I dont know what system you have, you didnt exactly give me much info. I dont have the latest and greatest either....see? It doesnt say much.
I know I can disable the shadows option, its how I normally run the game. But while with that option disabled it used to run at 60 FPS at all times buttery smooth, now I see the framerate dip to 50 (worst case scenario).
As for reducing quality, not only I wouldnt advocate for that, but I would advocate for the opposite.
Sadly, they HAVE reduced graphics quality on some areas, for the sake of adding more environment eye candy, as well as lighting enhancements.
The models still look slightly worse than some older versions of the game, and thats the trade-off.
It's just a system I bought a couple years ago. GTX1080, i5, and 16GB of RAM. It was probably a high(ish) end system when I bought it (I only paid like around $1500 for it), but it's two years old now, so it wouldn't even qualify as high end now. So, from my vantage point, I feel like being able to have 60+ FPS in Ultra mode, the game is in a pretty good place right now running that well on a two year old system.
Personally, I think the models look vastly improved from previous versions, but again, I am running with real-time shadows ON, and that *does* make a huge difference. The characters before were cartoony, and didn't rely on shadows and light to make them look good. Now the reverse is true, so running without all the options can make them look less appealing for sure, but they look fantastic to me on Ultra. I mean some of my screenshots look just as good as a render from some of these visual novel games.
Bottom line, if your system is > 2 years old, I think you *should* need to reduce some quality options to run it, and vice verse, if your system was built in the last two years, you should be able to run the game very smoothly. I think that's right on the nose in terms of quality vs optimization. You're forgetting that even most AAA games don't have as much hair movement and breast jiggle and high def textures. That all adds up. I think they are doing the right thing catering to high end, but allowing lesser PCs to turn off options. It makes sense. In a few years, it won't even matter, and everybody will be able to play this on Ultra because people will have newer systems, and this game isn't even "finished" yet. I think they said their release date to call it done is late 2019. All of this factors in IMO.
