Like A Dragon: Ishin, like a lot of the games in the franchise, can also be played portably on Steam Deck. While the game is listed as Verified from day one, how does Like A Dragon: Ishin perform on Steam Deck? Is it a smooth experience, or as smooth as Ryoma singing about being a farmer?
Like A Dragon: Ishin works relatively well out of the box without much tinkering required on Steam Deck, though you may actually have to make some adjustments if you’re looking for steadier framerates.
As of the public build available on February 17th, 2023, Like A Dragon: Ishin will actually have quite a lot of framerate issues when you first load up your save during a session, with the framerates ranging from 20-60fps, but the game seems to catch up to itself before long. The game gets close to 60fps at most times after that, but does suffer frequent dips — it rarely ever stays at a consistent 60fps, especially when in combat or traversing congested areas.
To combat this, there are a couple of settings to tweak. Most of the visual settings will automatically be lowered on Deck (though it does still look lovely), but you can always turn AMD FSR 2.1 on to either of its performance options to try and eke out a few more stable frames. Bear in mind, though, that doing so will noticeably impact the visuals — everything will look a bit “bleary” and smudged but still very playable. You can also, of course, drop the framerate limit down to 30fps and crank some of the visual settings up if you want more handheld fidelity. All of the cutscenes run at 30fps anyway, so at least you can be consistent there.
A feature of the Steam Deck version of Like A Dragon: Ishin that might not be for everyone is a border with symbols at the top and bottom of the screen when playing in 1280×800. It might be a bit distracting, but luckily you can just change the resolution to 1280×720 to take care of this.
Another aspect of portable play that isn’t quite talked about enough with the Steam Deck and big games is how poorly the battery life tends to hold up, but Ishin will actually give you a not too bad two hours of play with no setting changes, likely more than that if you limit power, though do bear in mind that your performance will take a hit. And if you’re also planning on playing the game on PC, the small save file sizes means that you can easily take advantage of cloud saves to seamlessly continue your journey for the truth.
While Like A Dragon: Ishin may not be the absolute best it can be on Steam Deck, it still offers an experience worth undertaking, especially if you’re just looking to get through the game’s many, many side activities and don’t mind making a few tweaks here and there.
Like A Dragon: Ishin is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X & S.
READ NEXT: Is Like A Dragon: Ishin Coming To Xbox Game Pass?
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