How to play Immortals Fenyx Rising on macOS (2025)
With CrossOver 26.0 Preview, and the continual updates to D3DMetal (GPTK), a lot of DX 11 and DX 12 games have been able to just run. Since Ubisoft is giving away Immortals Fenyx Rising free at the moment (as of this post being written), it’s a good time to test if I can play Immortals Fenyx Rising on macOS.
Crossover 26 the GOAT
CodeWeaver’s Crossover is the secret sauce that translates Windows applications, read games, to run on your Mac. CrossOver 26.0 in its preview version includes the latest D3DMetal and DXMT libraries which makes all this works really well.
This will cost you about $59.95 usually. Sometimes there are promos like Black Friday, etc so you might be able to snag it cheaper. Once you purchased and installed CrossOver, the fun begins.
How to install Immortals Fenyx Rising on macOS using CrossOver
I’m testing the Ubisoft version since they are running a free giveaway for the season (as of the writing of this post). That means on CrossOver 26.0 preview, you will need to install Ubisoft Connect first, then the game from the Ubisoft launcher.
1. Install Ubisoft Connect on a new bottle
You will see a few pop-ups such as the Visual C++ and Windows fonts installers which are required for Ubisoft Connect to run. Go ahead click the necessary buttons to install them when it asks you to.
After all the dependencies are installed, it will start to install Ubisoft Connect.
Once completed, you can open the Ubisoft Connect App from CrossOver 26.0 Preview. It should run without any issues and will first ask you to log in with your Ubisoft account.
Now, you’re ready to install Immortals Fenyx Rising on macOS
On Ubisoft Connect, search for the game. As mentioned, Ubisoft is giving away Immortals Fenyx Rising Standard Edition as a Black Friday promotion. Like I said, perfect time to test this out 😀
Depending on your network speed, it might take a while to download and install. It is a 30+GB game.
Running Immortals Fenyx Rising on CrossOver
Running the game should be as simple as just loading it from Ubisoft Connect launcher. I recommend setting CrossOver’s Graphic settings to D3DMetal. You can leave everything else as default. It’s a shame the game does not support DLSS.
The game should load without any issues on your Mac. For me, it launched by default in 720p resolution in a borderless window mode. Go into the settings and change the graphics settings to what you want it to be. I changed it to 1080p resolution and started with High Settings. Read on to see it runs on a M2 Max Mac Studio.
How playable is Immortals Fenyx Rising on macOS with the M2 Max chip (12-core CPU and 38-core GPU)
After a few quick test, I suspect that the game may be using some DX11 feature that the M2 Max GPU is not as good at. Check out my video recording of the gameplay below. I’ve also included the chapters for the different part of the tests I did.
- 0:10 (High Settings @ 1080p)
- 2:10 (Medium Settings @ 1080p)
- 7:37 (Low Settings @ 1080p)
- 9:55 (Low Settings @ 1080p – Underworld realm – 60fps)
- 13:38 (Testing with DXMT)
So, how playable is Immortals Fenix Rising on a M2 Max?
TL;DR: Meh. Unfortunately, the game averages at around 20+ FPS on my M2 Max Mac Studio with the 38-core GPU configuration. Tuning it down to lower settings and resolutions don’t yield any performance increase. I’ve tried 720p too, same average FPS. That to me is not playable. There are parts of the game, such as when playing in the underworld realm where performance increased a lot. But most of the game is played in the open world. Sad. Perhaps the game is just not optimised at all. 😝
However if you are running a M4 Mac, you should be in better luck. I saw gameplay videos of it running a lot faster than my Mac. So give it a try if you like a Zelda BoTW clone.
How about DXMT since it runs on D3D11
With CrossOver, switching over to DXMT is a breeze.
For one, the performance with DXMT is a lot better. Likely due to better translation of DX11 to Metal directly. However, with DXMT, game’s textures blinks in and out as you move around, making it unplayable. You can see the missing objects in the same scene below.
So, there you have it. On the M2 Max, its only playable if you can bare the low average FPS. But on newer Macs, such as the M4 or M5 chips, the GPU should perform much better. This is one of those times when more cores does not help as the game is likely using a feature that the M2 GPU does not support.
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