Avowed Gets Steam Deck Verified With Newest Update, But It Shouldn't Be

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Obsidian Entertainment is one of my favorite studios in gaming, and Avowed is another game from them that I have really enjoyed. It may not be perfect, but the story is intriguing and the combat is a blast, and I would consider it a really enjoyable game to play. However, as we mention in our review, it isn't the greatest experience on the Steam Deck. Still, it seems that hasn't stopped the team from making improvements, and the game is now Steam Deck Verified!

Announced with their new 1.5 patch, the game is now officially Steam Deck Verified. Along with that, we have a bunch of improvements like new abilities, new unique items, enemy combat upgrades, and a bunch of community-requested changes like doubling the cap on the Ring of Fortune crit chance bonus and updates to the visual representation of enchantments. There isn't much here that I would say that would help on the Steam Deck, except for maybe visual clarity for the cooking and crafting screen.

Still, with this update, I wanted to see if the experience has been improved on the Deck and if it really deserves that green checkmark. Unfortunately, I can't say it does.

Avowed's default settings, which set everything to Low with FSR 3 at Quality, still have massive drops below 30 FPS in the open world. Even putting FSR 3 down all the way to Ultra Performance doesn't fix it, and I still had big drops in combat when in the open world that went below 30. It was definitely improved from Quality mode, but still not to a state I would consider enjoyable and playable.

This feels like another game where the Verified badge may not actually be indicative of a good, quality experience on the Deck. Don't get me wrong, I very much want to play this game on the go. It would be awesome to play wherever I am. However, I would not call this a solid experience worthy of being a "great experience" on the Steam Deck. Hopefully, there is more that can be done to improve it, but not being able to run around without huge framerate drops is a big issue.

Avowed can be purchased for $69.99 on Steam.

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