dream
Published
Runs great. Turn off AA / Anti-aliasing in Graphics Settings - It tanks performance (also on Windows), It's known to be broken.
A great experience. Played both back and forth on linux/windows devices syncing the saves across with steam cloud. No visual glitches, slowdown, or audio issues that were not present on Windows. Turning off anti aliasing fixes performance, and its a known issue even on Windows. If you want AA you can use reshade/mods.
Note that NAHM mod manager does NOT work with Linux however.
This game runs great on Linux. I use Proton-GE just out of habbit, but the game runs perfectly fine with Steam's Proton 8 / Experimental
Enabling VSync drops your framerate to 21 fps. Once you get in-game the framerate corrects itself and locks to 60 fps (the max for this game, even for high refresh-rate monitor).
Playing without VSync provides the best experience with no issues in the menus.
Connected with friend's private lobby and with a random online public game. No issues.
No issues using a Dual Sense controller for one player, and keyboard for the other.
My tests were brief, I intend to submit another report after many hours of enjoying the game. I do not expect to encounter any issues based on initial tests.
Mostly stable. Use launch options below if using external displays/TV to avoid slowmo bug. If experiencing system crashes only play windowed
DXVK_ASYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 %command%
Only on this laptop, playing in fullscreen will result in a total system lockup unexpectedly. It can happen as soon as 5 mins, or take as long as 40mins. It seems random. Using sysrq commands / tty do not work when the game causes the freeze. Unfortunately system logs do not reveal the issue. Does not occur on my desktop. Tried various drivers/kernels. To subvert the issue play in windowed mode.
Since my prior review, I had no issues on my desktop. On this laptop however, using an external display such as a TV results in the 'slow mo' bug as others have called it. The framerate is very unstable and the game runs slowly. Using the launch options Aperture posted (also attached to this review) resolves this issue, where the game then runs a stable 60fps.
See the crashing mentioned on fullscreen issues section; Play in windowed mode to avoid. Seems unique to nvidia/intel laptops. No issues with single dedicated nvidia gpu on desktop
I'm changing my 'launching straight from steam' recommendation to 'No' because of the system locking bug and the slow-mo bug that will occur for some displays unless using launch options.
DXVK_ASYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 %command%
On this laptop however, using an external display such as a TV results in the 'slow mo' bug as others have called it. The framerate is very unstable and the game runs slowly. Using the launch options Aperture posted (also attached to this review) resolves this issue, where the game then runs a stable 60fps.
If playing on an NVIDIA laptop, you must run in NVIDIA Performance Mode, NOT On-Demand mode if playing in Fullscreen. Otherwise you will experience crashes, but that is not exclusive to this game. It's a bug in current 535 and 545 nvidia drivers.
v1.1.0.1 Fixed the crash on selecting Options in Shadow Generations
While the initial game launch version of v1.1.0 had crashing when selecting 'Options', the update released on November 5, 2024 [v1.1.0.1], now makes playing this game on Linux just as good as on Windows.
No tinkering is required, just install and play. I've played both the Sonic Generations and Shadow Generations portions without any noticable issues.
I 100%'d Spark 2 on this machine, fully on Linux since there is no cloud saves. The game is enjoyable.
Alt-Tab freezes the game / black screen
Game fully playable, stable at 65FPS - 75FPS; Windows runs at 144FPS
I previously played just the main story fully on Windows. I 100%'d Spark 2 on this machine, fully Linux since there is no cloud saves. This means all "Tour" extra game modes, all score medals, all speed medals, all art. The game caps FPS at 65FPS if Vsync OFF My monitor is 144Hz, so with Vsync ON it tries, but ultimately fails and still maintains around 65-75FPS, regardless of resolution + graphical options. Bottleneck seems to be CPU related. Despite this it still feels great to play.
I tested this on the latest version (v1.5)
On a 60Hz monitor you will have a stable smooth experience at 65FPS. The performance on this game is not equivalent to Spark 3, which does not seems to have this 65 FPS issue and instead VSync ON hurts performance in that game. That is not the case in Spark 2.
Runs just as good as Windows! I've played the entire game and also went speed medal hunting on linux
Game unable to restore itself when returning with Alt-Tab (frozen black window)
I swap back and forth between a windows/linux machine and had no issues with Cloud sync juggling the save back and forth. No noticable issues on Linux* barring Alt-Tab crashing.
Updating my prior report; After experimenting it seems if your hardware is not higher end, the game ultimately DOES run worse Windows
Vsync OFF is a must on Linux if not on high end hardware, the performance tanks with it on. For my AMD 5900 + RTX 3080, linux runs about the same as Windows, with Prison Area 4 running slightly worse, but other stages maintain the max framerate I specify. On a i7 with a GTX 1070 GPU, the linux vs windows performance difference is massive.
I also experimented with steam's recommended proton and it runs about the same as GE 7-42
Works amazing with latest Proton-GE + Media Foundation, plus a launch option tweak for CPUs with more than 8 physical cores
6.16-GE-1 GloriousEggroll
Because my CPU has 12 physical cores, I must use taskset otherwise the game will boot to a black screen even with Media Foundation installed:
Launch Options: taskset -c 1-12 %command%
Mouse capture is reluctant to lose control. You can successfully escape however clicking will usually be captured in-game instead of the window you are trying to click in your desktop environment.
Alt-tabbing out of the game will still capture the mouse in-game.
The report 2 weeks before this one titled "Sadly, it doesn't work out-of-box" is slightly out of date. Everything is true except you should not use proton 5. You can use Proton-6.16-GE-1 (or newer) + Media Foundation for the best experience.
If you have more than 8 physical cores, like me, you need to add this to your launch options:
taskset -c 1-[max core number] %command%
For example a Ryzen 5900X needs: taskset -c 1-12 %command%
Otherwise you will boot to a black screen even with media foundation installed.
First time setup:
Install game
Launch game with Proton-6.16-GE-1 (https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/releases), then close it when it launches (this is to generate the wineprefix folder). Note you may need to terminate it using the "stop" button in Steam, just alt-f4ing may make it hang invisibly in the background
Run mf-install (https://github.com/z0z0z/mf-install) to your Yakuza 4 prefix (1105500 in my case) Here's my command to help you:
WINEPREFIX="/home/username/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/1105500/pfx" PROTON="/home/username/.steam/steam/compatibilitytools.d/Proton-6.16-GE-1" ./mf-install.sh -proton
If you get a server error message, likely Yakuza 4 is still running in the background, so double check Steam's "Stop" button on the game Library to end it.
- Add taskset launch option if your CPU has more than 8 cores taskset -c 1-8 %command%
Note: You can also use 1-8 even if you have more cores instead of total count, but performance may be worse.
- Launch the game, the intro should work normally and all cutscenes and gameplay should work flawlessly.
For future launches you do not need to configure anything. You can just launch the game with Steam.
