Keebz
Published
The game is unplayable at default settings, even though it is Verified. Changing things to Standard or Low helps.
Graphics settings do not save. When you exit the game, you'll have to reapply them the next time you launch the game.
I don't know why the graphics settings aren't being saved. I can only assume read only permission error or something? Also, I feel this game should run better given how it looks but if you tweak graphics settings it can run reasonably well.
If you change the graphics settings you can get nearly 4 hrs of locked 30fps gameplay. By default you'll get terrible FPS and under 2 hrs.
Default graphics settings yield terrible performance. Changing them helps.
Sometimes upon resuming from sleep the audio will crackle until you restart the game. But not always.
Change the graphics settings in the main menu to get much better performance.
Set graphics in the main title menu as follows from top to bottom: 1080x600 | Window: Default | Overall: Custom | Texture: Standard | Shadows: Low | Reflections: Low | Effects: Low | AA: On | DOF: On | AO: Off | Bloom: On | Light Shafts: On | Draw Distance: Normal | Point Lights: Normal | Grass Distance: Normal | Grass Density: Low ------ In the Steam Deck's quick access menu, limit the FPS to 30, limit the TDP to 5 watts, limit the GPU clock to 800, turn on FSR scaling with sharpening up to 5. Enjoy!
TDP 9 watts, 40FPS cap, standard settings, Atelier Sync Fix .dll from GitHub
Small text in cutscenes and in party chatter while exploring.
Prerendered cutscene audio missing even on GE Proton. These cutscenes don't play at all without GE.
Certain menus will jitter unexplainably. It wouldn't always happen.
Graphics settings may not save unless you go manually save after changing them. Also, exit the game via the diary rather than force closing.
Game does not run well at all without Atelier Sync Fix DLL from Github. https://github.com/doitsujin/atelier-sync-fix/releases
Others have said that the game frequently crashes while loading. I tried to replicate this on GE Proton 7-52 with CryoUtilities and could not reproduce the crashing, which may be a positive sign. I fast traveled many times in a row and never got a hang.
This will require some work from Valve and/or on the developer's side. You can get it working well with tweaks but the out-of-box experience is poor due to performance issues, missing cutscene video and audio, small text.
TDP cap at 11 watts
Turn off motion blur, set XeSS to quality or even ultra quality, cap tdp at 11 watts and fps to 30 for better battery life. Raise textures to standard. Otherwise use all default settings (which are mostly standard preset). Proton experimental may run better or it may be placebo.
At the time of writing, Proton 7.04 is the current version and the game works great with that. However, it doesn't seem to work with older or newer versions--including Proton GE. I tried GE 7-24 as well as Experimental--didn't work on either of those. Would just crash before getting to the main menu. On 6.3-8, the intro cutscenes wouldn't play properly.
But currently it works great if you don't change anything. Just noting this for posterity.
There is a regression in Proton, and I am not smart enough to know how to fix it on my own because I no longer see 7.0-4 as an option.
The stutters caused by Proton make it very hard to enjoy this game. Forcing the Linux build to run only works in Desktop mode.
Steam defaults to the Proton version, which has stutters. However, forcing "Steam Linux Runtime" to get the Native Linux version breaks the game from launching at all in gaming mode. It works great without stutters in Desktop mode.
Resuming the deck from sleep can sometimes break the audio and cause slowdown.
Massive, inconsistent stutters on every version of Proton I tested.
Stutter is noticeable and breaks the fluidity of the game.
The best way to play is forcing the "Steam Linux Runtime" compatibility option in the game's Steam properties in Desktop mode. This forces it to run the Native Linux version, however it will no longer launch in Gaming Mode when you do this until you disable that setting. The Proton version has unacceptable performance due to massive stutter.
Impossible to enjoy Story Mode the way it was meant to be played in its current state. If you only want multiplayer, it is fine.
Stutters during video playback, videos not playing to completion.
Black videos in regular Proton 7. GE-Proton fixes those, sort of, but they still do not play to completion and end too early. The game also seems to cap itself at a strange 57 fps.
