The Last Of Us Part II Remastered: an ultimatum experience on PC or a new problematic PlayStation port?

The Last Of Us Part II Remastered was quietly released on PC. Not noticing Sony’s hectic marketing campaign, I was expecting a repeat of the disastrous launch of the first part. However, Naughty Dog and Nixxes pleasantly surprised me and the rest of the players. The second part of the story about humanity and the true price of revenge has received 89% positive feedback and good online (as for a story-oriented game that is 5 years old)

Important! This is a review of the technical state of the game on the «ultra» PC platform. I’m not going to look at the story of the direction or the game mechanics, which I think are a bit outdated. Because nothing has changed in this regard, and there are enough reviews and retrospectives on the game.

O tempora, o mores!

When I launched the game for the first time, I realized where the players’ positive feedback came from. If in 2025 any game launches and works stably «out of the box», and without patches on patches that broke more than they fixed — this is a great victory.

Moreover, the remaster can be played in 4K without DLSS and Frame Gen. I don’t think it’s advisable on weaker systems, but it’s possible! For those with high settings, with cards of 4080 and above, The Last Of Us Part II Remastered will be a real treat.

Moreover, the compilation of shaders at the first launch takes less than a minute and is not required for repeated launches or changes in the graphics settings (hi, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 😉).

However, due to the decision to make the compilation run in the background, the performance of the game itself suffers somewhat. But if you are not an expert in Digital Foundrybut if recording gameplay in high resolution and at a good bitrate is not one of your use cases, then this impact will be minimal even on an old Ryzen 5 3600.

Compared to the releases of most modern games (especially console ports), The Last Of Us Part II Remastered can be safely recommended for review.

System requirements: PC losing to consoles?

If we look at system requirements as «a spherical horse in a vacuum», then in 2025 the need to equip a PC with a 4080-level card for 4K shouldn’t surprise anyone.

However, this is not about your PC configuration, but about the port from the PlayStation. If you measure by pure teraflops, the game should be able to fly on RTX 3060 (10.29 TFLOPS vs 12.74 TFLOPS).

But the PC community is above cheap manipulations and looks at real performance, not theoretical performance, right?

Let’s be honest. There are many advantages to the PS5 GPU. Clock speed, bus width, and especially memory are significant advantages for modern games with complex geometry and heavy textures.

Features	PS5 GPU	RTX 3060
Graphics processor	Oberon	GA106
Kernels	2304	3584
Clock frequency	2233 MHz	1320 MHz
Memory	16 GB GDDR6	12 GB GDDR6
Tire	256 bit	192 bit

Am I saying that PS5 has the equivalent of RTX 3070 or RTX 4080? Of course not. However, I do believe that these system requirements could be justified simply because of the difference between PC vs. PlayStation developmentKeywords «could», But there is one caveat.

Same «Nuance»

According to the people at Digital Foundry, 3060 with medium settings in FullHD produces a worse picture than PlayStation 4. 

That is, despite at least a threefold head start in power, the RTX 3060 does not even provide twice the performance of a 12-year-old console.

Is the devil as bad as they say? As for me, thanks to the excellent art design and high-quality lighting, the picture is still quite nice in FullHD on the medium preset. So let everyone decide for themselves whether this difference in performance is significant.

Gaming experience from The Last Of Us Part II Remastered on PC

Test bench

No one has ever called my little home PC so respectfully. Nevertheless, inside we can find the following components:

• Ryzen 5 3600
• RTX 4070 Super
• 32 GB DDR 4
• SSD KINGSTON A400

Testing The Last Of Us Part II Remastered in 4K

When the game was first launched, the system selected high 4K graphics settings without frame generation or DLSS The game confidently demonstrated 35-45 FPS. In this mode, I played through the entire prologue without any significant complaints.

The thing is that The Last Of Us has quite strong console roots. Gameplay-wise, it’s quite meditative and doesn’t require a lightning-fast reaction. The slower frame rate also adds a certain charm and realism to the spontaneous movements of runners, clickers, and other representatives of the local fauna. Is it flora? The kingdom of mushrooms?

