Ace Combat 8 Doesn't Look Like It Will Run On Steam Deck At All

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I may not play many flying games, but Ace Combat intrigues me. I did try Ace Combat 7 and enjoyed it a lot, so I am quite excited and curious about Ace Combat 8. I’ve actually been super hopeful for the game to run on the Steam Deck, especially with how well the previous game in the series did. However, it doesn’t look like it’s going to run well, and I’m a little bit devastated about it.

Since I’m quite excited for the game, I decided to check out its recommended and minimum system requirements, and that’s when all hope left. The minimum system requirements are pretty hefty, enough so that I actually had to do a double-take when looking at it. It’s asking for a Ryzen 5 3600X CPU, NVIDIA RTX 2060 GPU, 16GB RAM, and a whopping 125GB of space. And in the notes, Bandai Namco says that this is estimated performance at 1920x1080 resolution upscaled and with graphical settings at low for 30 FPS, which is nuts.

And to my surprise, the recommended settings also made me a little bit worried. Not only is it asking for some hefty requirements, including 32GB of RAM and an RTX 3070 GPU, but this is also for an upscaled 1080p at the medium quality preset for 60 FPS. To me, that is crazy, and now I’m a bit worried about optimization.

There’s no doubt that the game looks beautiful and we’re going to be flying quite fast through the sky, but this just feels unacceptable. Compared to the previous release, the minimum requirements were asking for a 5-year-old GPU to play at low with 1080p resolution at 60 FPS. No upscaling at all. Even the recommended requirements for Ace Combat 7 asked for a GPU that was three years older and recommended the high-quality preset.

I do understand that Ace Combat 8 is using new tech that is more demanding and realistic-looking, but the requirements are very worrisome, especially when the recommended settings are still relying on upscaling for just the Medium preset. It looks beautiful, but I am definitely worried about how it’s going to be optimized for the full release, whether on the Steam Deck or Desktop PC.

Ace Combat 8 can be pre-purchased for $69.99 ahead of its September 28th release date.

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