Assassin’s Creed Shadows Balanced Mode Explained (PS5 & Xbox Series X)
Image Credit: Ubisoft, Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Assassin’s Creed Shadows looks stunning—and a lot of that comes down to its shiny new engine, fancy lighting, and destructible everything. But if you’re playing on PS5 or Xbox Series X, you’ll face a choice: performance, quality, or balanced mode. Balanced mode often gets overlooked, so here’s a simple breakdown of what it is—and why it might be the sweet spot for most players.
What Is Balanced Mode?
Balanced Mode runs the game at 40 frames per second—which may sound like a weird number, but it’s actually a happy middle ground between 30fps Quality Mode and 60fps Performance Mode. To use it, you’ll need a 120Hz display, which most modern TVs and monitors have.
What Do You Get in Balanced Mode?
Here’s the good stuff that Balanced Mode keeps intact:
Ray-Traced Global Illumination (RTGI) – Fancy lighting that makes shadows, sunlight, and indoor scenes look way more realistic.
Strand-Based Hair Physics – Individual strands of hair move in the wind or during fights, instead of clumpy, stiff hair models.
Full Visual Features – High-quality textures, foliage, and weather physics like swirling leaves and moving rain.
In Balanced Mode, you keep all of these effects across the entire game world, unlike 60fps mode, which turns off most of them to keep things running smoothly.
How Does It Feel?
The game runs at 40fps, which is smoother and more responsive than 30fps, especially during combat, while still looking amazing. Frame rates stay stable, and the game feels fluid—but without sacrificing lighting, shadows, and other details like the 60fps mode does. Cutscenes and your hideout area still drop to 30fps to enable the fancier visuals, but transitions between areas are smooth—no awkward fade-to-black loading screens.
Final Blurb
Balanced Mode is the best of both worlds—you get smoother gameplay and all the eye candy that makes Assassin’s Creed Shadows shine. If your display supports 120Hz, this is the mode to use. It’s like ordering dessert without skipping dinner—you don’t have to compromise.
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