coregeecorgi
Published
I've tried the various recommendations below and various builds of Proton, but was unable to get the game running. In one configuration I made it past the quote, only for the game to crash after a few seconds of the first 3D cutscene.
Seems hit-or-miss for people, but I've had no trouble with the game. Make sure to change your playback device in the settings to ACP/ACP3X/ACP6x to get ASIO-equivalent audio latency on Linux. I'd also recommend changing the VSync setting to 144fps limit instead (any limit should work really), and in conjunction, setting the Steam overlay FPS limit to 60 and allowing tearing. These settings eliminated the visual delay of VSync without causing any visible screen-tearing issues (despite the odd choice to allow tearing). Finally, don't touch the TDP limiter for this game. It will absolutely obliterate performance no matter what you set it to -- I assume it's just not playing nice with Xigncode or something. Game draws about 9W combined of CPU and GPU overall I'd say.
If you're having performance issues after the latest update (or any future updates for that matter), clear your shader cache. Install decky-loader and within it, install the storage cleaner plugin. It'll let you clear the cache for specific games. Clearing cache fixed the game running at 45-50fps.
Latest patch massively improves performance on deck. Can run uncapped at ~340fps, though I recommend capping at 144. For minimal latency, allow tearing in Deck game config settings and change the audio device to Virtual Sink.
Set the playback device to ADP for low-latency audio. I recommend running at 180fps with no FPS limit in the Steam overlay, and keeping Allow Tearing disabled (this gives the lowest latency visually without visible judder or screen-tearing -- you can increase the FPS above 180, but it'll drastically increase power consumption with no real visual benefit). Game draws very little from CPU/GPU while playing (though while loading the CPU increases). Total system power draw with these settings was on average about 8-10 watts.
Customized the trigger buttons so that Talk, Map, and En Garde were bound
When performing certain actions, the player's sprite may briefly blink out of view.
Game runs at about 20-50 FPS depending on the area.
protontricks 460120 quartz_feb2010 wmp11 qasf
Game defaults to mouse control on first launch. Open config and scroll down to control options to select Xbox360 gamepad
Forced GE 8.1 and ran the protontricks script others have given below. Also installed Megaresolution VII mod to run the game at 720p for higher performance/less battery consumption (game will always render internally at 1080p regardless of resolution setting otherwise). If you want to use this mod, add WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dinput8=n,b" %command% to the launch options.
Deleting a save is frustrating. I switched to offline mode, copied the template system saves from the game directory over the userdata ones, and had to resync to the cloud after starting a new game offline. The game checks online data to see how many saves you 'should' have, and keeps placeholder saves even after deleting them.
This wouldn't be an issue, but I encountered a critical bug where my first save file would save over my second save file. I recommend only keeping one save file for this game in order to avoid this issue.
Game renders internally at 1080p regardless of resolution setting. Unlike VII, no community mod exists to fix this, and hex-editing the .exe resulted in a lowered rendering resolution but with various visual glitches (not recommended). Overall performance is inconsistent between 30 and 45 FPS.
I recommend 40Hz and 40FPS caps, with TDP limited to ~11 watts. The game chews through battery in the 3D segments with total consumption of ~20W/h.
Steam Deck runs game naturally at 60FPS with no issues using the default out of box configuration, however the textures are on the blurry side so I'd recommend increasing their quality.
Keyboard/mouse and controller are detected simultaneously in a weird way, and I had to bind my mouse to the touchpad and navigate menus with it instead of controller buttons. Gameplay uses controller buttons without issue, however.
Runs at ~45-50fps on low settings using the native Linux binary, but forcing a Proton version to run the Windows binary instead, the game can hit 60fps with higher settings, though to minimize battery consumption, I'd still recommend keeping things to low overall.
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="d3d9.dll=n,b" %command%
Get the fixed D3D9 DLL from mega.nz/file/e8RGzQ5I#J1uFqwSEK8Hgk7xYfzzh3xxNI_WQVa5XRXChXgeAcls and drop it in your install directory beside the game executable. Then run with the launch DLL override option for fixed performance.
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="d3d8.dll=n,b" %command%
Installed the BetterSADX modpack to improve the game. Make sure if you're using this modpack to disable borderless fullscreen, as it makes the cutscenes judder noticeably (use regular fullscreen). Aside from having to boot into the game a second time after installing the modpack launcher, and choosing to rebind my left touchpad to a mouse for navigating said launcher, there are no issues. Game runs flawlessly at 60fps (cutscenes capped at 30), with minimal power consumption.
