The result? From playing the opening hours of the game, it performs near-perfectly on both Xbox Series X and S. Practically every major locale, including the fire-spewing dragon on the High Walls of Lothric, is delivered at a smooth 60fps. And yes, that applies to both consoles as by and large, Xbox Series S runs identically to Series X for the vast majority of play. The only exception I could find was a single, brief drop to 53fps during an early fight with a mutating creature on the Lothric roof. Heavy alpha effects buckle Series S only momentarily, while this spot's not an issue at all on Series X. The results are excellent all round, but Series X has a very slight edge in consistency with the fringe cases.
There is a catch though, and it's a big one. Both Xbox Series S and X continue to run at a lowly 900p resolution. On a full 4K display, an upscaled 900p image doesn't quite cut the mustard. Basic anti-aliasing is used to cover elements like grass, which flicker with movement due to its heavy sub-pixel detail and lack of temporal anti-aliasing. Just like prior FPS Boost titles, this is because the game inherits the settings from the base Xbox One, including the original 900p native resolution. It's especially disappointing that Xbox Series X still can't push past this 900p limit - we know the hardware can do much better, given that the same game runs just fine at 1080p60 on PlayStation 5.
FPS Boost isn't enough to fix all of Dark Souls 3's problems on Xbox, but it's a still a massive improvement to the game as the 60fps upgrade works handsomely. Also, there's a tangible benefit to playing on Series X and S due to the faster loading times afforded by its faster SSD media. Fast-travelling from the initial Firelink Shrine to the High Wall of Lothric gets chopped almost in half, down to 6.7 seconds on Xbox Series X, versus the 12.3 seconds on the older Xbox One X. Not bad.
Reply With Quote