Monster Hunter Wilds' Is More Playable On Steam Deck After The Latest Patch, But Still Falls Short On Stability

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There's no doubting that Monster Hunter Wilds is a decent game, but it's definitely received some valid criticism about how it runs on both PCs and consoles. The Steam Deck especially struggles to play the game at a playable frame rate. With the game rumoured to be coming to Switch 2 in the near future, it's not surprising that Capcom is heavily focused on optimizing the game, with the latest patch almost entirely focused on making the game more CPU-friendly, with a side of GPU optimizations too.

So does this help the game on Steam Deck?

Unfortunately, as the image above shows, not really. The issue on the Steam Deck is more related to the GPU than the CPU, so until we see optimizations in how graphics are handled, we're unlikely to see any improvement in performance. While we did get a couple of extra GPU options added in this update, they were pretty minimal and had almost no effect on the performance.

If you were struggling with CPU performance on a non-Steam Deck device, though, there are a bunch of new options added by this update that should help you out.

When in quieter or interior areas, we can often see a fairly stable 30 FPS, but once we venture out into bigger, more open areas, especially those with distance fog and foliage, the frame rate tumbles until it sits in the high teens or low 20s, making the game pretty unplayable.

The open area of the Windward Plains, for example, can drop below 20 FPS near the watering hole. Scarlet Forest often runs in the mid-20s, whether you're exploring or fighting, whereas Oilwell Basin fares better, generally staying at or just above 30 FPS, but with the occasional dip below during intense combat. This is also all tested on the lowest possible settings, so we still have to deal with immense blurriness and washed-out environments.

With that being said, Capcom has confirmed that the next patch, due to be released on February 18th, will include further GPU optimizations, which should definitely help out a lot. And despite the performance still falling short of what I would consider playable, it does improve it, and gives some hope for future patches that could improve performance further.

You can check out the full patch notes here.

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