PlayableShow Details
Unknown
Game works OOTB
Minor stutters during combat, but not enough to warrant any issues. Game was tested on max graphics, so if it bothers you, turn a few settings down.
Artifacting issues around launch are gone. All visual effects are now working as intended. You don't even need to use the GE version.
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 WINEDLLOVERRIDES="winhttp=n,b" %command%
Used SoulHackers2Fix and protontricks for resolving issues
In-Game Settings
- FPS: 60
- Vsync: OFF
- Graphics Preset: Custom
- Texture Quality: Medium
- Shadow Quality: Low
- Ambient Occlusion: OFF
- Bloom: OFF
- Radial Blur: OFF
- Render Scale: 130% (this is hard defined in the
SoulHackers2Fix.cfgfile and cannot be adjusted in-game) - Anti-Aliasing: ON
- Depth of Field: OFF
Quick Access Menu Settings
- Framerate: 40 FPS
- Refresh Rate: 40 Hz
- TDP Limit: 6 Watts
This setup allowed for ~3-3.5 hours playtime on battery.
Some on-screen text can be small at times.
Using the SoulHackers2Fix mod's config file, SoulHackers2Fix.cfg, I adjusted the RenderScale.Value from the default 100 to 130 to improve anti-aliasing. This seems to have improved text legibility without too much of a performance hit, but your mileage may vary.
Missing textures can be fixed by installing the d3dcompiler_47 Windows DLL using protontricks
The game natively doesn't support 16:10 aspect ratios and will force 16:9. I used the SoulHackers2Fix mod to allow for 16:10 ratio at 1280x800 resolution, which removed the black bars and utilized the entire screen.
As mentioned in other reports, this only applies to the in-game portion itself; menus, loading screens, etc are still at 16:9 ratio.
I did encounter 2 small issues:
- When I first boot up the game, it will revert to 16:9 aspect ratio even with the resolution set to 1280x800. Changing it to a different resolution, then back, returns it to 16:10. Setting
CustomResolutiontotruein theSoulHackers2Fix.cfgfile resolves this issue. I personally didn't force it because I played this game both docked and undocked. - The 16:10 aspect ratio occasionally caused temporary ghosting from animations or backgrounds to appear in the outer edges of the screen. This is only slightly distracting at times and is worth putting up with for the additional screen real estate.
Brief stutters caused drops in framerate to the 10-15 fps range during certain battle animations. Additionally, there was a very noticeable frame rate drop to 30-35 fps in one section of the final main game dungeon. Otherwise, most elements of the game ran at a fairly consistent 40 fps.
I put all 100+ hours in, completing both the main game and most of the DLC story, on the Steam Deck. For those who don't mind the more involved tinkering steps, I highly recommend playing it on this platform.
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="winhttp=n,b" %command%
Vereinzelte UI Elemente sind schwer lesbar
Bildrateneinbrüche bei Kampfszenarien (Angriff auf Gegner, Dämonentanz). Steam Deck Auflösung kann zwar ausgewählt werden, jedoch verbleiben die schwarzen Balken.
Ich empfehle bei diesen Spiel die Nutzung von "Soul Hackers 2 Fix". Es bietet die Möglichkeit 16:10 ohne Balken in den meisten Szenarien zu genießen und ggf. Downsampling zu betreiben ( Auflösung über 100%) oder z.B Chromatische Abweichung zu deaktivieren. Die Startparameter sollten nur gesetzt werden wenn dieser Fix verwendet werden soll.
Die Nutzung der von Steam gesetzten Proton Version 7.0-6 ist nicht zu empfehlen ( Einfrieren des Spiels, heftige gelegentlich langandauernde FPS Einbrüche, fehlende Effekte und Texturen, Spiel startet nicht immer in das Hauptmenü hinein usw.).
Wer sich an den kurzen Bildrateneinbrüchen bei den Kämpfen nicht stört und auch die nicht immer anliegenden 60 FPS nicht ärgert, kann an dem Spiel durchaus Freude haben.
Vorausgesetzt man benutzt die Proton 8.0-2 Version oder Experimental ist es sehr angenehm zu spielen.
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="winhttp=n,b" %command%
Vereinzelte UI Elemente sind schwer leserlich.
Ruckler im Kampfgeschehen bei Treffer des Gegners und bei der Animation des Dämonentanzes
Ich empfehle bei diesem Spiel mindestens Proton 8.0-2 zu benutzen, da die von Steam vorgeschlagene Version häufig beim Start, Auflösungsänderungen oder selten einfach so einfriert. Auch kann die Framerate immer mal wieder bis zu einer Minute lang auf 10 FPS fallen. Es fehlen manche Texturen bzw. Effekte in der Version dort.