Should not be Verified in its current state due to story mode bugs with video playback but the actual gameplay feels solid.
Please contact Bandai Namco support and ask them to enable Easy Anti Cheat support in this game for Proton/Linux. https://support.bandainamcoent.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=360000446452
You may link them to Steam's documentation that shows how simple it is to do. https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/proton
This is our only hope to get this game playable in online mode on SteamOS at this point.
Something changed. It seems we are closer to seeing full Deck support on this game, but not quite there yet.
The game now connects to online servers, but still shows a message about EAC being disabled and multiplayer matches being unavailable.
The recent game update, when paired with Proton Experimental, no longer starts the game in offline mode. You're able to connect to the servers and use some online features, however multiplayer matches seem to still be disabled because the game shows a message that it was started without EasyAntiCheat. Something has definitely changed to get this game closer to being 'verified'. It's no longer being blocked from connecting to the servers. If someone can find out how to force EAC on, it's possible that it will work. I feel like we're getting closer.
The hitching/stutter that appears every ~8 seconds after 10 minutes of play makes this feel rough.
After about 10 minutes of play there seems to be a memory leak. The game will hitch every 8 seconds or so. It feels really bad. I tried the default proton Steam recommended as well as Experimental. Same results. I'm surprised no one has mentioned this, it could be a recent regression.
Hopefully the source of this leak or regression can be found.
Works wonderfully with GE Proton 9-9. No launch options required! All prerendered cutscenes and audio play.
720p, windowed, high graphics preset, 30fps cap, 6-7w TDP limit = over 5 hours battery on OLED Deck!
I tried GE Proton 9-10 and had cutscene issues, so there may be a regression on later versions but 9-9 seemed liked a flawless way to experience this game as far as I can tell. Give it a whirl!
Careful, the playable tag is misleading. You'll get an account violation warning for trying to play on Deck.
They need to fix something because currently it sends you a warning after disconnecting you from the match, and says that if it happens again you'll be banned. Just for trying to play it on your Deck. Be cautious for now and send the developers your feedback.
I often can't play games with an internet connection, and this game doesn't work without one. It will now launch to the main menu, but controller input is disabled. If you rebind to mouse and keyboard buttons or hold the Steam button + use trackpads and other buttons to emulate keyboard + mouse controls, sure, you can navigate menus.
But it seems to either be a prevention or a bug with Steam Input in offline mode. So for now, for my use case, no the game doesn't function.
Download the "Definitive Edition Project" patch, add one launch command, and use GE Proton - you'll thank me later!
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="d3d8=n,b" %command%
Works great if you download the "definitive edition project" patch files and paste them into your game's directory, overwriting files when prompted. This is a great patch that fixes numerous issues and makes the game look and play great out of the gate on Steam Deck. You also need to add the launch command listed here to the game's General settings tab in the Steam UI, or it won't work.
I have heard that the ReVC version works but this "definitive edition project" option seems even better. You can get the files here:
Solid performance on Steam Deck, but requires GE until the default proton fixes the few pre-rendered cutscenes.
7 watt TDP cap will still give you a locked 60fps and 3.5 hrs battery life.
Certain pre-rendered cutscenes appear to have issues. GE Proton required to fix that.
Hopefully Square or Valve will correct those cutscene glitches.
Default controls are made as if you are using a Switch. I had to change to XYBA in the in-game customization menu to get it to match the Steam Deck's buttons. HOWEVER this did not affect the DPad and those directions were still mapped to the Switch's directions. Thankfully, Steam Input conquers all and you can manually remap these buttons in the Steam UI and then use the trackpads as your DPads for menu navigation.
The default control scheme also had no Back button mapped so I changed to the Gamepad template in the Steam UI. The game selected the PS4 config by default, but with the Switch's button layout. Weird, but totally fixable.
It crashes with an error that Vulkan could not be initialized. The game worked perfectly on Deck before Steam OS 3.3. It no longer works in Gaming mode, regardless of Proton version. However, some people are reporting that it still works in Desktop mode.
