First PC Performance Impressions for The Sinking City 2, 1666 Amsterdam, Mortal Shell 2, Valor Mortis, and Onimusha: Way of the Sword

A lot of PC demos have been released over the past few days. As such, I’ve decided to download, test them, and share my initial PC performance impressions. So, here are my first PC performance impressions for The Sinking City 2, 1666 Amsterdam, Mortal Shell 2, Valor Mortis, and Onimusha: Way of the Sword.

For these first benchmarks, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090. I also used Windows 10 64-bit and the GeForce 596.49 driver.

Let’s start with The Sinking City 2. This game is powered by Unreal Engine 5, and it will pre-compile its shaders when you first launch it. However, I did experience some weird stutters in random places. I don’t believe these are traversal stutters as they could occur at random places (and not on specific places). So, perhaps the game is not pre-compiling all of its shaders? I don’t really know.

Performance seems to be on par with what you’d expect from most UE5 games. At Native 4K, the game usually runs at 55-62FPS. However, I found a really demanding area (which is the area I’ll use for my PC Performance Analysis purposes once the game comes out). In that area, I was getting 50FPS at Native 4K on Quality Settings.

The Sinking City 2 supports NVIDIA DLSS 4 and AMD FSR 4.1. DLSS and FSR seem to offer similar performance in this title. With DLSS 4 Quality, I was getting 73FPS in my benchmark scene. By enabling Frame Gen, I was able to get to 132FPS. Then, with MFG X3 and X4, I got to 186FPS and 238FPS, respectively.

Overall, I’d say The Sinking City 2 runs fine. It’s not the most optimized UE5 game, but it’s also not one of the worst we’ve seen.

Next, we have 1666 Amsterdam. 1666 Amsterdam is also powered by Unreal Engine 5. However, this game is in a very early development phase. So, this prologue demo cannot give us any idea of how the game will run when it hits Early Access.

Right now, the demo has very limited graphics settings. To be more precise, it only has a universal preset graphics setting and a setting for upscaling.

For the most part, the demo runs fine. However, I did find a really demanding area after a few minutes of gameplay. So, in this area, I was getting 54FPS at 4K/Epic with TSR on Ultra Quality Mode. By dropping my settings to High, I was able to get to 65FPS. The demo does not support DLSS Frame Gen, it only supports DLSS Super Resolution. With DLSS Quality Mode, I was able to get 63FPS at 4K/Epic Settings.

My biggest issue with 1666 Amsterdam is the awful mouse camera movement. From the looks of it, there is an awful mouse acceleration issue. I’ve never experienced such a thing in any other UE5 game. As a result of that, the game is not enjoyable at all with KB&M.

Next, we have Valor Mortis. This is another game using Unreal Engine 5. Interestingly enough, though, this one does not support NVIDIA DLSS. Instead, there is only support for AMD FSR 3.1.

In this area, which appeared to be a demanding one, I was getting 52FPS at Native 4K with Epic Settings. By dropping the settings to one notch, I was able to get 71FPS. For gaming with 60FPS at 4K with Epic Settings, I had to enable AMD FSR 3.1 Quality. With it, I was getting 84FPS. And, for some weird reason, AMD FSR 3.1 Frame Gen was not working on my system.

What’s crucial to note is that I did not experience any stuttering issues at all. Valor Mortis felt smooth, without any traversal or shader compilation stutters. This should be good news for those who are looking forward to it. However, the graphics settings are very limited in this demo. So, here is hoping that the final version will offer more advanced settings. Overall, though, the game runs like most UE5 games.

The next in line is Mortal Shell 2. And yes. This is another game that uses Unreal Engine 5. Mortal Shell 2 runs with high framerates, even at Native 4K. For the most part, I was getting over 90FPS at Native 4K/Very High Settings. There are a couple of demanding areas like this one.

In this area, I was getting 64FPS at Native 4K/Very High Settings. The game supports DLSS 4, and with its Quality Mode, I was getting 100FPS. You can then use Multi-Frame Gen to further improve performance smoothness.

Sadly, Mortal Shell 2 suffers from some traversal stutters. They are not annoying, but most of you will immediately notice them. It’s a shame, really, because without those stutters, this UE5 game would feel really silky smooth. I should also note that the Ray Tracing setting appears to be broken. The game looked and performed the same whether Ray Tracing was turned On or Off.

Finally, we have Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and like most of Capcom’s games, it uses the RE Engine. At Native 4K on Max Settings without Ray Tracing, the game runs with a minimum of 119FPS on the NVIDIA RTX 5090. With Ray Tracing, I was getting a minimum of 98FPS. However, I could not spot any major visual differences with RT.

For instance, here is a comparison shot. By simply looking at them, these screenshots look identical. And, even with Ray Tracing, Onimusha: Way of the Sword does not look as good as the rest of the UE5 games featured in this article. So, I really hope Capcom will add support for Path Tracing.

The good news here is that Onimusha: Way of the Sword does not suffer from any stutters and feels silky smooth. But man, its visuals look really dated, especially after experiencing Resident Evil Requiem and PRAGMATA with Path Tracing.

And there you have it. These are my first performance impressions of these PC demos!

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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