Was ich empfehlen kann, ist die Installation von "Soul Hackers 2 Fix", die einem die volle Steam-Deck-Auflösung ohne Balken liefern kann und einige andere nette Features bietet. Das Spiel bietet nämlich zwar die Deck-Auflösung an, zeigt jedoch die typischen 16.:9 zu 16:10 Balken an. Die Startparameter oben angegeben sind für den Fall der Nutzung von "Sould Hackers 2 Fix".
Everything including the movies works out of the box
Most subtitles and header text are legible but incidental text and some menu text can be hard to read.
Missing textures and models in certain situations (ie. teleporters are missing).
Attempting to change fullscreen settings or Vsync settings caused the game to crash.
Overall playable but none of the graphics settings have any dramatic or meaningful performance impact. Using the in-game 30fps lock requires in-game Vsync to be off and causes massive frametime problems.
Changing some graphics settings and display settings caused soft-crashes requiring a restart of the game while loading a save file would, rather frequently, hard-crash the game.
This report was made with around 2 hours of Steam Deck play both using Proton 7.0-6 and Proton Experimental.
*Note: Proton Experimental works much better and the previous crashes and visual artifacting do not occur.
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 WINEDLLOVERRIDES="winhttp=n,b" %command%
Using SoulHackers2Fix and protontricks to fix issues
- Graphics preset at medium
- 40 Hz and 40 FPS cap in Steam Deck menu
- 6 W TDP limit
- 3 hours of estimed playtime
Some text is a little small, not gamebreaking
Missing textures by default, resolved by installing d3dcompiler_47 Windows DLL from protontricks
Does not support 16:10 aspect ratio resolutions, use SoulHackers2Fix to resolve this. Only works in-game, main menu and cutscenes are still forced 16:9
By default, game is forced to 16:9 aspect ratio, has uneven frame pacing, is missing some textures. All can be resolved via various small fixes, setting the game to 40 Hz and limiting TDP at 6 W gives me about 3 hours of playtime on battery.
gamemoderun PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60 ENABLE_VKBASALT=1 MANGOHUD=1 VKD3D_CONFIG=upload_hvv %command%
Installed d3dcompile_47 to correct missing textures.
Game runs amazingly well with above tweaks on Nvidia Hardware. Regardless of GPU MFG you will want to install d3dcompiler_47 using protontricks to correct missing textures, although if you have never played the game outside linux you may not realize they are missing (Not essential to gameplay).
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 %command%
installed d3dcompile_47 via protontricks, which resolved texture issues
cloud saves can error out/not load. To resolve, change a graphics configuration, save, and restart the game
The game can freeze during initial loading, but once you get past that, generally stable gameplay
missing textures, resolved with protontricks + d3dcompile_47
Use Protontricks to install d3dcompile_47 (Windows DLL component) to Soul Hackers' default WINE prefix. Afterwards, missing textures show up properly.
The title screen and initial load are unstable and can freeze. Once you get past that, and load a save file, everything would be smooth sailing afterwards.
If cloud saves fail to load / error out, you can fix them by updating your graphics settings in the title menu, exiting the game, and reloading it. Updating configuration locally somehow resolves the save corruption issue.
There are some textures and effects missing here and there. But this is very minor - if I hadn't seen streams of the game I would never have noticed a problem.
I have yet to find graphical glitches, still has the crashing issue where it freezes right at the loading screen or when loading a save.
gamemoderun %command%
Games often freezes with no crashing. When it does it's unplayable, when it doesn't, you can play long sessions
Installed d3dcompiler_47 to fix missing textures and effects
Medium settings, low shadows.
On first launch cloud saves didn't work. Change settings to high, then back to medium and they'll load fine
The game is missing some textures and lots of effects without d3dcompiler_47
The game seems to run well with minimal issues. I am about 15 or so hours into the game and haven't run into any significant issues. At one point the game save corruption was something of an issue with cloud save syncing, however that seems to have been fixed at some point and haven't had any file save corruption issues after syncing.
Should you encounter a "save corrupted" error after syncing, you can do the following
- Go to the settings menu in the game's title
- Change any setting
- Save the settings.
- Restart the game
- Go to Load game. You should now be able to bypass the "save corrupted" error.
One other caveat about my review is that it seems that I no longer need to run it with Proton GE. I'm not sure when this happened but I'm able to play the game just fine without any sort of issue as of recent.
Works very well, while there are visuals missing, the core game is still very very intact, any megaten fan will have a good time.
Most of the special effects aren't working, so battles aren't super visually interesting, and some visual flair on the main map area aren't present, such as the eyes on the enemies and the teleport visual are completely missing.
