Horizon Forbidden West has finally made its way to PC after more than two years since its release on PS5. The original game, Horizon Zero Dawn, has been a benchmark for performance testing on PC and a key part of our GPU reviews. The sequel raises the bar with enhanced graphics options and a more demanding game world overall.
Having spent the past week playing the game, experimenting with settings, comparing DLSS, FSR, and XeSS, and pushing the limits of performance, I can attest that Horizon Forbidden West lives up to its predecessor’s legacy. However, GPUs with only 8GB of memory may struggle with high graphics settings and resolutions.
Best settings for Horizon Forbidden West PC
Horizon Forbidden West offers a plethora of graphics options. After thorough exploration, here are the optimal settings for Horizon Forbidden West to achieve a balance between performance and image quality on PC:
- Texture Quality: Medium
- Texture Filtering: 2x Anisotropic
- Shadow Quality: Low
This serves as a good starting point for Horizon Forbidden West, as you can instantly see the changes in graphics as you tweak settings without the need for restarts. While these settings are recommended, feel free to customize further to suit your PC. Adjusting settings in Horizon Forbidden West is not as cumbersome as in other PC releases like Dragon’s Dogma 2.
For a detailed comparison between the recommended settings and preset options like Very High and Very Low, refer to the video above. The recommended settings strike a good balance between quality and performance, offering a substantial boost in performance compared to the Very High preset.
