SEGA has just released a demo of Metaphor ReFantazio on PC and consoles. The game uses P-Studio’s proprietary engine which was used in Persona 5, P4D, P3D, P5D, P5R. And, sadly for all ATLUS fans, it appears that the game suffers from MAJOR optimization issues.
To be honest, I never planned to cover this game. At first glance, it looked like it would run with no trouble at all on PC. After numerous reports, though, I’ve decided to test it. And yes, the game is currently a mess.
For our benchmarks, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, and NVIDIA’s RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, and the GeForce 561.09 driver. Moreover, we’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.
On this high-end PC, the game has trouble running with 60fps at 4K/Max Settings. Now contrary to what you may think, we are not GPU-limited. Instead, the game suffers from optimizations that prevent it from using the GPU at 100%.
Here are some screenshots. As you can see, GPU utilization is all over the place. When facing a lot of enemies in the desert, the NVIDIA RTX 4090 is used at only 46%. This usually means a CPU bottleneck but if you look at the CPU usage, none of our CPU cores is maxed out.
At first, things look a bit better in the first town you visit. Once you turn the camera, though, all hell breaks loose. GPU usage, once again, drops to really low levels.
My guess is that we’re looking here at a RAM limitation. The engine appears to be overwhelmed with drawcalls that it cannot efficiently handle. We’ve seen this in the past in very unoptimized titles. But we’re talking here about a DDR5 at 6000Mhz. And we are struggling to get 60fps. That doesn’t bode well for everyone who uses weaker RAM modules.
ATLUS will have to make major optimization improvements to this game. Frankly, though, I don’t expect this to happen. You see, ATLUS has been avoiding the PC for a long time. So, it’s unlikely to see them pushing any major performance updates, at least for the PC. I’ve heard that the console versions also suffer from some performance issues, but not to the extent we see on PC. Not only that but mouse controls are awful.
In short, you should stay away from this mess if you are gaming on the PC. This is one of the worst PC ports we’ve seen lately. So, congrats ATLUS for making a PS4-looking game that, at best, stresses high-end PCs. And that, right there, is the definition of an unoptimized mess.
UPDATE:
Kaldaien has released a Special K Mod that fixes the performance issues in this title. As the modder noted, Metaphor ReFantazio has insane timing code issues under the hood that are causing the aforementioned performance issues.
So I went ahead and tried the mod. And yes, I can confirm that it really fixes the game’s performance issues. However, it exposes another major optimization issue.
Here are two screenshots from the area that struggled to run with 60fps. As you can see, we now get 90+fps in that very same scene. However, pay close attention to the CPU usage. As you will see, CPU5 core is maxed out and as such, we are now CPU-limited even at 4K. And that’s the other major optimization issue I was referring to. Metaphor ReFantazio relies heavily on one CPU core/thread. Therefore, even with this performance fix, the game will have performance issues on CPUs that lack great IPC performance.
As I said, I don’t expect ATLUS to address this CPU optimization issue. So, let’s at least hope they will implement Kaldaien’s fix in the final version.
Before closing, I should note that the game was crashing when I was using Kaldaien’s Mod with MSI Afterburner. I was able to replicate this multiple times. Don’t know really why it’s happening. Still, if your game crashes with the mod, you should make sure to close MSI Afterburner and Rivatunner.
You can download Kaldaien’s Special K Performance Fix for Metaphor ReFantazio from here.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
Sad, a RARE new IP and they gimp it from the jump, New IP is what warms my cold blood. love the art style, not a Turn-based lover though.
It's a console designed game John what do you expect? This is ATLUS first multiplatform release which includes PC . They should delay the pc release but I think they won't cause they have too many fanboys that defend them . From what I observed ATLUS has cult like fanbase just like Nintendo !
Didn't the Persona 3 remake also launch on PC at the same time?
according to google sensei, yes
Does the demo section use another build entirely? Have you tried other computers?
Cause I played the demo today and had no trouble getting stable 60FPS.
Article updated, Kaldaien released a performance fix for it that actually works (we got a 30+fps performance boost).
The issue might be exclusive to NVidia GPUs, as I asked around on Discord and most people with AMD like myself, had no problems running this game on stable 60FPS.
I personally only played the Demo, as I didn't buy this game yet.
Edit: This is no longer a what if scenario, NVidia has exactly the same issues with Persona 5, there multiple reports of poor performance on the Steam Community. No issues at all on AMD builds, same as Refantazio (both use the same engine).
Hiring programmers? ❌
Diversity hires? ✅
Japanese diversity hires?
bout to ask the same lol
Who were the diversity hires for this game?
I'm on a 7800X3D/4070 Ti Super build with 32GB RAM (6000/CL30).
On 4K (rendering scale 100%) and max settings I am getting on average in the high 100s, low 200s. But in really constrained areas in the city it can potentially drop down to around 80-90 FPS, which is a huge variation, but still enough to keep it in the VRR sweetspot for my (FPS cap of 115 on a 120 Hz display, so as long as it stays north of 80-ish it feels smooth).
Atlus deserves their games to be emulated/pirated, they hate PC.
200 – 300FPS maxed out here, RTX4080 at 1440p
Dips in larger areas
On my Deck, it's mostly 60 frames with dips into the 50s at times
'Unoptimised mess' might be a slight overexaggeration. Most people aren't going to give a f*k about 40XX series GPUs or 4K.
According to the official specs, this is a DX11 game.
On the Steam Deck, that gets translated to Vulkan via DXVK, which is one of many reasons why it generally is able to punch above its weight.
Could anyone on Windows give this a try with DXVK?
Coincidentally, DXVK 2.4.1 was just released a short while ago.
Just make sure to update your GPU driver to the latest version.
I tried it with DXVK last night, and it improved my framerates a decent amount. Still had one core pegged at 100% in CPU-limited scenarios, and saw dips to low 50 FPS. Using a Ryzen 5700X and an RTX 3060 Ti with 2x16GB DDR4-3600 CL16 dual rank memory.
Wow, we have the same PC spec (except the RAM, mine is 4×8 GB 3600MHz ,CL18 I think)
Youre testing the lightest areas in the game try going to the desert or city the framerate tanks
Trash game looks aliased even at 4K 200% resolution scale. This is why you add TAA to your games. At least we could eliminate all the jaggies this way and then bruteforce the resolution in case it looks too blurry because it's not demanding.
Agreed, this game has some of the worst aliasing I've ever seen. The last game I played that had jaggies this bad was the Yakuza 2 remake (also published by Sega, what a coincidence). Hopefully using some AA injectors through Reshade can help somewhat.
But then the usual b1tches (amdumbos) would complain about mAh TaA bLuRrInEsS. well, there you go, there's ur aliased supersampled trash, enjoy it
looks like a ps2 game.
But then to expend money in denuvo atlus has no problem…
This might be a ps4 game but its a ps3 looking game at best it looks the same as persona 5 which was a ps3 game
Just enable frame generation. It seems to be the go to solution from the developers nowadays.