uncle dad
Published
- Game boots up in 800p without the need to access the settings
- In-game text refers to controller buttons when explaining controls
- Default controller configuration works beautifully
- Game operates at 60fps without the need of changing grapics settings
In short, this game works as well as or better than a bunch of games I've experienced with SD verified status.
-d3d11
Went through some steps in order to disable the dynamic resolution, and limited the game to 30FPS from the performance overlay settings, as well as the in-game FPS target in the graphics settings. Game looks beautiful and runs great, with occasional dips beneath 30FPS when a lot is going on.
Attempted to add basic functions such as moving structures and zooming the camera to the controller without success.
For some reason the UI should scale automatically for the Steam Deck upon launch, but you have to manually change the UI scale setting in the interface settings in order to get a legible interface.
The game is listed as verified, but basic functionality is not mapped to the default profile.
I don't want to dunk too hard on this game, since it's made by a solo developer and they're very quick to respond to questions from the community. However, I feel obliged to write up a cautionary tale after requesting a refund subsequent to attempting to map basic and essential functionality to the SD controller without any success. I couldn't progress through even the first tutorial without seeing the in-game text telling me to "double click a building" or "press [keybind not mapped] in order to move structures", and the cursor seems to sometimes decide to not select anything until you hit one of the triggers in order to "centralize" it. In short, the game controls are unintuitive and buggy.
Just to list a few issues with how the game controls out of the box:
- Zooming in and out isn't bound, which is essential functionality on a smol screen
- Mixing keyboard/mouse inputs with controller inputs makes for an extremely confusing experience, because the UI/UX is built to respond differently based on whether you are in gamepad mode or kb+m mode
- Moving structures is a mode toggle, but toggling the mode can only be bound to a keyboard button
- Customizing the controller input through Steam and mapping the move mode toggle to, for instance, a back-grip button doesn't work, as mixing keyboard/mouse controls and gamepad controls makes the game confused
- Some UI functionality is essentially broken. For example: Opening the worker overview, and selecting a worker opens the worker details window. Attempting to select any highlit button in the worker overview closes the overview, because the game registers your confirm button input as though you were still navigating the worker overview menu.
Game has repeatedly locked up, frozen or crashed in multiple unique ways. Changing graphics settings in order to reduce load on the system seems to make no difference.
Despite the verified status, the game has crashed four times within the short while that I spent actually playing the game. Cursory internet searches came up with plenty of similar experiences.
The game sometimes freezes up entirely, requiring a hard reboot of the system. The framerate sometimes slows down to a crawl, making it nigh on impossible to quit out of it, essentially also requiring a hard reboot. The game sometimes crashes back to the SD gaming mode UI.
All in all, it does not function as well as indicated by the official verified status.
Game crashes at random intervals and sometimes during specific cutscenes. Sleep mode can cause audio and input issues.
Sometimes, after returning from sleep mode, the audio would be garbled and crackle, warranting a reboot of the game.
Crashes seemingly randomly during normal gameplay. Encountered one cutscene in the games' main plot content which would crash during every attempt at viewing it, so I had to skip it in order to continue.
When returning from sleep mode, randomly some of the inputs stop working (most notably the left stick). Workaround was to open the weapon wheel and closing it again.
Going to sleep mode while inside a menu seems to reduce the odds of this issue happening.
Despite the verified status, this game doesn't run flawlessly on the Deck. It does, however, look phenomenal, especially when you take the time to configure the graphics in such a way that you find a balance between visuals and framerate which works for you. SD native FSR does wonders for performance.
If you can live with the occasional crash or softlock and save often, I would still recommend this. Just don't expect a flawless experience despite the verification status.
UI text is pretty smol and UI scaling doesn't seem to work
Online experience is a bit more unstable when compared to PC - for instance, during a multiplayer mission I would often end up by myself after a while, seemingly having lost connection to the other players. Going to and from sleep mode usually results in not being in multiplayer mode anymore, which is to be expected.
You can max out the graphical settings and get reasonable performance (20-30fps most of the time) if you turn up the in-game FSR all the way to QUALITY
Spent about two years waiting for the alleged Switch release, then bought a lil Deck instead.
With a bit of setup, this game runs at a relatively solid 30FPS. If you have amazing 120% eyesight, you can enjoy this little issue.
DXVK_ASYNC=1 %command%
In-game font size is unusually small. I have perfect eyesight when wearing glasses and can read all in-game text, squinting for the smallest font sizes, but I can imagine this being an issue for others.
