A Plague Tale Requiem is finally out on all the major gaming platforms, and I have to say that it is one of the most demanding games that I have seen in my entire life.
If you didn’t know, Requiem is a third-person action-adventure title that has been developed by Asobo Studio and published by Focus Entertainment. The game is a sequel to the 2019 Plague title, Innocence.
In this game, you play as Amicia and Hugo de Rune who journeys through Southern France, to find a cure for Hugo’s blood disease. In the process, you will have to deal with Inquisition soldiers and, of course, the hordes of rats, that are spreading the black plague.
A Plague Tale Requiem’s gameplay and mechanics are quite similar to ‘Innocence’, with an overhaul to the combat system. As Amicia, you are equipped with weapons like a Knife, a Sling, and a Crossbow, to deal with the enemies that you face throughout the game.
Not only can you combine your crossbow bolts, rocks, and throwing pots, with alchemical mixtures, but you can now use Tar, which increases the radius of the light source, that you create with Ignifers and Extinguis, and can also be used to burn enemies.
Enough info about the game, now let’s take about how the game performs on PC. Well, ever since the devs announced the requirements for the game, I wasn’t expecting much to be honest.
I mean, the game is extremely heavy, and not everybody would be able to run it. And people who are flocking to try the game, without a good GPU, are facing issues like Stuttering, FPS Drops, random Freezing, and Lag.
Anyway, the devs have recommended some fixes that you can try to counter these issues.
How to Fix Stuttering and FPS Drops in A Plague Tale Requiem
To start with, if you are using a decent GPU like the RTX 3070 and you are getting decent FPS in the game, but you are getting random stutters. Then I would suggest that you limit the frame rate that you are getting in the game. I did the game, and the stuttering reduced for me significantly, and my GPU overheating issue was gone as well.
The game has no option to cap fps, so I did it using Nvidia Control Panel. Here is what you need to do:
- Launch Nvidia Control Panel.
- Click on Manage 3D settings.
- Click on the Program settings tab.
- In order to select A Plague Tale: Requiem, click on Add.
- Select ‘A Plague Tale: Requiem – Windows’ from the list of programs.
- Look for the Max Frame Rate setting.
- Set it to 60 or something that your PC can handle consistently.
- Go in-game and turn on V-sync.
Nvidia has already released a Game Ready Driver for A Plague Tale Requiem. The version is 522.25, and it got released on 10/12/2022. You can either download it via GeForce Experience, or you can visit this link to download the driver manually. No word from AMD, though.
After you have done all that, make sure that you tweak the video settings of the game properly, and try to utilize settings like DLSS, to squeeze out extra performance.
I was able to eradicate the majority of the stuttering and fps drops that I was getting on my RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti by just turning on DLSS. I already have a guide for that.
If you are curious, I was able to get an average of 62 FPS at Ultra Settings on 1440p, with the help of DLSS. Check out the video:
If tweaking the settings doesn’t help, then you can go to Nvidia Control Panel, and make your GPU focus more on ‘Performance’ instead of ‘Quality’, by clicking on ‘Adjust image settings with preview’, selecting ‘Use my preference emphasizing’, and pull the slider all the way towards ‘Perfomance’.
Go ahead and disable every single overlay that you have on right now. Overlays from applications like Discord, Nvidia GeForce Experience, Steam, etc., are known to cause issues in games. So disable all of them.
While you are at it, if you have demanding applications running in the background, then there is a chance that the freezing and stuttering are being caused due to some applications eating up a lot of resources. On top of that, A Plague Tale Requiem requires you to have 16 GB just to run the game at 30 FPS. Just open your Task Manager, select the Processes tab and click on CPU. Make sure the arrow beside it is facing downwards.
Doing this will pull the resource-hungry applications on top. Look for the processes that you do not need, yet they are consuming a hefty chunk of the CPU. Right-click on them and click on “End Task”.
What to do if nothing ends up working?
Well, if you want me to be 100% honest with you, if you are trying to play with a GPU that is worse than something like the RTX 2060, then I would advise you to put down your controller or MnK, and move on.
I normally test every game on a total of 5 GPUS. GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 1650, RTX 2060, RTX 3060 Ti, and the RTX 3070 Ti. But with this one, I didn’t even bother testing the game on GPUs, other than the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti.
I did run the game just once on the GTX 1650, and I was getting 28 FPS on low settings. I had to bring down the ‘Resolution Scale’ to 65% to get playable framerates.
On top of that, I was facing constant stuttering and freezing. After playing for not more than 10 minutes, I decided to call off the test.
I doubt the devs will optimize the game more than this in the future. So, it is better to move on.
If you think this guide has helped, then let us know in the comment section below. And for more A Plague Take Requiem guides, keep an eye on Frondtech. We will be covering every single technical issue and bug of the game. Good luck!
That’s all, folks!
Last Updated on October 20, 2022
Shoaib, 30, is a simple guy who loves to play video games, and enjoys new cuisines sporadically. He has been gaming since he was 7 years old, and with an experience of 22 years, under his belt, there is not a single AAA game in this world, that he hasn’t played. Despite being a MBA Graduate he decided to follow his passion. And because of his love for gaming, Frondtech came into existence.