I had to force Proton Experimental, as Proton-GE wouldn't allow me to go above 60 FPS. (tested with GE-Proton7 37 when last tested.)
Both X-Input and D-Input controllers worked perfectly with the game as well, had no issues with the game not detecting my controller. But Keyboard feels slightly better personally, can't put my finger on it, but something does feel off when using a controller, feels a little clunky.
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 %command%
Capping 40Hz from Steam Deck menu.
Each session with this game is a hit or miss.
- The game can freeze during initial loading.
- Background audio can be missing.
- Textures and effects can be missing. If you continue to play a session with missing textures, the game can randomly crash.
But from my playtime, note that all those issues don't always happen and you will notice them from the start. So in the end, just close and restart the game as many time as needed to get a "good" session. Sometimes I had to restart 3 or 4 times before getting a session without troubles, another time it went well from the beginning... And when the game is running fine, the experience is good. This is not a perfect solution of course, but still totally ok to enjoy the game on the Deck if restarting the game several time is not bothering you. Also, 40Hz mode is the way to go regarding performance.
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 %command%
40hz medium settings
Lots of missing textures and effects in battles
could not load cloud saves on other devices
even with esync and fsync disabled, loading into the game could be a struggle later in the game
This is a final update on on prior posts. I completely beat Soul Hackers 2's main story on the Steam Deck.
However, there are lots of missing battle textures and effects. The missing textures don't affect the core gameplay, but not having attack effects, etc, does make the experience less visually interesting.
Also, when I was later in the game, I had trouble getting past the title screen and initial load screens without freezing.
After fully loading a save file, everything would be smooth sailing afterwards. So the title screen and initial load are unstable, the rest of the experience was pretty much smooth sailing for me.
40hz refresh, 40 fps cap
A ton of effects and textures missing, including glowing eyes on enemies on the field, effects when slashing Ringo's sword in the field and hitting an enemy, backgrounds for Sabbaths, and basically 98% of effects in combat.
had issues with saves on first try - resolved automatically. Try entering the load menu again or rebooting the game.
Tried running with the SoulHackersFix mod from github as well as without. Also tried with the PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 %command% and without. All seemed to run fine, but did not fix the glaring graphics issue.
Switching to Proton Experimental is required to launch the game at all, GE-Proton to make cloud save work.
Enabled 40FPS limit to increase battery life
Resolution settings are ignored, the game always runs at 720p instead of native.
Game reports that save data is not accessible when using synced cloud saves.
Had to switch to GE-Proton7-33 and disable loading screen tips via the ingame gameplay settings menu to load my existing cloud saves.
gamemoderun %command%
Until I switched to Proton Experimental, I could not change the resolution without the game becoming unplayable.
Launching this game with default proton or GE proton 7.20 stops you from being able to change the resolution or change to borderless fullscreen mode. Switching to Proton Experimental fixed this for me, but I had to stop cloud saves and manually wipe the config in my game folder each time I retried with a different setup otherwise the game would not start.
Broken if you change the resolution
Tried GE and Gamemode
Launched fine with normal proton, however it defaulted to 1080p. I changed it to my native rez and the screen went black. Now whenever I start the game I will just get a black screen; tried with GE proton and with gamemode. I can't access the settings to change the resolution back so I will have to uninstall, wipe the save folder and clear steam cloud I guess, oh well.
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 %command%
loading cloud save from Deck wouldn't work on living room HTPC
solved by disabling esync + fsync
This is an update on my prior post. After disabling esync and fsync with PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 %command%, I've now played 14+ hours on the Deck with no in-game freezes/crashes. I can also now change in-game resolution, borderless/fullscreen, etc, without any issues.
The only remaining issue I've encountered at this point is that freezing while first starting the game does still occasionally happen, but is very rare now, and usually just works on a single retry.
Minor missing graphics, such as the teleporters in dungeons not showing their glowy aura. The icon still displays so you know where they are to use mind you.
Fullscreen can cause crashing by default so it's best to avoid using it.
Without modding the game can sometimes crash from fullscreen as already mentioned but also when changing resolution sometimes.
By default the game does run mostly fine but you need to avoid using fullscreen or changing the resolution as it can cause random crashes. Game is also locked to 16:9 despite letting you select 16:10 resolutions. Furthermore beware of changing proton versions too much as Denuvo counts each swap as an install and it limits you to 5 installs in a 24 hour period.
Modding
If you're open to modding the game Lyall of the WSGF has made a Soul Hackers 2 Fix Mod to fix the aspect ratio on both ultrawide and steam deck which also fixes some of the crashes too, fully recommend using it for a more optimal experience. Instructions for installation are listed on the github page.
Slight stuttering during the opening cutscenes.
Launching with the default version of proton selected by the steam deck would sometimes lock up at boot. No problems with experimental.
