Review Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy Excels on PC with Superior Scalability

Four years after the beautiful scenes of A Plague Tale: Requiem, Asobo Studio has returned with Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy. Powered by the developer's proprietary Zouna engine, this prequel marks an impressive visual evolution, boasting richly detailed environments, excellent character models and superb art direction that builds significantly upon its predecessor. Our aim with this PC-focused testing is to provide the optimal balance between visual fidelity and performance on PC, through performance analysis and careful cue-taking from Asobo's choices for settings in the PlayStation 5 version.

Before we get into the optimised settings, it's worth noting a few unexpected disappointments in the PC release. The settings menu is unfortunately lacking here, with much the same functionality as Requiem - which is to say there's zero guidance on how adjustments actually impact visual fidelity or performance. Most critically, the lack of a proper VRAM usage metre leaves users guessing about memory limits, making the tweaking process unnecessarily opaque.

There is - or rather was - another key issue. At launch, the Xbox/Game Pass version of the game had severe issues running on Nvidia GPUs with no apparent shader precompilation step in place, resulting in massive stutters throughout the experience on first play. This wasn't a problem with AMD, where Microsoft's Advanced Shader Delivery made for an experience as good as the Steam version. Thankfully, a couple of days prior to us finishing our work on the day, Asobo fixed the problem. Even so, it took a while to resolve and we've no idea why it took so long and how the Nvidia issues made it passed QA in the first place.

However, it's worth bumping up to high for the likes of screen-space reflections for a visual win with no severe performance penalty, while the CPU-specific NPC refresh rate and enemy refresh rate settings can be dropped to low if you're struggling to hit 60fps on an older CPU. If v-synced 30fps is instead your target - perhaps on handheld hardware - then it's best to stick to high, as the refresh rate setting on low results in choppy 15Hz updates at this frame-rate.

Texture quality on the PS5 effectively matches the ultra preset, which is recommended for those with sufficient VRAM. However, players with 8GB cards should stick to the high setting to avoid memory bottlenecks at higher resolutions. You can see the full list of optimised settings in the table below, which on an RTX 4060 deliver a 33 percent boost to performance versus the ultra preset.

In direct performance comparisons at matched settings, the RTX 4060 runs closely to the PlayStation 5 with native rendering, though the console occasionally pulls ahead in demanding sequences. The introduction of DLSS 4.5 for Nvidia GPUs transforms the experience though, not only providing a significant performance boost over TAA upscaling but also delivering a cleaner and more stable image with fewer artefacts. FSR 4.1 and XeSS are also supported, so users of other GPUs aren't left in the dark.

Testing the high-end RX 9070 XT against the PS5 Pro reveals a significant performance gap in favour of PC - sometimes running in excess of double the frame-rate with equivalent upscaling and without frame generation. The AMD card handles settings equivalent to the console's quality mode with ease, maintaining a substantial lead over the console's output. This confirms that high-end PC hardware can comfortably outperform the current console ceiling, which is what we like to see - though it's not always a guarantee, even in high-end multi-platform releases. There's room for post-launch improvements here too - perhaps RT shadows would be a good addition to use up some extra GPU headroom on top-specced PCs.

Ultimately, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy arrives as a well-crafted PC release with excellent scalability. While the lack of an improved settings menu and the performance issues on the Game Pass version are regrettable, the core experience is technically impressive, without the performance issues that often plague modern triple-A fare. The game remains a strong showcase for Asobo's work on the Zouna engine and the advantages of charting your own tech path.