Stutter presumably due to caching shaders
Didn't recognize input with regular proton 7, but glorious egg roll 7-10 worked well. Stutters due to shader caching or something. Seems to improve with time.
Seems to run flawlessly on default settings with zero problems, as if it was made for Deck.
Hopefully nothing pops up later but so far this feels like a Verified game as far as I can tell.
Yesterday I tried booting up the game, got to the menu, could not load into my save (crashed). I tried starting a new game, and after about 15 seconds was met with a crash. As of today's Proton Experimental update, the game no longer crashes when choosing "new game" (still crashes when loading my save) however no video is displayed, only audio. Bummer that this game doesn't work.
Odd behavior when pausing and resuming (game speeds up and hangs till the next choice or scene change).
Game stretches to 800p. I forced 720p in the game's Steam properties to fix.
Proton experimental required as of this post. Game is now playable. Odd pausing behavior isn't game breaking. Use Decky Pause Games plugin for now if needing to pause.
The default Linux-native port reports a steady 60fps out of the gate, but there is visually some very obvious stutter. Forcing it to run the Windows version via Proton (I used Experimental but any recent version will probably work) provides WAY smoother gameplay. Very interesting.
Sides were cut off until changing resolution.
Boss cutscenes would display a black screen.
Cutscene bugs mean this should not be Verified.
Missing cutscenes would ruin the experience for your average gamer, but simply changing to Proton 6.3-8 will fix all issues.
Some text was cut off due to the default resolution being strange. Changing it fixed this.
Audio was not playing in certain cutscenes until switching to an older Proton (6.3-8). Now it's perfect.
Video playback wasn't working in certain cutscenes on other versions of Proton.
Default resolution needs changing on Deck.
Flawless experience on Proton 6.3-8 - unfortunately many gamers on Steam Deck won't know to do this.
This game seems ready to be Verified. Perfect experience on Deck. Text isn't small. Default graphics look good. Long battery life.
I can't think of any complaints. The experience seems perfect so far, so let's get this game Verified.
60FPS cap, 4 watt TDP
Interface was improperly scaled on first launch. After that, it was fine.
Certain videos in-game, like speaking to Carth on the communicator early on, were just black screens. I found that the Anti Aliasing setting in game was breaking these cutscenes. If you launch the game and don't change any settings at all either in-game or in the .ini file, you should be fine. But I went and cranked everything up only to find that Anti Aliasing will break these minor cutscenes. It's fine to turn Anisotropic Filtering up, it seems, but beyond that I don't recommend tweaking anything. I also recommend sticking with the default 800x600 resolution and using FSR.
If you get a black screen with subtitles early on when viewing security camera footage or listening to Carth's remote message in the first 5 minutes of the game, you'll want to read the rest of my report. It may not happen if you haven't changed any settings.
Game crashes on launch. I can install and log into Origin, but the game will not launch beyond that.
It's borked.
Does not boot--crashes immediately. Sad day.
Missing textures on Shiva's hair and other objects.
Pulls me out of the experience. Apparently an issue with AMD cards even on Windows.
The new version 6.0 is Deck Verified and works very well in places. But can slow to a 10-15 FPS crawl in certain situations.
30 FPS Cap, 9 watt TDP
If you find yourself in a big space battle between 4 factions, FPS can be in the 10-15 range.
I found myself in a space battle between 4 different factions. There were many ships on screen at once, lots of explosions, etc. And I was experiencing an unplayable 10-15 FPS. Outside of this, the game ran pretty smoothly capped at 30 FPS on the "low" preset. Supposedly, version 6.0 of the game offers big performance improvements so it's possible that the above scenario would be far worse on older builds.To be clear, I am on the Release Candidate version 3 of the 6.0 beta. In 2 days this will get pushed as the official update. I don't expect performance to change in this time.
I still consider it an amazing achievement to have this game running on the Deck, and it's awesome that it supports Dynamic Cloud Saves too (you can sleep the deck and continue on PC without closing the game) but it would be great if performance could be further improved so that the game can hold 30 fps minimum at all times on the Deck. Given that X4 is such a deep game, there are still many things you could do in the game via the Deck that will perform just fine.
