I desperately want a steam deck for comfy jrpg gaming. I prefer my action/adventure/FPS to be on desktop, yet also find turn based a bit slow while at my desk. Don’t have the funds, so I just hacked my vita instead haha
Yeah I put off buying a Steam Deck ever since they first came out by first hacking my Wii U, then my n3DSXL, and finally my v1 Switch, and I had tons of fun getting injections and emulators working and trying out games I missed out on originally. So now I just got a Steam Deck OLED and I’m dipping my toes in a bit, the possibilities are so vast it’s pretty exciting
Interesting as I’ve heard mixed things about the performance of BG3 (though to be fair most of the issues I’d heard were earlier into the release and may have been optimized out).
It’s not that unexpected though given that BG3 is one of the more recent AAA titles and the Deck form-factor lends itself well to RPG’s. The FFVII remake played like a dream
Seems many of the most-played games on SD are also some of the most difficult to run on any hardware. Starfield and CP77 are probably 2 of the most intensive games and yet both are at the top of the list.
One thing to consider with that is that the screen size and resolution of the Deck are quite forgiving.
On a PC, you may have beefier hardware but you’re also driving bigger output. My PC rig runs up to 4K@120 on a 32" screen. The Deck - when running on the native display - needs to drive a max 1280x800@60 (90Hz for OLED I suppose). Stuff like massive FSAA is also less necessart/helpful on a smaller screen size and resolution.
That isn’t to say the Deck isn’t great at being what it is. It’s very powerful for a portable while still being able to operate like a desktop when docked. The Steam UI is tailored to the Deck hardware (with a better interface than i.e. on Switch) and the work that’s gone into stuff like Proton is great. Throw in the capability of it being portable like the ability to easily suspend and resume play later and it’s a winning combination.
Overall, I’d say the Deck wins because it’s entirely focused on it’s strengths and being convenient/accessible, while still allowing a lot of other use cases if docked and via desktop mode and tweaking with underlying Linux OS (or even multi-booting windows, if that’s your thing).
IMO, PC gaming and to a good extent console gaming fell off the track some time ago with a focus on the dick-swinging contest of heftier hardware and power while user experience, convenience, and fun kinda ended up playing second-fiddle. So while Deck might be the more beautiful/powerful system for running those games it still wins out in many ways with convenience.
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