The Last Hero of Nostalgaia

The game was provided by the developer/publisher. Thank you!

Ever felt like Dark Souls needed a bit of humor injected into the formula? Well this game will help you find out what you've been missing! The Last Hero of Nostalgaia is an unapologetic satirical adventure filled to the brim with a gorgeous changing world, unique enemies, and a combat system reminiscent of the souls-like genre. This is all packed on top of a dark story with a narrator that is actively hating you and making your life harder since you were created.

Combat wise, you can expect the usual souls-like combat of timed rolling and attacking. The enemies are relentless, but Nostalgaia offers some interesting features that sets it apart. The world is a celebration of video games, which means a bunch of easter eggs and items influenced by other franchises (like the green herb from Resident Evil). Armor and weapons also have their own lore which, if you go to specific spots, you can help them remember the past memories which can power up the weapons! Mix this with a humorous outlook and online co-op and you have a recipe for a very enjoyable game. But, of course, we have to see how this game runs on the Steam Deck.

The Last Hero of Nostalgaia: Max Settings

When set to max settings, Nostalgaia can actually perform decently, but it has a major issue with lighting that is casting shadows. For whatever reason, it is very taxing on the system, so going into any spot with too many lights caused major slowdowns and battery drain. This typically went to 20W while framerate droppped to 33 FPS. While these framerate drops can't be avoided completely while saving any battery, there are ways to make gameplay significantly better.

Nostalgic Optimization

After my testing of The Last Hero of Nostalgaia, I came across a couple conclusions. I found that 55 FPS helps negate some of the minor frame drops while keeping smoothness, 1024x576 with FSR looks great with these kinds of visuals, and the lighting causes some issues regardless of settings. With these in mind, I found that 55 FPS was stable in the most important parts of the game, the fights.

With this, there was still some minor slowdowns at some points, but it stuck above 51 and returned to 55 soon after. This didn't impact gameplay at all and the batter lasted around 3 - 3.5 hours! If you want to play at the highest quality settings, there will be some sacrifices for stability in bigger areas. Getting rid of Volumetric Lighting helped, but it fluctuates wildly in some areas with drains going from 11W to 19W. Playing at 40 still felt good, but the bigger drain made it hard to justify.

I also created a 60 FPS build, though it has the same issues as the quality. Even on the lowest possible settings, there was still some slowdown with a similar battery and temp situation.

Minor Gripes

There really wasn't any major bugs in the game and was actually pretty smooth through and through. There were a couple of little things I noticed like Vsync not working in the main menu and then starting up in-game, but this didn't affect the game. My biggest issue would be the slowdowns caused by the lighting, but with the recommended settings, I was able to minimize it to almost nothing!

Conclusion:

I truly believed the souls-like genre was good as it is with some incredible and unique games there, but I didn't expect to enjoy this one as much as I did. On the surface, The Last Hero of Nostalgaia seems like a generic souls game, but the humor that is injected into the formula, with the video game nostalgia influences, feels like a breath of fresh air. I actually laughed out loud when the narrator threw a cow at me. With the recommended settings, this game is wonderful on Deck and definitely worth your time!

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

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