Occasional crackling after waking the device from sleep mode with the game running, but this issue seems to be widespread as I've encountered it with other games as well.
Like other people have explained, asynchronous shader caching means encountering major graphical glitching/artefacting when first viewing a new area (or a previous area during a new time of day), or for instance when a previously unencountered graphical effect is shown.
This becomes less of an issue the longer you play the game, and I imagine that eventually a shader precaching update will be released, resolving the problem outright. Unfortunately, even with asynchronous shader caching enabled, there is still some minor hitching.
Additionally, the "bloom effect" in-game graphical setting objectively makes the game look worse, so turn that off.
Critically, the game can still stutter if you don't configure it right both in-game and in the steam performance settings. I recommend:
- 30FPS limit (in-game settings and steam performance settings)
- 60hz limit (steam performance settings)
Balance the in-game graphical settings to your own preferences, I'm running most settings on mid or high and get a solid 30FPS.
All in all, I think this game experienced a bit of a pavlovian response from early Steam Deck adopters (understandably) due to it's state when running out of the box. With some low-effort steps, it runs almost like a native game, with the one exception that the native Deck resolution is not supported, so you'll have to deal letterboxing. Otherwise, it shows controller glyphs matching the Deck controller and can target 30FPS (probably even 60FPS if you're willing to scale back the graphics).
It's definitely designed to be played on a big PC monitor
Game does not have any native controller support, game controls lend themselves poorly to being mapped on a controller.
Game runs fine out of the box, and could be considered playable with a USB keyboard and mouse. However, since it is designed around keyboard+mouse controls, playing it on a gamepad is a mixed bag.
Game ran at 1/2 speed, had to set the FPS to 60 in the in-game settings, as well as limiting to 60FPS from the SD quick settings.
Custom controller layout and manual configuration of graphics settings allow for flawless experience
The game requires a slight amount of set-up in order to run optimally:
- Apply a custom controller config (I recommend the one used for this review)
- Launch the settings application, set the display resolution to 800p
Otherwise it runs without issue out of the box.
The game that got me into the series runs like it was made for SD, can't recommend this enough to anyone looking to get familiar with the series.
Dunno why this is marked as unsupported, presumably due to a battery draining issue which is solveable by applying a community patch. Since I'm a couch potato always playing within reach of a wall socket this was never an issue I needed to address.
Other than that, the gameruns perfectly out of the box, 60 FPS at max settings, so all in all it may as well have been marked as verified.
Some in-game cinematic cutscenes are played with the audio track for a different cutscene. FMV cutscenes contain artefacts.
Some in-game cinematics play with the wrong audio track
FMV cutscenes contain artefacting
The audio swapping issue for cutscenes is unfortunately still not solved. Tested using GE-Proton8-3, 8-6 and 8-11 since prior reports indicating that the audio issues were resolved reported using 8-3 and 8-6, and 8-11 was the latest available version at the time of writing.
Pre-rendered cutscenes have compression artefacting, most noticeable when a lot of visual changes occur between frames. It's noticeable, but it doesn't make the scenes unintelligable.
The game doesn't crash due to video codecs anymore, and the cutscene audio does not go out of sync anymore either, so the problems have been reduced to occasional cutscenes playing the wrong audio.
Outside of cutscene issues the game runs at a fluid 60FPS with all graphical settings maxed out. I can recommend this for people who started this series on SD and want to or have to finish it on Deck for whatever reason, when watching cutscenes on youtube is an acceptable workaround. For anyone else I would recommend playing it on literally any other system or OS.
Kinda torn between thumbs up and thumbs down, since personally I find the state it runs in acceptable enough to play (and honestly the remaining problems are quite minor and completely absent during hands-on-controller gameplay), but I can't comfortably say the game runs without issue.
This game obviously shares its' engine with 0, and supposedly 5 was built on the same engine. Apparently the engine used is an upgraded version of the engine used for the PS3 releases of 3, 4, Dead Souls and Kenzan. Thankfully none of the issues apparent with running 5 on Linux/Steam Deck crop up here, so I guess some difference exists between the engine used for 5, 0 and Kiwami.
Anyway tl;dr this works 100% and deserves a verified check for sure.
Did some minor graphics tweaking in order to hit my personal sweet spot between FPS and graphical fidelity. I noticed this runs better at higher settings than Yakuza 7 does.
The only setting you could potentially turn on in order to make the performance tank is real-time reflections. Otherwise, this game runs without any issue and is one of my personal recommendations for JRPG enthusiasts who want to try something on Deck.
