Mount & Blade II Bannerlord- Graphics Settings Comparison
In today's graphic review, we'll take a look at the graphic settings and their impact on the picture quality in Mount & Blade II Bannerlord, the sequel to the much-loved medieval battle simulator with role-playing elements. The game has a fairly large number of graphic settings, which allows you to fine-tune the game quite finely. Let's go directly to testing.
The first setting that directly affects image quality is Shader quality: High, Medium and Low. The transition from high to medium is not noticeable to the eye, but from medium to low it is immediately visible - the landscape becomes less prominent.
Next comes Texture quality: High, Medium and Low. The difference is noticeable between all modes and manifests itself in a decrease in the quality of textures and a decrease in their detail and relief.
Shadow quality: Very High, High, Medium and Low. There are differences between all modes, but the difference between Very High and High is the most noticeable - the contours of the shadows become blurry and fuzzy. Further lowering blurs the contours and detail even more and is no longer as conspicuous.
Shadow type: Dynamic and static, Static and Off. Differences are visible immediately and very clearly - when switching to Static, the shadows from moving objects such as trees disappear, which makes the picture completely lifeless. Well, turning off the shadows does not need comments - the picture loses realism and depth.
Shadow filtering: PCF and Off. The difference between the modes is barely noticeable and shows up as more blurred shadow edges when PCF is turned off.
Particle Detail и Particle Quality - since we could not find a visible difference between all modes, we will skip these settings and move on to the next ones.
Vegetation quality: Very High, High, Medium, Low and Very Low. Differences are visible between all modes and are manifested in a decrease in the amount of vegetation when switching modes.
Character detail: Very High, High, Medium, Low and Very Low. Oddly enough, but the visible difference is noticeable only between Very High and Very Low and is manifested in the simplification of the texture detail and the appearance of the characters.
Detailing the world: Very High, High, Medium, Low and Very Low. The difference between Very High and High is very slight and only shows up in the simplification of textures on some distant objects. The same applies to the transition from High to Medium. From Medium to Low, the transition is already more noticeable - textures on large objects such as a castle wall and a barn roof become less voluminous and lose detail. Low and Very Low differ only in that some textures disappear altogether when switching, while others become even less voluminous.
landscape quality: High, Medium and Low. There is no difference between High and Medium. But when moving from Medium to Low, it is already clearly visible that the landscape becomes flatter and loses relief.
Shading method: TSAO and Off. When TSAO is turned off, a lot of soft shadows and small shadows on objects disappear, which makes the picture less saturated.
Texture filtering: 16x, 8x, 4x, 2x, Trilinear and Bilinear. There are differences between all modes and are manifested in the simplification of textures on horizontal and inclined surfaces as the settings are lowered. The difference is most noticeable when going from 2x to Trilinear.
Water quality: High, Medium and Low. The difference between High and Medium is not particularly noticeable and is manifested only in slightly reduced water detail. The transition from the Middle to the Low is already noticeable much more clearly - the water becomes "flat" and loses many small details such as foam near the coast.
Smoothing: Temporal SMAA x2, Temporal SMAA, SMAA x2, SMAA, FXAA and Off. The difference is visible between all modes and manifests itself in a gradual increase in the "jaggedness" of the edges of objects, but the differences are most noticeable when moving from SMAA to FXAA. But FXAA and completely disabled anti-aliasing do not differ.
Lighting quality: High, Medium and Low. Between High and Medium, the difference is slightly noticeable - some shadows become less saturated. The transition from Medium to Low is already visible much more noticeable - many soft shadows disappear and in general there are much fewer shadows, due to which the picture loses depth.
Decal quality: the effect of this setting on the picture could not be found, therefore we will not consider it.
Depth of field: On and Off. When disabled, there is no difference.
Reflections: On and Off. When turned off, all reflections on the surface disappear.
clothing simulation: On and Off. The influence of this parameter is very difficult to see in statics, so we will not consider it.
interactive grass: On and Off. No effect on the image could be found.
subsurface scattering: On and Off. No effect on the image could be found.
Sun rays: On and Off. Turning this setting off makes the sun less realistic, nothing more.
tessellation: On and Off. The difference between the parameters is not noticeable.
glow: On and Off. Enables or disables the glow of some objects.
Let's summarize. It is unlikely that the graphics in the game can be called modern and realistic, but, nevertheless, it is quite carefully designed and draws attention to detail and has a very serious set of settings. In general, this game is loved not by graphic bells and whistles, but by the gameplay itself. Even with such graphics in 500 vs 500 battles, performance sags significantly. Well, we can simply assume that if the game used a more modern and advanced engine, then the game would hardly be able to produce normal performance in massive battles.