Dark Souls 3 PC Performance Review

Game Controls 

Dark Souls 3 is a game that is primarily designed to be controlled using a gamepad, though there are mouse and keyboard controls to use if the user desires, just note that this is not the optimal way to play the game. The mouse and keyboard controls are fully

The mouse and keyboard controls are fully rebindable, which is a great feature to have, but when considering the importance of dodge rolling and moment are to combat, the directional control provided by an analogue stick is something that is hard to beat with a keyboard.   

 

 

Graphical Options and Settings

The graphical options menu in Dark Souls 3 is very basic, with the game being easily played at a wide range of resolutions and in a fullscreen or windowed mode.   

The game has 4 pre-defined graphical presets, Low, Medium, High and Max, all of which have a reasonable amount of performance difference to cover a wide range of PC hardware. Sadly some of these graphical presets do not make much of a visual difference in-game, but it is still great to see that there are a decent number of options. 

The available graphical options are as follows, Texture Quality, Anti-Aliasing, SSAO, Depth of Field, Motion Blur, Shadow quality, Lighting quality, Effects quality, Reflection quality, Water surface quality and Shader quality. 

One problem that Dark Souls 3 has on PC is that the game is locked to a maximum refresh rate of 60Hz and that the game does not support any proper Anti-Aliasing support, with only FXAA as an option, which has a blurring effect on the final displayed image. 

 

 

Unlike other websites we do not just test games at maximum settings, at OC3D we like to give a fuller picture and give you results for a variety of different settings, as most PC gamers do not play their games at max settings.

We have tested Dark Souls 3 with the games four pre-defined graphical presets, which are shown in the screenshots below.    

 

    

(Low Settings (Left), Medium Settings (Right))

  

  (High Settings (Left), Max Settings (Right))