izigame.me

I won't talk much about the gameplay, setting or story, because there's nothing new to say. There are many reviews for the PS5 version telling you that it's an amazing game and they're all correct. The thing I think people mainly want to know is whether the PC version is technically solid or not. The tl;dr is that it's great, easily setting a new bar for technical quality.
Setup/Settings/Shader Stuff:
On the very first boot, the game knew exactly what my screen resolution and refresh rate were and set them correctly. Should be a given, but lots of games still can't get that right. The game went on to compile shaders up-front (good stuff). Once that was complete, I was taken to a menu where I could set my graphics settings and run one of the most sophisticated benchmarks I've ever seen. It tests all of the different types of loads the game can put on your PC, and shows you a detailed summary with framerate, CPU utilization, and GPU utilization graphs. All of this before even beginning the first cycle. It's nice being able to start the game knowing that your settings are all in good shape to carry you through the full experience. The game also alt-tabs perfectly. A small thing, but again, there are lots of modern games that still can't seem to get this right. These small things are what show you that a lot of care and attention went into the port.
Controls:
Once in the first cycle, I plugged in my PS5 controller. The game recognized it immediately, and switching between the controller and M+KB on the fly was flawless. KB+M controls are also top notch. Despite being a game where an assumption of analog movement is heavily baked into the game's design (winding precise paths through lots of bullets and beams), the game doesn't treat KB+M as a second class citizen. It's clear that no effort was spared on making the KB+M aim and movement feel as solid, smooth, and responsive, as they feel on controller. It's impossible for movement to be as precise with WASD as it can be with an analog stick, but this is as close as I've ever seen it.
Using the PS5 controller, I still get the same trigger haptics as the PS5 version, but I strangely don't get any of the rumble, which is a shame because they're fun effects (for example, light rumbling simulating raindrops hitting the controller in the first biome). I don't know if rumble is absent from the PC version, or if this was a bug.
Graphics:
At the highest settings and with ray traced shadows and reflections enabled, the game looks substantially better than the PS5 version to my eye. I haven't done any rigorous side-by-side comparison, but I've played a lot of the PS5 version, so I feel that I'm fairly well calibrated to what it looks like. Starting up the game, the crash site and first biome immediately struck me as noticeably more "alive" than I'd ever seen them. Things that stood out to me were: higher res textures and models, more (and more detailed) particle effects and light sources, debris on the ground reacting more dynamically to your actions, much more detailed and accurate lighting and shadows. The overall texture and atmosphere of the world is hugely enhanced by the PC version. The DLSS implementation is also excellent. I think it may cause a little shimmer in the background of early-game cutscenes that use strong depth of field filters, but that's the only thing that made me notice I was playing with DLSS on at all.
There are a few other small graphical issues I've noticed. Foliage tends to pop in more harshly than on PS5. On the PS5, foliage pop-in was cleverly somewhat masked using an effect where it appears to quickly grow out of the ground as you get close enough for the game to render it. On PC, this effect seems to exist but doesn't happen often, and the foliage simply appears instead. I also noticed that the low-hanging fog in the first boss's arena seems to render at a very low resolution and looks bad in the cutscene.
Technical issues:
Unfortunately, the game isn't totally stutter-free, but I don't think it's the same DX12 shader compilation problems plaguing a lot of PC games these days. Returnal's problem isn't frequent micro-stutter (the game is incredibly smooth most of the time), it's infrequent but rather large hitches. I was playing coop with a friend whose PC has very different specs than my own, and we both got stutter in exactly the same places at the same time. Our suspicion is that it's caused by loading of some kind. The hitches are common enough that you notice them, but they're not game breaking. It'd still be great to see this fixed, as this is easily the biggest technical issue in the game, and the only thing that pulls you out of the experience.
Also, every bug that exists on PS5 still seems to exist on the PC version. Fortunately Returnal doesn't have many that a casual player is likely to encounter. Most of them are minor, and the worst of them only occur in coop (such as the desync that can occur for coop partners in the third boss fight), but if you're coming from PS5, just know that nothing has changed here.
Conclusion:
Overall, this is a top notch port. Nothing I said here should stop you from buying the game if you want to play it. I just wanted to give you a concrete idea of what to expect, as well as show some appreciation for the incredible attention to detail and consideration for the player shown by the developers. The teams at Housemarque and Climax Studios did an outstanding job, and I feel they've set a new bar for technical quality in PC games.