Wraith_Skyline
Published
Was able to play the main campaign from start to finish with no issues. The only modification I did was bind Yaw to L4/R4 and Flare to R5. Did not run into any frame drops and game stayed at a healthy 60fps throughout. The battery life isnt the greatest clcoking in at about 2 hours which is to be expected.
Plays great on its own, but if you have the knowhow, there's a ton of custom content that makes it the ultimate AG racing sandbox game.
Dropped to 540p with FSR. Thing is, the game is by design is super customizable and has both modern visuals and retro visuals based on your taste. I did not have to drop to 540p /FSR, that was purely a personal preference. Game on average will get 3ish hours of battery although you'd think more because of the visuals. But keep in mind its running on a modern Unity Engine.
So this review is for the Windows+Proton version. The native linux version runs perfectly fine. I used the Proton Version to test out Custom Huds since those do not work on native linux, but do in the windows version. Custom videos also, do not work in the proton version or linux version yet. I'm not listing it as a bug since the video billboards in all of the base game + DLC tracks are perfectly fine and custom content is never garunteed to work.
Using 960x540 w/FSR Processor TDP set to 6w
The game has no idea what to do with the graphical settings on load so it sets it to lowest settings with VSYNC. Turn off vsync or you will get some weird frame drops.
Was able to install and launch no problem. The only oddity is the graphics default to lowest settings at 800p and vsync on. My settings were as follows. Battery life with this setup is ~2:45 - 3:00 hours. You can easily get more if you drop the graphics settings down or even set the frame limiter to 30. These are the settings I used
In Game
-Graphics: Max
-AA: 8x
-VSync: Off
-Res: 540p
-In Deck
-Frame Limiter: 60
-Processor TDP: 6
-Full FSR
There really isn't much to say here. I got full 60fps 95+% of the game. It ran smooth, the controls were great. Seriously no issues at all. Great game for the Steam Deck
Was able to play the game from start to finish without running into any major game breaking bugs. For transparency, I did run into a bug after the climax where I lost all moral and the game soft locked before the conclusion, had to load up an older save to fix. I do not know if this bug is present when playing on Windows, but it's easy to avoid. The quick resume feature works, game looks great, text is fine. If anything the battery life could be better and there are probably ways to increase it, but I didn't do any tinkering for this one Overall though enjoyed my time playing on Steam Deck.
VSync Off
With the exception of Custom Music not working at all (will crash the game) and some weird zooming during certain cutscenes, I was able to play from start to finish at 60fps stable . All things considered, it was a fantastic experience. Aside from turning VSync Off, I left the default visual settings as is. Battery life is ~2.5 hours at best.
Even though valve says it's not supported, it runs fine (it seems, need more playtime) as long as you launce without anti-cheat. However that means no multiplayer, same as the non Steam Deck linux reports. The game also supports normal gamepad. I created the controller profile myself based on the keyboard and mouse layout. I have not tried anything outside of Halo Reach, and as of writing this, I've only played the first mission in the campaign. I also kept the default graphics.
Graphics Setting - Medium Processor TDP - limited to 10w
Putting the system to sleep while playing may cause the game window to shrink into a tiny window in the top left requiring a game restart.
I was able to get it installed and running. You may run into issues with the Origin launcher the first time it runs and installs. After you've gotten signed in though it should launch Origin followed by the game automatically. I also have my Steam linked to my Origin account, so I didn't have to type anything in to get signed in after it installed Origin.
Once in I was able to get the frame rate to a solid 30-50 with Medium preset and TDP limit of 10. You should be able to get more if you leave the TDP unlocked. Don't expect more than maybe 2 and a half hours for battery, the game only supports 720p, 768p and 800p. So can't really do the low res with FSR trick.
Not really trouble, but had to use the touch screen to get through the punkbuster portion. Just something to be aware of.
A few buildings here and there have some artifacting, very minor and not very common.
I was able to get it running without any real issues. The controller prompts are all keyboard based despite the game recognizing joypad controls. There are a few keys that will still need to be mapped separately but that's about it. The game defaults to the lowest settings possible, change that as soon as you can, steamdeck can do full 720p@60fps on max settings. Maybe don't put the world effects at highest for aesthetic reasons though (the insane amount of bloom is distracting). Overall seems to be great.
Sometimes after a boss fight the game would get stuck on loading, requiring a restart.
Game was great to play on Steam Deck. I was able to complete the main story with consistent ~60 fps. Tried on standard proton but the bugs with that were awful. No in game video billboards and the audio from them would replay and overlap. However with GE 7-14 was able to play with minimal to no issues.
Rare Crashes - game sometimes crashes (not frequent though) when entering into a lobby . Upon reload player is still locked into the match but can't play or go back to the main menu until the match is over.
The game runs and plays great on Steam Deck. Battery life is about 3ish hours, so not super demanding. I think the default control setup though is awful and should be changed from WASD with Mouse trackpad to gamepad since the game heavily relies on cursor position when hitting the core and is very hard on the trackpad. The crashes that do happen every now and then can also be annoying since they happen when entering a matchmaking lobby. Outside of those inconveniences, by far a very enjoyable multiplayer experience for the steamdeck.
