time I have to hold down the parry button is a lot more arbitrary, whereas on PC, I can lightly tap it when it feels right and I pretty much always get the result I want.

But this is not the only spot where a well-equipped PC can power ahead - in contrast to the console builds, there's the sense here of a PC port that is rather well optimised and may even have been the lead platform. Typically, we look to GPUs like Nvidia's GTX 1060 and AMD's RX 580 as cards able to double console performance at 1080p on the majority of titles, but the fact is that both GPUs make a good fist of running at 1440p60 on console equivalent settings, with minor dips. By extension, we can infer that at 1080p, less capable GPUs should be capable of taking the title to its standard 60fps limit. AMD could use some driver tweaking though - occasional stutter crops up at 1080p, and it's much more impactful when gaming at 1440p.

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