After spending a year being exclusive to the PlayStation 4, Nioh 2 is finally coming to PC. We got to spend some time with the PC release, and publisher Koei Tecmo has been talking up the PC release quite a bit. It's time to look at whether it lives up to the hype. So, without further ado, let’s look at what you can expect from Nioh 2’s PC release.
Nioh 2 Minimum PC Requirements
- OS: Windows 10 64bit, Windows 8.1 64bit
- Processor: Intel Core i5 4460 or over
- Memory: 6 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 or over, VRAM 4GB or over
- Storage: 85 GB available space
Nioh 2 Recommended PC Requirements
- OS: Windows 10 64bit
- Processor: Intel Core i7 6700K or over
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER or over, VRAM 6GB or over
- Storage: 85 GB available space
Nioh 2 PC Graphics Options
Despite being originally a PS4-exclusive, Nioh 2 has a host of graphics options to play around with.
- Display Mode: Fullscreen, Windowed, Borderless
- Screen Resolution
- Rendering Resolution
- Frame Rate Cap: 30, 60, 120
- Shadows: Off, Low Quality, Medium Quality, High Quality
- Motion Blur: Off, On
- Dynamic Reflections: Off, On
- Ambient Occlusion: Off, On
- Texture Quality: Low, High
- Effects Quality: Low, High
While the options seem a bit bare, they’re actually more than enough to be able to tinker about with, making the game quite scalable between mid-range and high-end PC hardware. Rendering resolution especially helps weaker systems run the game smoothly by allowing the game to cut some down on exactly how much it’s rendering. Sure, it results in a dip in quality, but on the other hand, being able to play a fast-paced game like Nioh 2 depends more on stable frame rates than it does on looking pretty.
Another option to look at if running Nioh 2 on weaker hardware is Ambient Occlusion. Keeping it on makes the game look great, but turning it off will provide a massive boost in frame rate, and could end up being the difference between Nioh 2 being a laggy mess and feeling wonderful to play.
Nioh 2 Resolution and Frame Rate
Nioh 2 provides a frame rate cap, allowing the PC version of the game to run at up to 120 frames per second. If you have the monitor and hardware to support it, we fully recommend keeping it at 120. The action was buttery smooth on our 144hz display, running on a Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB of RAM and a Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Ti.
The frame rate dips were few and far between, especially when facing against some of the larger enemies of the game that love firing off particle effects every chance they get. Even then, however, the frame rate never quite dipped below 100fps, so I'd call that a win.
Sadly, Nioh 2 doesn’t have its own benchmarking tool, but having played the game quite a bit, I can assure you that my mid-range PC had more than enough horsepower to play it at 1080p with every setting turned up to max, while being able to maintain a smooth 120 frames per second. Well, every option except motion blur. We really hate motion blur.
Nioh 2 PC – Good or Bad?
Don’t let its console-exclusive origins fool you; Nioh 2 is a wonderful game to play on PC. While not extensive in offering graphic options, it provides just enough to make tinkering around not tedious. It also scales wonderfully with lower-end hardware, especially with options like rendering resolution and frame rate caps. For beefier systems, the higher frame rate caps are a welcome sight as well, especially when paired with a monitor capable of going beyond 60Hz.
If this is the first time you’re going to play a Nioh game, Nioh 2: The Complete Edition on PC is just about the best way to play it. Of course, it helps that it comes packed with all the content that the original Nioh 2 got over time after its release. And did we mention that it offers fully rebindable keyboard and mouse controls?
Nioh 2: The Complete Edition is available on Steam for Rs. 2,499.
