A Plague Tale: Requiem

Last Updated: Mar 16, 2023
First Published: October 17, 2022
SDHQ BUILD SCORE: 
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Review

A Plague Tale: Requiem is the next installment of the wonderful action-adventure franchise. Follow Amicia and Hugo after they have escaped their ravaged homeland to start a new life. In a vibrant new world, they must now overcome new foes and challenges with a variety of weapons and tools...or rats. Sneak around and strike from the shadows or unleash all hell in this harrowing and brutal tale to save the family you have left.

A Plague Tale: Requiem is an incredible follow-up to its predecessor. Requiem features a gorgeous world and fantastic continuation to the story with some gameplay improvements over the original. With some minor QoL improvements like stones being infinite, the game feels much smoother and streamlined to play. While it also can be played by itself, it feels like something is missing if you haven't played Innocence before this, so I definitely recommend checking it out first. Requiem can also be played on the Steam Deck, but it isn't the easiest game to run.

A Plague Tale: Requiem - Steam Deck Performance

When the game first released, it was significantly harder on the system. It could barely chug along to 30 FPS on the lowest settings and exhibited intense ghosting. Luckily, on November 9th, Requiem received a patch that made it much more compatible with the Steam Deck and added some new graphics options to play around with. This patch made the game much more playable, but it is still pretty heavy on the system.

With the update, Requiem tends to stick around 14W - 20W battery drain to hit 30 FPS on the lowest settings. This is definitely a huge improvement over how it ran before, and looks significantly better, but it is still going to be a drain to keep a stable 30 FPS. I did also notice that with everything on low, turning Vsync off helps stabilize the framerate a bit more. I tested with Vsync on and SteamOS's FPS limiter off and it was still smoother using only the SteamOS cap with Vsync off.

There are still some spikes that go below 30 FPS, but this is usually during very crowded scenes or cutscenes. Otherwise, the game had no issues with the controller and no visual bugs!

Conclusion

A Plague Tale: Requiem is an awesome game that continues the story in a fantastic way. With some pretty wonderful improvements to keep gameplay smooth and fluid, this is a wonderful next step in the franchise. While this game is fantastic and I recommend playing it, the performance on the Steam Deck leaves a lot to be desired. For what it is worth, it is playable with a lot of compromises to settings and framerate. But, if you are willing to put up with all of that, you will be rewarded with an enjoyable experience that anyone who follows the series should have.

We definitely recommend playing Innocence before this though, it adds a lot to the experience!

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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SDHQ's Build Score Breakdown

A Plague Tale: Requiem is an incredible continuation to an amazing story and has many improvements that streamline the gameplay. On the Steam Deck, it will require some compromises, but if you can handle them, it will ultimately be a rewarding experience.

Build Score

Performance: 
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VISUALS: 
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Stability: 
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Controls: 
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Battery: 
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Noah Kupetsky
A lover of gaming since 4, Noah has grown up with a love and passion for the industry. From there, he started to travel a lot and develop a joy for handheld and PC gaming. When the Steam Deck released, it just all clicked.
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Current Price: 
$26.59
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8 comments on “A Plague Tale: Requiem”

  1. Bought this game last week and haven’t been able to make it past launch screen. I tried to run this game in stable channel, Beta channel and Preview channel. Tried all protons including experimental and proton GE. Tried verifying game files and proton files and everything came back normal. Tried reinstalling the game in the internal storage and it won’t work and tried on sd card and same issue. It’s frustrating to want the Steamdeck to succeed and have to deal with a “verified” game not working at all.

  2. I just want to post an update because they updated game for steam deck ! Now the default settings run the game fine at 30 FPS with decent quality, the battery is not great since it's pushing the APU it but it's very playable now since they included an in game upscaler with FSR and more graphics options. Just a side note but it's listed by steam when you go in "playable" details, quit to desktop option is not working well on deck and you may need to close it manually using steam overlay. I think this review is out of date now, but for a good cause 🙂

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