Sharp Shadows Fix

Sharp Shadows Fix (Engine.ini Tweak)

What it does?

Half Sword may render some shadows at a very low resolution by default, even on Ultra settings. This results in blurry, low-res shadows on every character, no matter your GPU. This mod is a simple Engine.ini tweak that forces Unreal Engine to use higher resolution shadow maps and better cascade settings, giving you sharp, clean shadows. Tested on an RTX 5070 at max settings.

• []Download the archive for the preset you want (Light, Medium, or Heavy). [/]

  []Press Win + R, type %LOCALAPPDATA% and hit Enter. [/]

  []Go to HalfSwordUE5\Saved\Config\Windows[/]

  []Drop the Engine.ini file from the archive into that folder, overwriting the existing one if asked. [/]

  []MANDATORY: Right-click the Engine.ini file, go to Properties, and enable Read-only. If you skip this step, the game will delete the file the next time you launch it, and your shadows will go back to blurry. [/]

Pick one depending on your GPU and how much performance you're willing to trade for shadow quality.

[]Shadow Resolution: Baseline 2048x2048 texture size.[/]

[]Cascade Shadows: 4 standard directional shadow cascades.[/]

[]Distance & Detail: Default culling thresholds and distances.

Medium (recommended)[/]

[]Shadow Resolution: Doubled resolution to 4096x4096 for sharper edges.[/]

[]Cascade Shadows: Keeps 4 standard shadow cascades.[/]

[]Distance & Detail: Maintains baseline culling and distance settings.

Heavy [/]

[]Shadow Resolution: Maximum 8192x8192 resolution for ultra-sharp shadows.[/]

[]Cascade Shadows: Doubled to 8 cascades for seamless far-to-near transitions.[/]

[]Distance & Detail: Expanded rendering distance and strict detail bias.[/]

[]Caching: Enabled point shadow caching (10).

Medium is the recommended preset. It gives a clear jump in shadow sharpness over the default game without tanking your framerate on most modern cards. Light is for older or weaker GPUs, or if you just want a small improvement with basically no performance cost. Heavy is for high-end GPUs only (RTX 5070/RX 9070 or better, but I still recommend sticking with medium.) The gain over Medium is smaller than you'd expect, and the performance cost is much higher, so only use it if you have FPS to spare.

Credits: 

Based on community findings from Steam Community guides and the r/HalfSword subreddit regarding Engine.ini tweaks for this game.

Mods used in the screenshots:

Way Of The Samurai by NUMB3R63

Custom Armour Pack by  dog132

The Katana by  balenciagasockss