Very playable as long as you are willing to try loading the game a few times, after changing proton. Haven't experienced any other bugs yet.
Switching from Fullscreen to any other option can lock up the game
Sometimes doesn't get through the initial loading screens. Forcing Proton Experimental, or GE makes this much less frequent.
Change to Proton GE or Experimental. Don't mess with the display options. When using GE or Expiremental, the initial loading screens will look like it freezes, but give it time and it will work (after a good amount of time. Give it 30-60 seconds before restarting the game) This is an update from my previous report.
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 %command%
Medium Settings with low shadows gave 3+ hrs battery life
cloud save was erroring out on other devices
Frequent crashes while loading the game, or loading into a new area while in-game
Game was freezing frequently for me while trying to load the game, as well as during loading screens while going to new areas in-game.
After disabling esync with the PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 %command% launch option, I was able to play for a few hours straight without any crashing or freezing.
Game crashes on load very frequently. Most spells fail to render or are displayed incorrectly.
Some text is difficult to read if halfrate shading is enabled.
Most effects (portals, attack fx, spells) fail to render regardless of settings.
Enemies in dungeon areas cause framepacing issues.
Freezes when changing resolution settings, initial load, or rarely when entering dungeons.
If you can get passed the freezing on startup then its generally a good experience. Was able to hit a constant 60 through most of the game.
Changing resolution or going windowed will cause the game to crash upon saving settings. Game defaults to 720p. Changing to 800p did not do anything and there are still horizontal black bars.
Game would often freeze at the start of launching, relaunched about 2-3 times until i was able to get to to work. once i was able to get passed that there have been no issues in game
Noticed some crackling a couple of times
Game crashes on switching to 800p
Frametimes slightly wobbly; sometimes framerates will inexplicately dip when GPU isn't maxed out
As long as you do not change the display mode to Windowed or Windowed Borderless, the game will be able to run smoothly on Fullscreen 720p.
Capped framerate to 40 FPS
Changing from Fullscreen to Windowed or Borderless Windowed would freeze the game indefinitely.
Additionally, changing the resolution to something that fits the Steam Deck's aspect ratio would cause the game to freeze. Lastly, sometimes the game would also get stuck on the initial loading screen indefinitely randomly.
The game runs pretty much perfectly if you do not change the resolution settings or the display mode settings. The game seems to freeze if you're trying to change to anything besides Fullscreen 1280x720. Capping the framerate to 40 FPS and changing the overall graphical settings to Medium netted nearly 4 hours of battery life on a full charge. If the game freezes on start up, changing the resolution in the properties settings on Steam to Default seems to fix it by resetting the resolution back to Fullscreen 1280x720.
Game crahes often while booting and when loading the game after picking a file. The game always crashes when it tries to go back to the title screen after a game over. I would also get random crashes on loading screens occasionally.
The game is 100% payable if you're lucky and the game doesn't crash, it runs amazingly well, almost exactly like it would on windows. However there are times where the game just refuses to let you play as it crashes constantly.
gamemoderun %command%
Careful this has Denuvo so if you switch proton versions too many times, it WILL lock you out for 24hrs
Sometines music is not played
Some textures are mising and effects missing on combat and on the dungeons
Changing configuration of resolution or fullscreen/windowed causes the game to freeze
Sometimes the game freezes when booting it. I had to restart several times the game until it decides to work
60FPS cap, Ingame Graphics set to medium, TDP to 10W
Explanation text in ingame menu is very blurry
Tsuchigumo texture does not load.
One crash in 4h when the Sabbath cutscene played in battle.
everything seems to perform great out-of-box, with high (default) graphic settings fps are is fine.
with the "normal/default" proton there is no audio issue with some in-game cutscenes, until it's resolved I recommend using GE-Proton
(the game doesn't seem to like if you change the default resolution, as it seems keep freezing after that, have to check if its happens on desktop as well)
everything works out-of-the-box with GE-Proton, and plays really smooth with max settings.
only issue I had with "default proton" was some (in-game) cutscenes lacked audio, otherwise same experience...until that issue has been resolved I recommend using GE-proton version
some cutscenes have missing audio (there is some cracling at times), works fine on GE-Proton
until the audio issue has been fixed on "default" proton I would recommend using GE-proton, if you don't mind installing the correct audio codec manually yourself.
Changing from Fullscreen to Borderless Window or Windowed caused game to freeze.
Rarely makes it beyond the initial loading screens
Game freezes frequently while trying to load. Sometimes it makes it into the game, then it works fine as long as you don't try to change display settings (resolution/windowing). I plan to keep tinkering to see if there is anything I can do to fix the issues encountered, and will change my report according to my findings.
