Kingdom Come Deliverance: Royal Edition tech analysis and PS4/XB1 comparison

Kingdom Come Deliverance: Royal Edition is finally available on Switch as of today and it’s been a very long time coming. We first heard about this port years ago when retailers leaked it, and its finally come to fruition. After asking for a lot of patience from fans, was the incredibly long wait worth it? A round of tech analysis and comparisons seems to indicate so.

Kingdom Come Deliverance: Royal Edition was ported to Switch by Saber Interactive, and they’ve certainly tackled some impressive ports in their past. Digital Foundry has put the studio’s work through its paces, and here’s what they discovered with Kingdom Come Deliverance: Royal Edition.

• 86 second wait to get to the game’s title screen on Switch
• for comparison, playing the game on an Xbox One has players waiting 157 seconds
• runs at a 30fps target
• 720p target while docked, dynamically dropping to 540p when the GPU is stressed
• temporal upscaling is used
• facial expressions lose definition in the upscale, as does finer detail across a landscape
• a form of sharpening is used
• full use of screen-space reflections
• parallax occlusion mapping adds 3D height and depth to floors, to rocks, mud tracks, and more
• uses sparse voxel octree global illumination, a real-time GI feature not on PS4 or Xbox One
• light shafts are included, albeit at a low resolution
• more pop-in of shadow maps, grass, foliage, and geometric elements
• lower quality shadows
• grass density is dropped
• certain texture assets are also lowered in resolution, on character clothing notably
• Switch struggles to cap at 30fps in every area
• fully v-synced, locked 30fps at points
• frame-pacing issues
• occasional frame-time spikes to 16ms on Switch
• Switch framerate can drop into the 20s and lower

Still want to see more from the Switch port of Kingdom Come Deliverance: Royal Edition? You can check out some videos below that show the game in action and compare it to Xbox/PS4 versions.