Hello fellow players. A couple of friends and I are thinking about getting BG III on Steam Deck with the intention of playing together. However, what’s stopping us from buying it is the mixed reviews when it comes to performance. We’ve mostly been Switch gamers, so graphics are not really an issue. Some people say it’s playable, but we’ve also seen reviews bashing on it since they say it really isn’t playable (but some PC players consider anything under 60fps to be unplayable). And as we know, sadly the verified status doesn’t always guarantee it works great. So, is it possible to maintain a stable 30fps after all these months? Does it make a difference having it installed on the Deck’s internal memory or on an SD? Is it worth it to experience it for the first time through the deck? Thanks in advance for the answers.
Fellow former Switch gamer here, so my expectations might be in line with yours when it comes to performance and visuals.
I think the game is worth playing on Deck. The game has three acts. The first act always had solid enough performance on Deck if you approach it with Switch expectations. The second act used to be borderline, with some pretty rough dips but mostly still not below low 20s range. The third act used to be horrendous - think 15FPS or lower while panning or rotating the view, and barely more than the low 20s while doing nothing. That’s where most of the serious performance complaints came from, and this has been improved significantly since launch.
I won’t promise you can get a stable 30FPS in act 3 - not in the overword anyway. Too much going on CPU-wise. But if you’re happy locking to low-to-mid 20s, it’s very playable, and IMHO still very enjoyable, as it’s a very slow-paced game. I should point out that I mostly play at 8-10W TDP cap, but have occasionally uncapped TDP to see if it makes a difference - in my experience it usually didn’t gain me more than a few FPS - not enough to justify burning through battery for me personally, but YMMV.
FWIW, I’m only playing on Deck and I have it installed on the SSD. I might be less inclined to rate the experience favorably if I was jumping back and forth between a gaming desktop and my Deck, but I only game on Deck.