The Last Case of Benedict Fox

The game was provided by Rogue Games and Keymailer for review. Thank you!

The Last Case of Benedict Fox is a 2.5D Metroidvania that takes place in a lovecraftian-inspired world. You play as Benedict Fox, a self-proclaimed detective that is bound to a demon companion. The two of you will uncover the mystery behind a young couple's murder and the disappearance of their child. To do so, you will need to look for clues, solve puzzles, fight demons, and dive into the memories of the deceased to figure out what happened. It's time to dive in to dark worlds and solve this final, brutal case.

The Last Case of Benedict Fox left me a bit torn. The world, lore, and story is beautiful on so many levels. The setting is phenomenal and the atmosphere it gives off is breathtaking, dark, and gorgeous. The story is a little anticlimatic at the end and Unfortunately, the game is held back a bit by its gameplay mechanics. Combat can feel very rigid and off, while some bosses can be a bit inconsistent.

There are also some bugs that happen every so often that can hamper momentum, as well as some Quality of Life features that really should have been implemented. Map markers, automatically being put at the nearest portal on death, no immunity frames (you could get constantly hurt even when trying to get up from the ground), and little to no direction on where to go or how to do things in the game. If you're a fan of no instruction whatsoever, you might enjoy this, but I definitely got confused a couple times. While it has some issues here and there, the game can be played on the Steam Deck with some tweaking, but there are some compromises to be made.

The Last Case of Benedict Fox - Steam Deck Performance

Now there are a couple things I noticed when I booted The Last Case of Benedict Fox up. First, having no TDP limit will heavily drain the battery. At 30 FPS, without a cap, the battery would drain around 20.5W, while at 20 FPS, the game was draining around 17W - 18W at below native resolution (1152x720). This is extremely high and I would consider unacceptable for framerates that low.

Secondly, the other settings in-game didn't do much to fix this. The only one setting that I could change to get any change was resolution. Bringing it down helped stabilize the game, which is great, but even this wasn't a full on fix. 20 FPS at 800x500 resolution with FSR drained around 16W - 16.5W, which is still way too high. Using FSR did make the game look a little sharp, but definitely still playable.

To fix this, a TDP limit is necessary. Doing this fixes the unnecessary battery drain, but also causes some spikes when moving to new areas or moving around super fast. Putting on a GPU Clock Speed Frequency of 1200 did settle this one out though and fixed 98% of all the spikes I encountered without it. With all of this, I found that a combination of a framerate+battery build was my personal favorite when playing. I was able to keep a stable 40 FPS under 15W battery drain, with some very minor spikes here and there.

Personally, I recommend the build above most due to stability, higher framerate, and lower battery drain. It is possible to push this further, but the cons outweigh the pros, in my opinion. For a slightly clearer image, but more battery drain, you can push resolution to 1152x720 with a 30 FPS cap for around 16W - 17W battery drain with a TDP limit of 10. The end result is a little clearer, but with more drain for lower framerate, I didn't find it worthwhile.

I did see if I could feasibly push framerate higher. You can put a higher framerate on the recommended build and increase the TDP limit, but I didn't feel it was worthwhile still.

The last thing I noticed was some graphical issues. For whatever reason, the game does have some issues showing backgrounds here and there. I noticed this initially in the first boss fight, which shows a back background instead of one that blends with the setting. I tested on Proton GE, Experimental, and 8.0-2, but nothing fixed it. I didn't notice it a lot, and it didn't affect the gameplay, but it was still prominent.

The Last Case of Benedict Fox does have full controller support and 16:10 resolution support, and thankfully, it does have cloud save support! It doesn't say it has it on the store page on Steam, but it definitely works.

Conclusion

The Last Case of Benedict Fox is a game that had me at ends. The premise, story, and setting are so intriguing and I love what’s being sold, but the execution, gameplay, and lack of QoL features stop me from fully enjoying the game it doesn’t help that the game has trouble performing on the Steam Deck, but with those tweaks, it’s definitely playable!

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

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