Following its second delay, CI Games’ Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 has been officially launched for modern consoles and PC platforms.

The open-world offering, set near the Georgian border, sees sniper Jonathan North trying to solve a proxy war between two warring states, mired in a separatist conflict. Looking far more polished than previous releases, you can hopefully read our forthcoming review of Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 whenever we get our hands on a copy.

Unfortunately for CI Games however, the launch was almost immediately met with the news of long load times and occasionally poor optimization. Eurogamer reports that the initial load takes almost five minutes, to which CI Games has responded with:

“We are aware of the problem with long initial loading times, but thanks to this decision we were able to shorten any loading times during missions, respawns, and fast travel to a minimum.

-Fast travel 4-15s
-Load last checkpoint(depend on situation) 15-30s
-Restart mission 25s

Ultimately we feel like this inconvenience is rewarded with a comfortable experience once the game is loaded.”

Initial impressions of the game certainly will suffer as a result. Regardless, here’s to hoping any issues are resolved by the time we’re able to give you our extended thoughts on Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, or we will make sure to bring them to your attention.