Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was first launched on the PS5 in 2021. Fast forward two years, the game is now available on PC as well, so fans of the franchise without a PS5 can finally experience the continuation of the much-loved series.
For the most part, I thoroughly enjoyed playing the game on PC. Even after so long, Ratchet & Clank is still just as entertaining to play through with great-looking graphics. And this is despite the fact that I’m running the game on older hardware.
But is it worth forking out RM249 for the game? Well, I’ll get to that in this review of Rift Apart.
What It Is
For PC, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is available on Steam and the Epic Games Store for RM249, which is RM50 less than the PS5 version (RM299). However, it’s worth noting that the game is also available through PlayStation Plus – the Extra tier, to be specific.
Before I get to the meat of the review, I should outline my PC setup first:
- AMD Ryzen 2700X
- Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 WINDFORCE OC 8GB GDDR6
- 16GB RAM
- Samsung 860 EVO SSD
- Windows 10
Yes, not a particularly modern PC setup, though it’s certainly not a low-end machine by any means. Throughout my playthrough of Rift Apart, I ran the game at 1440p under the High graphics settings with DLSS upscaling switched on. Overall, I can get pretty solid frame rate – I’ll elaborate more in the next section.
The Good Stuff
Since I’ve already reviewed Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart when it first came out on the PS5 in 2021, I’ll focus more on the performance aspect of this PC version. It’s usually a gamble when it comes to PC ports of console releases, but I’m happy to report that Rift Apart, even with my modest PC, can still run the game exceptionally well.
However, there is one rift jumping sequence at the start of the game that gave me a bit of a scare. That particular scene dropped my frame rate to about 20fps for a few seconds, though I don’t experience the same lag anymore in subsequent rift jumps after that portion of the game – thankfully.
In fact, rift jumping during combat is smooth without a hint of lag. Of course, the official recommendation is to run the game on an SSD, and I’m happy that my Samsung 860 EVO can keep up without losing a beat. While it is technically possible to still play the game with a slower HDD, but it won’t be a very pleasant gaming experience.
With my RTX 2080, Rift Apart runs quite smooth, and I didn’t face any severe frame drops even during heated battles with hoards of enemies. On average, I can get about 60fps, though the frame rate does drop to about 40fps in more intense gameplay. I switched on ray tracing for fun at times, but my frame rate drops to about 30fps…and below during combat. Needless to say, I switched back to the High graphics settings shortly after.
Performance aside, I also can’t get over how good Rift Apart looks. From the unique biomes of the different planets I visit to the very detailed character models – not to mention the sheer vastness of each environment – this is a stunning game. It’s amazing to think that Rift Apart was initially released two years ago.
The Bad Stuff
As much as I enjoyed playing through Rift Apart, I did encounter some issues in my playthrough. One of which is the (slightly) confusing control references. I used a mouse and keyboard to play the game, and there are a few instances where it still mentions half-pressing the trigger buttons, which is a reference to the DualSense controller.
Understandably, I can still connect a DualSense controller to my PC to play Rift Apart, but I find it more comfortable to aim with a mouse and keyboard. On the bright side, the half-press, full-press mechanism does translate quite well to the mouse input: right click is half-press, left click is full-press, and holding left click is long press.
I also encountered some bugs with the weapons vendor, Ms. Zurkon. There were a couple of instances where she closed up her shop and hid when I got closer, which usually only happens when I’m in the middle of combat. Of course, I wasn’t actually in a fight when this happened to me.
The other one concerns the weapon preview page, which shows how a particular weapon looks and performs. There was one time where the pop-up would come up, but…nothing was actually shown. It’s really just a minor bug, of course, which quickly resolved itself when I visited Ms. Zurkon again.
Is It Worth It?
For RM249, I’d still say Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is worth the money. While the main storyline of the game isn’t particularly long at about 15 to 20 hours of gameplay – depending on whether or not you do the optional quests – it does have good replay value, thanks to the inclusion of Challenge Mode.
Plus, the PC version of Rift Apart does include a number of new features, including ultra-wide monitor support and a slew of performance-enhancing upscaling, so the game can still run quite well on older hardware, such as my PC.