Changed right track pad to mouse.
Outside of my normal set right trackpad to mouse I didnt mess with anything or need to. The game runs flawlessly as far as I'm concerned
TDP set to 8w
So the linux build defaults to windowed and the on screen cursor desyncs its position making it incredibly difficult to get through the menus to change the graphics setting to go full screen. IT IS DOABLE THO, but basically where your cursor shows on screen is not where it registers in game and is offset. Once you manage to get it to go fullscreen it works great.
In game cursor is offset until you manage to get it set to fullscreen. Whatever official control scheme double fine set up for the game does not work one bit.
As stated in other section. The default controls that Double-Fine setup for the game just don't work. Be prepared to have to rebind a lot of stuff and tweak the triggers. I uploaded my control scheme and is available and works. There's also plenty of other Community ones you can try out as well if you don't wanna deal with rebinds. Also be prepared to be frustrated with the cursor being offset until you manage to get it to go fullscreen. Once the initial pain is over the game works great from start to finish. I was constantly using the quick resume feature of the Deck and ran into no problems at all unlike other games i've tried. I know i've seen a lot that are going the proton route for this one, but you really don't need to.
If you like the game notmally and are willing to put in the effort to get the controls setup, it plays great on Steam Deck.
The game barely supports a gamepad and there are no good community layouts for Steam Deck that I could find due to the amount of keys/menus. Even the layout that I set up isn't perfect. So be ready to add stuff to the layout as you play.
Set to medium preset. Game defaults to ultra. Do not play on ultra, the performance is okay on ultra when you start, but as you build more and more it requires more and more CPU power for all the calculations.
Text is tiny. It's readable as long as you leave the resolution at 800p, but it is tiny.
I rented a server to play with friends and offload the CPU calculations. Plays great on dedicated server.
Overall, great time. I hope eventually the devs add in more official support for Steam Deck. But as of this writing, the game is still Early Access v0.5, so there's still hope in later updates.
Was able to play from start to finish, even was able to use the Steamdeck's quick resume feature without any issues. Battery life ~4 hours iirc. All in all, great game to play on Steamdeck
Fantastic game to play to play online with people. Only issue I ran into ever was with the ingame steam friends and getting them invited to play. Usually would require a system reboot to fix. After that though ran perfectly.
I've put a decent amount of hours both playing multiplayer games with friends and also just against the AI. I run full max settings which kills the battery, but I can do it at around 45-50 fps which im fine with. You can easily get better battery life and performance if you lower the settings. The developers did a fantastic job with actually labelling the controls when you press the steam button which I really appreciate. Overall great experience.
The game was designed for 1080p screens and it shows. For instance, in the fleet manager when you reinforce your fleets, the progress bars for said ships bleed off screen and you can't see how many days are left until completion. It's not a deal breaker and overall is fairly minor, but it is worth noting.
The artifacts that I listed are the same ones found in other reports. Basically some text characters will ghost from time to time on screen. Its not distracting, nor is it game breaking, but it's worth noting.
If starting a new game, 60fps is attainable and the battery life is ok. However, as your galactic conquest gets to later stages of the game and theres more happening, the fps will drop over time and battery life will get worse. At end game, on a giant map, fps hovers around 25-30. The quick resume feature, which is very hit and miss on a lot of games I've played, works great and I have had no issues with it. It makes the experience so much better as a result, because it makes it into a game where you can put the Steam Deck to sleep while the game is running, and jump back in very quickly without needing to reload the game.
Not just for battery, but with how demanding it gets i have resolution set to 540p at 40hz with 40fps limit, and most effects turned off.
If you play on a server or like to build a lot in a smaller area i.e. build a town. Expect those areas to drop to 15fps over time the more thats done. Out and about, easy 40 fps tho.
Steam Deck will struggle HARD the more you build. But I don't think that warrants knocking off playability points unless you really can't tolerate as low as 15 fps.
I love this game and have put all of the hours shown exclusively on steam deck. I have my own server i rent to play with a few friends and its great. However, I know I've said it multiple times in the assessment. But, be prepared for painfully low fps. I haven't seen it go into single yet. But we built a town, at first it was ok 25-30 fps. I am now down to 15-20 max running in 540p, half rate shading, and FSR, in said town due to the amount of stuff going on. If you are playing solo, you probably can enjoy this game just fine without feeling the heavy frame rate drops as long as you keep things a bit more scattered. In fact when not in the town, I get a solid smooth 40fps. Just make sure you are aware of how bad it can get with this game and don't expect too much and you'll be okay and probably enjoy. If you are a frame rate chaser, lol good luck.
This game is super low demand. I set tdp to 8w with now frame drops at all.
There really isn't much to say. The game is incredibly low demand performance wise and everything just works out of the box.
It'd be great if the game ran. But it doesn't. At least not with the easier fixes. I did not try anything too advanced to get it working. But as is, GE and default Protons will not boot.
