BHZ
Published
This game should be Steam Deck verified. There are other verified games with smaller fonts and/or icons.
Having played this game on a big screen, I'd go as far as to say that Steam Deck (or a handheld) is the ideal device for this game. Runs surprisingly smooth, between 40-60 FPS, and looks absolutely gorgeous on the Steam Deck screen. The small screen compensates for the bad camera implementation. I had no crashes and no sound issues in my whole playthrough.
Near perfect game for the Steam Deck. I played in fact for some 31 hours, mostly offline.
One or two pixel-wide lines are misaligned during cutscenes. Barely noticeable.
Battery life was decent, maybe some 4+ hours on the SD OLED. Not as good as the pixel games, not as bad as most Unity games.
Certainly not the best game for gamepad controls, otherwise incredibly low battery consumption.
A "typical" player would enjoy perhaps 5 hours of this game on Steam Deck, after which I believe they would need to do some tinkering.
Performance gets notably worse in big fights.
Roughly 2 hours of battery, not much but maybe enough for an first-person shooter. Too low frames per second just when things get interesting. I am sure both battery and frames per second can be improved a lot with some tinkering, but the experience out of the box can be disappointing for such a challenging first-person shooter.
Conversation from the shades was very difficult to read, although it is not crucial to the story. Jars with gold, enemy animations before attacking, and other much more crucial elements of the map are difficult to spot in a small screen, and there is no time to use the magnifying glass in the middle of combat.
Battery life is quite underwhelming. Average two runs, in a game where you pretty much won't turn off the SD until a run is finished.
The Steam Deck hardware is more than capable of running this game, and the graphics look beautiful on the OLED screen. However, this game has an isometric view and has way too many small details that the player has to spot in the middle of battle.
Enemy attack animations, jars with gold, little spots where you can get a bit extra lore. Sometimes even a fishing spot can be missed in the small screen (in the lava, it melds with the lava animation. In a big screen, you never miss them).
The battery is another important issue for a roguelike. After one run, I am dangerously close to half battery. This is not the case with my other roguelikes, and I think severely limits the use case of the SD for a game like this.
From Steam Input, invert X and Y axis on the right joystick. The default right stick behaviour seems to be opposite to most twin-stick games.
That surprise VC++ redistributable installation dialog requires using the touchscreen, or perhaps plugging a mouse.
Fullscreen works, but it is difficult to get it to fit to the Steam Deck's screen.
In display settings, switch to full screen and change resolution to highest available. My advice: use Steam Input and invert both X and Y axis on the right joystick.
30 FPS or thereabouts, the game is barely playable.
Didn't do any workarounds and didn't need the ping workaround. However, there are probably tweaks needed for the FPS to be playable.
Same old problem with video (codecs?) as of last game patch (2.41) and latest content update.
%command% -dx12
Hard to tune down graphics to the point that one can get consistent enough 60 FPS, this is a requirement for multiplayer.
Constant 60 FPS is rather a requirement due to rollback. Of course you can play locally offline at 30 FPS, if that is comfortable, but the online software will give you serious problems.
It's important to clarify that "not being able to watch videos" means that the game (story mode) freezes, does not respond to input (other than alt-tab), and you have to force-stop it from Steam, so it really is unplayable. You can test whether videos work on gallery mode, and avoid a game crash that way.
Both on Steam Deck and desktop, still I am unable to watch videos unless forcing DX12, none of the Proton versions seem to help.
Steam Linux Runtime
Tried out other community layouts
40 FPS limit give a very promising 4h+ battery life on the SD OLED.
The newly introduced CA launcher hides the crash of the second launcher (Feral's launcher). Has to be debugged through CLI instead.
Font slightly too small
After recent updates, you must use some compatibility option, either Linux or Proton.
The hardware is ready: very stable 40 FPS, decent battery life with projected >4h on the OLED, excellent graphics, the trackpads make gameplay feasible.
The software is not ready: this game is just not controller-friendly. Font size too small, none of the layouts is good enough, too many options and small spots to click.
With the game's gamepad support, auto-aim, and gyro, (and the shotgun), this is the closest I have been to using my Steam Deck as a main device for a first person shooter. Unfortunately, I still need mah mouse to headshot, which this game seems to require at times.
Controller support is excellent for a first-person game and battery drain is reasonable, and can be tweaked a lot.
Max 60 FPS on SD OLED, meaning: brought down max FPS from 90 to 60
This is so far the best fit for Steam Deck of my Steam library. This is where it's at. I can get away with 60 FPS because, even then, the expected battery life remained at over 4 h. The game runs smooth even during the big waves and boss battle.
