I'm playing on a Ryzen 3800x, a GTX 2060 Super with 32GB of 3600 MHz Ram. I think the game looks bad (with playable settings) and hasn't been compelling enough for me to sink that much time into it, while the missions are pretty grindy.
I'd say play GTA V and the Witcher 3 for a comparison in immersive open world story telling and high caliber graphics. I haven't played Spiderman (2018, 2020) but in gameplay footage (which is only on console) it looks much better as well.
I feel like I'm crazy when I say that the graphics are incredibly underwhelming. It looks good, and there's neat stuff. But I don't care how pretty a shadow looks when the hundreds of NPCs walking around look so rough.
Playing on a RTX 2070, I have to decide between having a very low framerate, a blurry picture, but good graphics thanks to raytracing, or low framerate and very normal but disapointing graphics.
It seems the blurriness can be removed by disabling film grain and another setting, also framerate improves drastically if you reduce "cascading shadows." I'm curious if you've done that or if you haven't and it improves things. I haven't bought the game yet, expecting bugs.
I tried the various recommended settings and editing of text CSV files. I'm considering sacrificing a virgin goat or waiting 5 years before playing the game again. I will try disabling the grain filter.
I think it may really depend on what settings you have going. The developer really needs to optimize this game for older hardware, but I'd think there's a set of settings that'll get it to look good on your actually very recent machine. Could be wrong of course, but have you seen how good it can look at the top end? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZp8fXLXgqg (Digital foundry's visual tech tour of the game)
I disagree on the gameplay/grindy part, but yeah the game isn't pretty. I've heard it justified as deliberate: It's a futuristic dystopian city overrun by constant advertising, corporatism, and crime. That doesn't make for a pretty environment. Of course if that was a deliberate artistic decision then maybe they should have gone a different way.
I'd say play GTA V and the Witcher 3 for a comparison in immersive open world story telling and high caliber graphics. I haven't played Spiderman (2018, 2020) but in gameplay footage (which is only on console) it looks much better as well.
I feel like I'm crazy when I say that the graphics are incredibly underwhelming. It looks good, and there's neat stuff. But I don't care how pretty a shadow looks when the hundreds of NPCs walking around look so rough.