By Jay Peters , a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a delight on Steam Deck — even though I sometimes can’t tell what’s going on.
I suspected that might be the case going in. Everything I had seen about Baldur’s Gate 3 before I downloaded it promised a vast, sprawling adventure, and all the streams of the game I watched on Twitch featured incredibly detailed characters and worlds. I’m sure most of those streamers were running the game on top-of-the-line rigs. I suspected that the Steam Deck, which recently had some troubles with The Last of Us Part I, might not be the best place for me to play Larian Studios’ new RPG.
That said, the game just looked like so much fun, and since it won’t be coming to PS5 until September, I really wanted to find a way to play it sooner. I was even more intrigued after reading my colleague Ash Parrish’s beginner’s guide. And then, a few days after Baldur’s Gate 3 officially launched, I saw that it was Steam Deck verified. I knew that wouldn’t necessarily mean the game would be beautiful to look at, but it was enough for me to jump into Baldur’s Gate 3 on my Steam Deck.
Here’s what I encountered after downloading the huge 122GB game:
You’ll notice the screenshots in this article aren’t pretty, but for some reason, they’re seemingly worse than they should be. I promise I didn’t go out of my way to make the game look as awful as possible! After I first published this story, Sean Hollister and I may have found some inconsistencies with Baldur’s Gate 3’s default Steam Deck settings, and we think there’s something going on that made the game look worse for me. Possibly something to do with the AMD FSR AI-powered upscaling that can improve performance by running a game at lower resolution before blowing it up.
We’ve reached out to Larian to try and clarify a few things, including the default FSR mode for Steam Deck, and we’ll update if we hear back.
Despite all this, I’m absolutely fascinated with Baldur’s Gate 3 on Steam Deck.
I just keep marveling at how much game is packed onto a relatively small machine that I can hold in my hands. Even though it clearly struggles on my Steam Deck — it’s a graphically demanding game, and we’ve seen subpar results on lower-specced desktops as well — I’m impressed that it works as well as it does.
I’ve rolled four different characters already, and I’ve found new areas and conversations each time I go through the game’s early sections. Baldur’s Gate 3 is full of life, so even though I sometimes have to squint to figure out where I am, the characters are incredibly fun to talk to. To my surprise, I haven’t run into any major issues playing co-op, meaning my wife and I have spent hours howling at our ridiculous mishaps. (RIP, Barcus Wroot, the gnome we accidentally flung from a windmill.)
I also find that there’s something more personal when playing a game on a handheld — it’s one of the reasons I love the Nintendo Switch. Sure, it’s a lot of fun to share an adventure with everyone in the room on a TV. But some of my favorite time with Baldur’s Gate 3 has been sitting on the couch, Steam Deck resting on a pillow on my lap, and headphones plugged in, wandering through Faerûn. (It helps that the game’s gamepad controls, while a bit complex, have started to make some sense, though it’s sometimes hard to pick up objects that are close together.) I’m even thinking about bringing my Steam Deck on an upcoming vacation so I can play Baldur’s Gate 3 — what better way to relax than a cold drink and a successful persuasion roll?
My feelings could all change. With about 18 hours of playtime, I’ve barely scratched the surface of Baldur’s Gate 3, and I don’t know if later areas will look or feel worse on Steam Deck. (One colleague says some darker areas that show up later can be particularly hard to parse.) Larian plans to implement FSR 2.2, which could make things look better.
But overall, it’s been a surprisingly smooth ride so far. Even though I’m looking forward to picking up my adventure on PS5 with cross-saves, I bet I’ll still spend a lot of time with Baldur’s Gate 3 on Steam Deck.
Update August 18th, 7:41PM ET: Added details about the Steam Deck’s graphical settings.
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