Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Review (PC)
Since entering the PC world, Sony has had its ups and downs with its releases. Some of them were protocol ports, which brought relatively good optimizations, but without some desired functionality; others were real lessons on how to port console games to PCs; and, in rare cases, we’ve also had examples of how not to switch to PC.
Somehow the company has managed to get a steady stream of good adaptations, but occasionally we see omissions here and there. Now with Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves debuting on the platform, which side will the port be on? Come see our full review!
Same collection as PS5
First, this quick brush up so you know what you’re getting into and what’s going on in the collection. Legacy of Thieves in undrawn. Although now coming to PC in October, the anthology that brings Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy it already exists on PS5 from early 2022.
In fact, both games have been present on PS4 since 2016 and 2017 respectively, but the arrival on PlayStation 5 came as remasters of both titles. No DLCs or enhancements other than graphics and performance: after all, A lost legacy has already served as standalone DLC for the fourth title in the franchise.
The debut on PC is a bit more interesting though: after all, the franchise has never been on PCs and may be a new audience’s contact with the series, which has existed exclusively on PlayStation since 2007 – something that, even, is a strange choice, as many will players start at the end of the franchise.
What there is to experience is nothing new, but it does not lose its value. Despite each title being 5 to 6 years old, it’s undeniable that we’re seeing the pinnacle of the IP, with incredibly detailed graphics that hold up very well to this day, memorable locations, fun dialogue, and a story that keeps us engaged from start to finish, mixing combat , puzzles and exploration. It is worth remembering that the version unknown 4 no PS4 multiplayer here.
But I won’t linger here as we have reviews of each of these games individually on the site and channel, as well as an analysis of the PS5 collection. What matters is: how do the games run on the computer? Is it worth the investment?
Overall a very good fit
We started this review with good news! If you had any fear, know that the port of undrawn for PCs, it performed quite satisfactorily during our tests, without too many bizarre bugs, bad optimizations (but we’ll talk about that later) or broken functions.
If you’ve seen the minimum and recommended specs that Sony has released in advance, you more or less know what to expect. One feature that caught our attention is that, despite not adding fancy visual effects such as Ray Tracing, the hardware required to run the game at higher resolutions or at 60fps performance is a bit beyond what you might expect.
During our testing, we ran both games on a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and the results were positive in most cases – I’ll talk about the exceptions below. At 1440p, I was able to easily run the game on Ultra settings with fps well above 100fps, often in the mid-160fps range.
Of course, tools like DLSS help a lot, although in this case they don’t seem as effective as in other PC games. And if you have an AMD or Nvidia 10 GPU or lower, relax: FSR 2.0 is also available here. However, if you have an Nvidia RTX 20 series graphics card or higher, I recommend opting for DLSS, as in all tested scenarios the performance increase was greater and with better image quality.
And, if you want to enjoy everything that PC has to offer, know that the interfaces have been redesigned, everything works well with the mouse and keyboard, there is support for ultrawide, several controls work well and, if you have a PS5 DualSense, it can be played with features like touch feedback and customizable triggers, but like many PlayStation titles on PC, the controller must be connected to a PC for these features to work.
Unlike Spider-Man Remastered, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves it seems to be very CPU friendly. Despite the high-end CPU demands, I was able to run everything smoothly on the old Ryzen 7 3800X for a few moments in the game with only 4 to 12% CPU usage. So don’t worry about recommendations in this regard.
it’s still not perfect
No matter what Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves it seems to be up to the PC standards we’d expect, there are a few glitches here and there, but the vast majority should be fixed in future updates. Starting with DLSS and FSR 2.0: switching between the activity and its different modes takes time to take effect in-game.
If you’re one of those PC enthusiasts who likes to tinker with clock settings and performance, both rebuild technologies take almost a minute to work in-game for no apparent reason. So don’t panic if the performance doesn’t improve, it takes some time to get things done.
Another odd point is the shader compilation before opening the collection. This behavior is already unusual for PC games (and in general, really), but it happens here: you can wait a good 20 minutes after installing and launching the game to start having fun. Despite being only once, it happened that it was necessary to repeat the process after some update, without much explanation. After several updates this was removed, but I still suspect that this version of the shader increased load times and could be the cause of performance loss in some cases.
According to the game guidelines email, this happens on CPUs with less than 8 cores, although my CPU meets this requirement and still has to wait for a process. However, it’s nothing more than a failure, despite being annoying from time to time when the shaders would need to be recompiled for some reason.
Finally, I admit that I found it Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves hard to run on the GPU. Since it has several new graphical attractions, without the presence of Ray Tracing, it is strange that even on the RTX 3080 Ti there are times when even DLSS cannot handle the loss of performance in 4K. Yes, at 1440p things flow very well, but there is something very difficult when we increase the resolution.
In addition, there are specific situations in which the GPU suffers a lot of stress or, interestingly, others in which the performance drops significantly compared to the average with no apparent explanation: the video card has enough space, and the CPU even more, but even so, the number of frames per second is decreasing. It is worth noting that this happened in rare and very calm moments, because during the fights and explosive scenes there were no problems with the performance.
But even lowering the settings or resolution does nothing to change the frame rate. Finally, I didn’t feel a big evolution compared to the PS5 which explains such a hunger for the GPU. To be honest, comparing the PC score to the PlayStation 5 requires a microscope to see the differences. Yes, there are improvements in shadows, lighting and reflection of screen space, but only a clinical eye, a sharp eye that knows where to look, will notice the improvements. Can you see?
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Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves on PC is an (almost) excellent port
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Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves on PC is an (almost) excellent port
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Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves on PC is an (almost) excellent port
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Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves on PC is an (almost) excellent port
)
Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves on PC is an (almost) excellent port
)
Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves on PC is an (almost) excellent port
)
Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves on PC is an (almost) excellent port
)
Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves on PC is an (almost) excellent port
Also, there are other bugs here and there: boxes stuck to the wall, some commands not working, and weird animations that disappear when reloading a scene. These are small bugs, worth mentioning, but they exist.
And in terms of game design, not everything has survived time so well and there are rhythms in campaign progression that interrupt the delicious adventure that the franchise undrawn offers, or not so clear climbing mechanics that lead to death.
Is it worth it?
unknown 4 and Uncharted Lost Legacy are impressive technical works. Interestingly, even though they are half-life products of the PS4, it’s surprising how beautiful these games are: perhaps as beautiful as many of the so-called “next-gen games” on the PS5. The pacing has its flaws, of course, and there are mechanics we see room for improvement in 2022, but nothing to cloud the experience.
What somewhat overshadows this fun game are certainly the rough edges of the PC port, with some intriguingly difficult areas to launch, certain places in the game where resources are not fully utilized, unstable shader compilation, and the occasional glitch, but these are all fairly rare and easy to repair and undoubtedly put port Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves among the good computer games to try.
