Onimusha: Way of the Sword Looks Like a Next-Gen Game With DLSS 5

Last week, NVIDIA officially launched DLSS 5. As of now, only one game officially supports it: NBA 2K27. So, while official DLSS 5 support is still limited, modders have found ways to add DLSS 5 to almost any game. And this brings us to a new series of articles.

Since I play most of the latest PC games, I’ll be testing DLSS 5 in these games and sharing my results with you. I will not be testing DLSS 5 in older games. I’ll be solely focusing on the latest PC games. Not only that, but I’ll be testing both the NVIDIA RTX 5080 and the RTX 5090.

Now, I know that the DLSS 5 Mods already work with the RTX 40 series GPUs. So, in theory, I can also use the NVIDIA RTX 4090. I’ve not decided yet on this. In future articles, I might try it. But for now, I’ll cover the RTX 5080 and the RTX 5090.

Let’s start with the visuals. My biggest complaint about Onimusha: Way of the Sword was its graphics. Although it performs exceptionally well, it looks bad. At least by today’s standards.

With DLSS 5, the game literally transforms before your eyes. The characters no longer look flat or plastic. This is easily a generational leap in visual quality, at least compared to the vanilla version. Here are some comparison shots. On the left, you can see the DLSS 5 version. On the right, you can see the vanilla version. No matter what, you have to be blind to choose the vanilla shots.

Here are also the settings I used for both the NVIDIA RTX 5080. As you can see, I’m not using extreme settings. That’s because extreme settings can introduce major visual artifacts. For the NVIDIA RTX 5090, I also had NR Render Scale at 1.0.

So, what about performance? At 4K/DLSS Quality, the game runs with 40-45FPS when you enable DLSS 5 on the NVIDIA RTX 5090. By using Smooth Motion, you can get to 100FPS. If the mod supports Frame Gen, you can use MFG to get to 180-190FPS.

Since the base framerate is above 40FPS, the game is fully playable with DLSS 5. With the above settings, I also did not have any flickering or visual issues. So, these are what I consider “proper” DLSS 5 settings. At least for me.

As I’ve said, DLSS 5 modders have found a way to unlock render-scale rendering. This can greatly improve performance. On the NVIDIA RTX 5080, I used DLSS Performance Mode at 4K with max settings, ray tracing, and DLSS 5’s NR Render Scale set to 0.5. With these settings, I was getting around 50 FPS without Frame Generation. That’s a great base framerate for using Frame Gen. With MFG X4 enabled, I was able to reach 200–210 FPS.

Image quality was better on the NVIDIA RTX 5080 with DLSS 5 than without it. Yes, you can use higher-quality modes of DLSS Super Resolution without DLSS 5. And yes, if you look closely, DLSS Quality has fewer jaggies and a slightly sharper image. However, DLSS 5 is transformative in this game. You don’t need a magnifying glass to see the improvements. Since you can also tweak DLSS 5 to run at a base framerate of 50 FPS at 4K, even on the NVIDIA RTX 5080, I think this is the best way to play it.

All in all, Onimusha: Way of the Sword greatly benefits from DLSS 5. If you own an NVIDIA RTX 5080, an RTX 4090, or an RTX 5090, you can use the above settings to get a great gaming experience at 4K. The DLSS 5 Mod I used was the DLSS5 Neural Rendering Load Tool, and I did not have any stability issues with it.

Stay tuned for more!

John Papadopoulos

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.”
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