For what seems like two decades, PC players have been begging Sony to bring their classic PlayStation titles to PC. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a bevy of PlayStation 4 classics, such as Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War, Days Gone and even Marvel’s Spider-Man find their way onto the open platform. It was a rocky start, but they ended up being massive successes. While we’re still missing a few big names in its line up, such as The Last of Us and Ghost of Tsushima, Naughty Dog’s other colossal hit, one that became a household name thanks to its witty dialogue and incredibly choreographed sequences, will finally break outside of its PlayStation barrier. We’re of course talking about Uncharted, at least Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. While we would have loved to have seen the original trilogy help expand the minds of PC players, these two will help usher in a new wave of PlayStation titles on the platform. Iron Galaxy has taken up the challenge to port the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves remaster to PC and it has come out exceptionally well.

Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection bundles together remastered versions of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. In A Thief’s End, Nathan Drake is united with his long-lost brother, Sam Drake, and is pulled into a globe-trotting adventure to uncover the lost treasure of infamous pirate Henry Avery. Racing against them is a rich boy trying to make a name for himself, Rafe Adler, and mercenary leader Nadine Ross. Meanwhile, The Lost Legacy takes Chloe Frazer and Nadine to India in search of the fabled Tusk of Ganesh, pitting them against the local warlord, Asav, who’s seeking the tusk for power. Both stories remain as well-told as ever thanks to excellent writing and performances. A Thief’s End’s exploration of both brotherly and marital relationships and the cost of obsession remains impactful today. Meanwhile, The Lost Legacy serves more as a character study, delving deep into one of the series’ more beloved side characters, Chloe Frazer, and fleshing her out into a developed protagonist. The game also does a solid job with Nadine, helping to rehabilitate her image from A Thief’s End. These are both fun and engaging stories, but there’s an issue for returning players.

Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut, this is not. The Legacy of Thieves Collection is merely a remaster of the 2016 and 2017 games. There’s no new or expanded story content in either title. While it can be thrilling to revisit these swashbuckling stories, and new players will undoubtedly have a blast experiencing both for the first time, there’s nothing new here for returning players. Despite not having any new content, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection does offer plenty upfront. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End will run you about 15 hours to complete just the campaign but can easily go another 5-6 if you aim to find all the hidden treasures and 100% the title. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, as a side game, runs much shorter, wrapping up in about 6-8 hours. Like A Thief’s End, there are quite a few side activities to pursue. Completing each campaign unlocks different skins, bonuses, cheats and weapons to use in New Game+.

Like their original incarnations, both remastered titles are mostly linear games. You’ll proceed through chapters solving puzzles, partaking in gunfights and occasionally traveling off the beaten path for a collectible treasure. Both games do dedicate a chapter to a semi-open environment with additional sights to see and puzzles to complete for in-game rewards. Of the two Uncharted: The Lost Legacy nails the semi-open world better with more sights to visit, an optional side quest with a tantalizing reward and great enemy encounters. Like with the story, however, there isn’t anything new within the game’s content.

Unfortunately, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection does lose something from the original release: multiplayer. Just as it was released on PlayStation 5 early this year, this remastered collection arrives on PC without the multiplayer component. While not everyone’s cup of tea, it’s disappointing to see the multiplayer removed, especially when servers remain live and active. Considering there’s no third title in this collection like there was in The Nathan Drake Collection, getting that multiplayer would have injected a lot more value into the Legacy of Thieves Collection.

For games released in 2016 and 2017, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy hold up remarkably well. The lush vegetation, immaculate character modeling and texturing, gorgeous water shaders and cinematics are all still there but with additional clarity from the increased resolution options. Neither game may be cutting edge compared to recent titles like Demon’s Souls and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, but both look decent enough. Unfortunately, not much else has been done with the presentation.

Iron Galaxy has done amazing things to better push the Uncharted titles from technical wonders on console to PC. As one can expect from modern PC releases, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves has a large array of graphical options to choose from. This includes the standard low to ultra settings for textures, anisotropic filter, shadows, reflections, etc. and it even tracks the amount of VRAM all of this takes up compared to what is currently in use. On top of that, there’s support for AMD’s FSR2 and DLSS rendering, which is hit or miss, but it’s always a good option for those who don’t mind compromises. Ultrawide support is one of our biggest attraction, and it has been handled with grace. It works on almost all portions of the game outside of cutscenes, with the other exception being opening up the journal, presumably because of how the arms or maybe background is rendered. Even going in and out of cutscenes has a subtle animation of the black bars on the sides closing and expanding upon itself. The default controls are also well implemented to the point we actually preferred it over using a controller. If they’re not to your liking, there’s the ability to fully remap every little action in the menus.  On top of this, similar to how the DualShock / DualSense controller lighting functions, there's automatic lighting effects for some keyboards. There’s the standard red glow when Drake is hurt and a nice sweeping effect when loading, but also when a piece of treasure is collected, there’s an array of colorful lighting effects to celebrate the achievement. It’s a nice touch that brings the subtleties of the PlayStation experience to the keyboard and mouse.

With all that said, we did run into a couple of issues. The first is that there’s massive framerate drops when transitioning between chapters, generally when it’s loading in a brand new area. Hiding the load times behind cutscenes is smart in a controlled setting, such as a console, but it’s more varied in its success on PC. In addition, we did run into a strange instance where the shaders on the bottom half of Drake’s face went a little wild, first being a mesh of colors, and then a completely different substance than it was supposed to be. It was as if Drake had nasty third degree burns all across his jaw. Thankfully, we only ran into this issue in the first hour of our playthrough, with the rest of experience being smooth sailing. Despite these handful of issues, the PC port is handled incredibly well with plenty of options for players to play around with.

Closing Comments:

The Uncharted franchise has been the spectacle of video games for fifteen years, meshing strong writing and characters with exhilarating scenarios. Granted, most of these scenarios aren’t particularly realistic, but that’s the whole point: you’re in it for the absolute absurdity of the events. Whether it’s escaping a crumbling structure while dodging fists and a hail of gunfire, or falling from a clock tower only with a couple of scuffs, it’s an overly-entertaining experience. The best part is now you’re able to experience all of this on PC where you’re able to control the level of detail, resolution and framerate. Iron Galaxy has done a magnificent job porting over two of Naughty Dog’s fantastic pieces of work, creating an even greater spectacle that fans can enjoy. Whether you’re new to the franchise or a long-time fan, the PC version of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection only helps excel the franchise in a greater direction.