Fix for Lag in Metaphor: ReFantazio Demo on PC Revealed

Yesterday, a surprise demo for Atlus' latest game, Metaphor ReFantazio, dropped. This enormous fantasy RPG, set to release on October 11, is already available for about six hours of gameplay across consoles and PC. However, PC players are reporting significant performance issues.

PC Performance Issues

Many Steam users have reported that the demo is plagued with framerate issues. Some claim the game is only utilizing one CPU core, leading to stuttering and inconsistent framerates. This is surprising, given the game runs smoothly on PS5 and Xbox Series consoles.

My own experience mirrored these reports. Despite having a decent setup with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, 32 MB RAM, and a GeForce RTX 3070, I encountered framerate drops during busy combat scenes. The game struggled to maintain a steady framerate, making it very distracting.

Possible Fixes

Fortunately, some players have found potential solutions. Here are a few tips that might help:

• Reduce the game's rendering scale. The game often defaults to 125% to 150%, which can be lowered to improve performance.
• Adjust Texture Quality settings. After reducing the rendering scale, you might be able to increase texture quality without performance loss.
• Use Task Manager to set CPU affinity. This involves manually adjusting which CPU cores the game uses, which has helped some players.

Rendering Scale Adjustment

Reducing the rendering scale to 100% significantly improved my gameplay experience. I was able to achieve a solid 60 FPS in busy areas, even with dozens of NPCs on screen. This simple tweak made a big difference.

CPU Affinity Trick

Another solution involves using Task Manager. By setting the CPU affinity for the game, you can force it to use multiple cores more effectively. This trick allowed me to increase the rendering scale back to 150% while maintaining a stable framerate between 55 and 60 FPS.

Looking Ahead

Hopefully, by the time Metaphor ReFantazio officially releases on October 11, the PC version will have better optimization and more comprehensive graphics settings. Standard features like antialiasing and DLSS are crucial for a smooth gaming experience.

In the meantime, these fixes have worked for me and many others. If you're struggling with performance issues, give them a try and see if they help.

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