Boom$t!ck » Reviews » Sword Coast Legends
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Where do I begin...

Being a fan of the Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter titles, I was very excited about this game! Unfortunately, this one does not live up to its name. The game itself isn't horrible and offers some entertainment value, however the story is bland and the game itself is grind-heavy. Although SCL does remind me of the older titles, there are a few major flaws and differences.

1. Bugs. Everywhere. Seriously. Disappearing mouse, 100% GPU usage on a high end system, lack of optimization, choppy gameplay, clunky pathing, disappearing NPC's, etc...

2. Odd hybrid 5th edition rules with cooldowns? The system does not appear to be true full-fledged 5th edition, and several of the dice rolls & mechanics behind your actions are hidden.

3. Graphics. The game is not ugly, but it is also not beautiful. My concern with this game is that other, graphically similar games run smoothly with low hardware requirements, however this game runs pretty bad even on high end rigs. Also, something seems off with how it handles both AF and Shadows when it comes to GPU usage % and video memory. I have seen plenty talk on the forums about people getting massive framerate hits for no apparent reason, which I have experienced personally.

4. Price. In it's current form, I would be more forgiving were it in beta. SCL does not feel complete. $39.99 USD for a buggy, incomplete game is no good.

I would describe Sword Coast Legends to be more of a clunky cooldown-based Diablo clone. It is not well polished both graphically and in gameplay, thus I cannot give it a positive recommendation at this time. I would avoid this title until the above issues are fixed, or the price drops significantly. If you are looking for games similar to Baldurs Gate with modern gameplay mechanics, check out Pillars of Eternity or Divinity: Original Sin.



- Boom$t!ck


(All games reviewed are played on the following system)

CPU: I7 3770K Quad OC @ 4.2GHZ + Turbo
Motherboard: MSI Z77A-G45
Memory: 16GB DDR3 1600 (8x2) Crucial Ballistix Tactical Memory
HDD: Samsung 250GB SSD (OS/Games), WD 750GB 7200 RPM HDD (Storage)
Video: ASUS STRIX R9 380 4GB
Monitor: 27 inch Acer LED (K272HL) @ 1920 x 1080
Mouse: SteelSeries Rival, Razer Naga 2014
Keyboard: Razer Blackwidow Ultimate 2014


/WARComm/ - War Gaming Community

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2 Comments
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Boom$t!ck Oct 24, 2015 @ 4:41pm 
Did all you stated (other than nvidia steps, using a radeon card). I disabled Catalyst AI as well, which can be an issue in some games. None fix the issue, and I'm not the only one in my group of friends with the same problem. Optimization is the key, and this game does not have it. I do have it running at 60 frames, still has many stutters. Turned off Surface Format Optimization as well, no effect. The problem is, the stutters happen regardless of video settings, low or high. The game may be suffering from memory leak or similar problems. If you look around on the forums, there is quite a bit of people out there with similar problems.
toroks Oct 24, 2015 @ 4:06pm 
Try this if you have lag problems: Open Nvidia control panel, Click "Manage 3D settings" Navigate to "Program Settings" tab, Click "Add" Click "Browse"
Current default location is C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Sword Coast Legends\SwordCoast.exe. Select "High-Performance NVIDIA Processor" as your 'preferred graphics processor' for swordcoast.exe and then click Apply

(This is assuming you have an Nvidia GPU, if you have something else the process would most likely be similar, Maybe someone else can help you with that)

you can also make changes to priority for the game, ctrl, alt delete and the go to task manager and then processes, with the game running you will see one called swordcoast.exe, right click and set priority to high.

You can also right click steam in your tray, go to library, right click on sword coast legends-head start access, go to properties, click on set launch options, and enter "-High" with the hyphen, click ok.