Slicewing
Published
This fires right up and runs like a dream. It does ask you to sign into an EA account before you play, that which I assumed was gonna be mandatory...but it's actually not! I was able to just back out and play the game without signing in. No qualms here. Runs perfect.
Ubisoft launcher continues to be finicky, but it seems that when you work around it once you're set. As long as you log in with your credentials while online at least once, it seems to work moving forward even if you don't have internet. I've played several hours without a connection thus far.
I run graphics on high with motion blur off and maintain an almost entirely stable 40 FPS lock in handeld mode. I don't have a variable refresh rate TV/monitor so my docked experience fluctuates between 40-60 FPS with graphics still set to high. Just be careful with anti aliasing and ambient occlusion, as more than one of their presets can severely hinder performance. Just figure out which ones to avoid and go from there.
Enable the game's built in FSR2 (set to "quality") in its video/graphics settings and it maintains a totally stable 40 FPS lock in handheld mode. Same settings on a docked display and you'll even maintain 60 sometimes, but it mostly bounces between 40 and 60. Regardless, looks and runs great and all you really gotta do is toggle FSR2. You could probably get some better looking results mixing and matching, and definitely so with a 30 FPS lock, but this was good enough for me.
The game will likely give you no issues at all until you've built a bigger base, and even then it's much better than before.
Battery is what you'd expect as is. Between 1.5-3 hours time if you lower some settings. I usually play plugged in so I don't really notice.
The game finally runs on Steam Deck like Reddit tried to say it did 6 months ago. After disabling full screen and opting for the windowed display, setting resolution to 1152x720 and turning on the Deck's FSR, you can pretty comfortably mix and match graphics settings to maintain either 30 or 40 FPS depending on where you're at and what's going on. I have a pretty busy home base and can maintain a pretty stable 30 with draw distance and vegetation both set to high, sun shafts and small particles are on, everything else off/set to low. If you're out exploring somewhere you haven't built much in, knock down the above settings to medium and 40 FPS is mostly stable. In either case, the game is still going to stutter now and then, but this is x10 better than what it was before the June update.
Joining other servers, be it Steam or Xbox, is broken on Deck for me now, so I can't judge how it performs since the last update. But before the update, I was playing with all settings low and a 30 FPS lock. It stuttered heavy in bigger bases but out fighting and exploring it was acceptable. Hopefully it's better now.