Interesting things:

• After switching from high to ultra settings, nothing changed. Neither the FPS nor the picture became better/worse. It’s not that there were no changes at all, but the gap between 35 and 40 is not something critical.
• But the difference between high and medium settings surprised me. While I had to stare directly at the picture when testing high on ultra-high, when I switched to medium, I felt like Dicaprio from a meme. The rendering distance has decreased significantly. The dense bushes were filled with textures along with the sunlight.
• The difference between medium and low graphics settings seems imperceptible at first. I didn’t even notice the «rendering on the fly. The key change of the low preset is the drawing and the amount of detail on the characters’ faces. For the spectacular and story-oriented The Last of Us, this mode is unacceptable.
• After I turned on the frame generator, the FPS jumped to 120+. However, even with the low base 30 frames, I didn’t experience any lag or a feeling of viscosity, as if the character had fallen into a vat of jelly.

Results:

4K	Average FPS	1%
Ultra	35	28
High	42	35
Medium	44	37
Low	48	39
Ultra + DLSS Balanced	58	41
Ultra + Frame gen	70	56
Ultra + DLSS Balanced + Frame gen	104	79

The best choice: In any other game, I would probably choose Ultra + DLSS Balanced. In The Last Of Us Part II, I quickly began to get annoyed with the ladders and artifacts in Ellie’s hair. So, I’ll continue playing in 4K native/high/@40+. And if I suddenly run out of frames, I’ll turn on the generator.

Testing The Last Of Us Part II Remastered in 2K

The game loses a lot of detail when switching from 4K to 2K. The bark, moss on the trees, and the ground become much blurrier. However, if you’re not looking to write a review or run through the forest to look at bark, moss, and the ground, you shouldn’t have any problems.

Interesting things:

• The picture with DLSS is much clearer than without. Details come back into play. And with them, artifacts and ladders.

Results:

2K	Average FPS	1%
Ultra	56	39
High	65	50
Medium	73	54
Low	75	55
Ultra + DLSS Balanced	68	45
Ultra + Frame gen	103	71
Ultra + DLSS Balanced + Frame gen	130	80

My choice: High settings, without the help of DLSS or Frame gen.

Testing The Last Of Us Part II Remastered in 1080p

Do I agree with Digital Foundry’s conclusions? Yes. At least at first glance, the equivalent of PS4 graphics would be high settings. Maybe even an ultra preset.

1080р	Average FPS	1%
Ultra	75	47
High	84	60
Medium	84	62
Low	84	64
Ultra + DLSS Balanced	80	62
Ultra + Frame gen	140	91
Ultra + DLSS Balanced + Frame gen	155	97

The best choice: Ultracustomization, without the help of DLSS or Frame gen.

Moore’s law does not work

While playing The Last Of Us Part II Remastered, I couldn’t help but think of one interesting thought. Moore’s Law has really stopped working. In addition, the usual habit of «PC gentlemen» to brutalize everything that doesn’t work with raw power and performance doesn’t work either.

Every day, hardware is falling further and further behind the software that is written on the instructions of marketers and business stakeholders. Modern cards can skill fully heat a small studio somewhere in Obolon (tripling the electricity bill), but they can’t do 4K @60+ RT without dancing with a tambourine and help from the leader of the Autobots himself.

So maybe it’s not worth it? Maybe it’s time to listen to the wise peopleand embrace the era where software is king, and just start enjoying games instead of measuring teraflops? Absolutely not. I urge each of you to vote with your wallet until the developers start listening to players instead of productive managers with Big Data charts.

Optimization and accessibility of such gaming experiences like Morrowind, Gothic, Deus Ex, Elden Ring, God of War, Baldur’s Gate 3, Half Life, Doom, Skyrim, Legend of Zelda, Factorio, Total War, and Kingdom Come (the list is not complete, it was written on the fly) are much more important than cool features or features that not everyone can see.