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Titan Quest 2 was supplied by THQ Nordic. Thanks!
Titan Quest has had an attention-grabbing improvement cycle. The sport initially launched in 2006 and had one enlargement, however over 11 years later, it bought an overhaul with fixes and extra expansions. In 2023, after three extra expansions for the sport, Titan Quest 2 was introduced. Seeing a sequel in any case this time, and after what appeared like the unique recreation’s demise years and years in the past, is fairly wonderful. Now, with the sequel lastly right here, we are able to proceed the journey that started over 19 years in the past.
So, whereas I’m engaged on a assessment for this early entry launch, I needed to take a fast take a look at the way it performs on the Steam Deck. I used to be a bit apprehensive from the closed playtest, however there was some hope I noticed from it. I went into the sport with an open thoughts and many hope, and whereas it reveals some promise, there are nonetheless some efficiency points that hold it from being able to play on the go.
Earlier than I am going into my findings, I wish to reiterate that that is an early entry recreation, which remains to be in lively improvement. Due to that, content material and optimization will more than likely change all through improvement. Remember that that is simply an analysis of the preliminary launch.
The precise content material of Titan Quest 2 is numerous enjoyable to mess around with to date. It is a Diablo-like recreation, the place you combat tons of enemies utilizing expertise, getting bunches of loot, and leveling as much as enhance stats. Nevertheless, we’ve numerous malleability with how we construct our talents out. We get two masteries, which give us each lively and passive talents, and as we improve them, we are able to modify them in several methods to offer totally different results and alter how the abilities function. It is an superior system, and I’ll go over it extra in my early entry assessment, however I wish to focus extra on efficiency on the Steam Deck.
After enjoying round with the sport for a bit, I can safely say that is going to be a combined bag on the Steam Deck. There are some areas that run above 30 FPS on the decrease settings with first rate visuals, whereas some will tank the efficiency to an unplayable state, even when the sport is on the acute lowest potential settings with upscaling at a render scale of 25%.
Titan Quest 2 consists of TSR, XeSS 2, and FSR 3 upscaling, which I respect. Nevertheless, selecting between them is not the simplest. The one I can simply single out is FSR 3, which creates this horrible glistening impact on the grass. No setting made the sport playable or pleasant with FSR 3, so I extremely advocate not utilizing it. This consists of FSR 3 body technology, which is within the recreation as nicely. It makes the sport a stutter mess with heavy enter lag, so I extremely advocate not utilizing it in any respect.
That leaves XeSS and TSR, that are each across the identical visually. I made a decision to go in direction of TSR, which seems to be barely higher for my part and provides a bit extra management over how particular the upscaling is. TSR at 65% render scaling was the candy spot for me, giving above 30 FPS efficiency in some areas, whereas the realm that drop do not drop as arduous.
At this level, one of the simplest ways to extend the framerate might be to zoom in on the digital camera. Zooming in can carry the framerate up by 4-10 FPS, relying on the realm and the way intently you zoom in. It is arduous to advocate precisely how far to zoom in, as a result of zooming in too shut harms the general expertise, whereas staying too far out will kill the framerate. I might barely zoom in to extend framerate by round 3-4 FPS, which places it above 30 FPS as a rule.
Evaluate
Zoomed Out
Zoomed In Barely
Nonetheless, for the most effective efficiency, we’re going to get from Titan Quest 2 goes to be on the bottom settings. Holding TSR upscaling at 65% retains the visuals wanting decently sharp. We might transfer it additional down and decrease the rendering scale additional, however it hits visuals a lot more durable, and we’ll nonetheless get the identical drops.
I additionally did expertise a RAM utilization crash after turning my Deck off whereas enjoying the sport. It occurred as soon as, however nonetheless value mentioning that it teeters on full RAM utilization.
I might say that is one of the simplest ways to play presently if you’re enjoying on the Steam Deck. It’s technically playable, particularly since there’s a good quantity of areas that do carry out at 30 FPS with these settings, however there might be drops it doesn’t matter what proper now. When you solely have a Steam Deck to play PC video games, I might say that is manageable, however when you’ve got a extra highly effective handheld, laptop computer, or desktop PC, the most effective expertise might be there.
Titan Quest 2 is on sale for $23.99 till August eighth to rejoice its launch.
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