Tales of Seikyu's Full Release Shows Big Improvements On Steam Deck

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Tales of Seikyu recently left Early Access after a year of development, gradually growing into one of my favorite farming sims on the market. Despite a saturated genre, its unique Yokai setting and focus on character growth carve out a distinct niche against the competition.

I've played a plethora of farming sims over the past couple of years, particularly those in Early Access. Even now, I'm impressed by the sheer number of farming games available, though quality varies significantly. There's considerable diversity, from action-focused titles like Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma and pixel art games such as Fields of Mistra and Stardew Valley, to trading-centric experiences like the Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar remake. While 2D farming sims offer plenty of great options, third-person titles are few and far between. My Time at Sandrock is arguably the best example currently available, though Tales of Seikyu is a decent contender.

When Tales of Seikyu first launched, my biggest issue was optimization. Even on modern hardware, I encountered serious memory leak issues, leading to stutters, freezing, and crashes. Back then, running Tales of Seikyu on handheld PCs like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally was out of the question. Playing it on the Steam Deck over the past year felt like an old man who had just spent a week in Chornobyl.

Regardless, I've noticed several performance improvements since the game's full release, which piqued my curiosity. Is Tales of Seikyu worth playing on the Steam Deck now? With some free time, I reinstalled the game to see how it performs in its 1.0 state. The answer is mostly yes. Performance has improved considerably in the months leading up to the full release, and I would now call Tales of Seikyu mostly playable. There are still some framerate issues, and the game continues to lack interface scaling. On the Steam Deck's screen, some text is quite small, to the point where I had to use the magnifier tool to read certain in-game tooltips. Hopefully, UI scaling is something the developers at ACE Entertainment can add. While it's not the worst case of "tiny text syndrome" I've encountered on the Steam Deck, it's an important point to note.

The game otherwise plays pretty smoothly on the Deck, though you won't get away with playing Tales of Seikyu with a low TDP. I experimented with settings to find the best balance among visuals, performance, and battery life, as this game will rapidly drain the battery while also providing an excellent hand warmer (which might be helpful in winter). I found that a mix of low and medium settings, with an unlocked TDP, offered the best blend of visual quality and performance. You'll get around 3 hours of battery life on the Steam Deck OLED, though I'll see how much more I can squeeze out of it in later playthroughs.

Tales of Seikyu is $22.99 normally, but is 30% off as part of its 1.0 launch until 25 June. It is rated Steam Deck Verified.

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