Batora: Lost Haven - A Steam Deck Preview

Batora was provided for free by publisher Team17. Thank you!

When it comes to the Steam Deck, there are a couple of genres that really shine. RPGs, Story-driven games, and action-adventure games all create some amazing experiences that tend to feel right at home portably. So what happens when all of these combine? Well, you get a game that should be an essential experience on the Deck.

It totally looks like that is a Steam Deck symbol on her forehead...coincidence?

Developed by Stormind Games and published by Team17, Batora: Lost Haven is a game claiming to do all of this by offering a rewarding RPG experience, action-adventure gameplay and combat, and a rich story that is driven by the choices you make. Taking place in a sci-fi world, you embark on a intergalactic journey across alien planets to restore your lost home. You play as Avril, a woman gifted with extraordinary powers, who will have to journey across worlds, uncovering secrets, and perfecting your powers. Full disclosure, I didn't expect to enjoy this game as much when I first saw it, and while it does have its flaws, I was happily wrong with my expectations.

Batora: Lost Haven - Story

I won't dive too much into Batora's story, since I feel it is a big part of the game itself. Overall, the story is pretty good. I would not say it is one of the best, but it is better than a lot of others I have encountered this year. The best part of it is the choices you make in the game. You have 2 options (Defender and Conqueror) in all your dialog choices and, when chosen, you can see direct consequences that happen from them. You can feel the weight of the choices almost immediately and that they actually may affect parts of the story in the future.

A still from one of Batora's cutscenes. I am a big fan of cinematics like this!

The characters of Batora, on the other hand, are hit or miss. Some of the dialog and personalities really mesh well with each other. I especially really like the relationship between Avril and Mila, which is full of friendly banter and jokes that keep things lighthearted even when touching on heavy subjects. But then you have some characters who talk in the third person in very broken English that just feels way too cringe at times. And with everything having voice acting, which I really love, the characters who speak like this are just too much for me. I can understand and respect why, but there is only so much I can personally take. You can also view a codex in the main menu, which details the characters and worlds you encounter, as well as tutorials if you need to go back.

You will be following a main quest line, but there are side quests to be found throughout the game which can expand the story too. While I wasn't taken with all the side quests, there were a few I found that did justify the time I spent away from the main branch.

Batora left me with a positive feeling on the story overall though. While it is unpacking lots of lore, it doesn't feel too overwhelming. On the preview build I played, there were some cutscenes that weren't there which made the story feel a little disjointed at those times, but it didn't detract from my understanding of the narrative itself.

Batora: Lost Haven - Graphics

Batora has a very unique style of graphics that, while put me off at first, really grew on me. These cartoon-like graphics have allowed the developer to create some really unique environments and characters while still looking really gorgeous. I am a really big sucker for vibrant colors that pop, which this game delivers plenty of.

I do love some vibrant colors...look at how shiny they are!

The locations in Batora are diverse, ranging from underground locations littered with crystals, to vast deserts, to snowy mountaintops, and many more. The locations feel different and varied, but still tied into the overall style of the game.

The character designs feel very fitting and quite unique when looking at the different aliens in different locations. They feel different enough to justify them living in different worlds, but similar enough to feel like they all live in the same galaxy.

Batora: Lost Haven - Gameplay

The gameplay of Batora, on the surface, is quite similar to games like Diablo and Divinity, but does have a lot of layers to it. The game adopts a top-down view and gives you open areas to run around while randomly being put into combat as you run, unless you are in a city.

An example of a desert town in Batora with a shop keeper...waiting to take all my money.

From there, you can access shops and talk to NPCs, which I know is our favorite thing to do in any RPG game. You will be able to get side quests talking to some of these NPCs. Through the game, you will find the currency and other resources to utilize in these shops, which you can see in the "Inventory" section of your menu, alongside the quest and story items.

Batora features different open areas to run around in. As you progress through the story, you will be teleported to new locations which you can run around freely, though other than the side quests and main quests, there isn't any extra activities to do. You can, however, find enemies and grind your way to become more powerful.

There are some interactive puzzles as well that you'll need to beat to progress through the story. The puzzles aren't aggravatingly hard and do require some thought. I felt it struck a nice balance, though I would have preferred more fighting. Controlling the ball in puzzles can be a bit hard though...

One of Batora's basic interactive puzzles. They get more intricate later in the game.

Batora utilizes a leveling up system that, while you can't upgrade specifics stats by leveling up, will make you more powerful over time. You gain more experience to level up with every enemy you kill. You can also use runes that you find, or buy in the shop, to augment certain parts of your character's stats.

You have the stats of each version of Avril packed with Health, Attack, Crit chance and damage, and defense.

You can't just equip any rune though, you have to have enough of one of the three rune point categories, which increase the more you play the game.

Each rune in Batora has a specific use and requires a certain amount of rune points, which are shown in the bottom right.

The game also features a "Polarity" system which allows you to swap between different movesets and abilities. The runes you acquire can affect 1 of the 2 modes you can switch between. Each polarity also has their own health bar which goes down depending on the enemy's attack. The bars are shown at the bottom of the screen to the sides of Avril's face and if you fully lose 1 health bar, it is game over.

This will all prove useful when it comes to the challenging boss fights. The bosses you fight will have three tiers to them and be able to shift which polarity will work best on them. Though, just like how you have 2 health bars, so do they. You will need to bring down both health bars in 1 tier to move to the next, and if you don't within a certain amount of time, the boss will heal up and you have to do it all again. I wasn't a big fan of this mechanic and, for a few bosses, it was extremely hard due to the grunt enemies attacking me while I was trying to quickly bring down the boss's health.

Combat

Batora's combat is where it gets a bit different from games that are similar. The uniqueness for this game is the "polarity" system it uses. While fighting, enemies will either have a red/orange or purple halo underneath them, noting which type of attacks will work on them. By pressing a button, Avril will switch between their different fighting modes to do the most damage to each enemy.

The orange halo underneath these enemies notes that the Sun polarity will be most effective against them.

Some enemies will have both colors in their halo. This means they have 2 health bars that you will need to drain with each polarity.

This system is basically switching between melee and ranged attacks. You will have You will have your main attack, as well as a directional attack when using the right analog stick. Using your Sun polarity (melee), I found directional and main attacks to both be useful, while the Moon polarity (ranged) was only useful with the directional attack.

Both polarities have 4 abilities with them, with 1 being a rolling/dodging move. The remaining three are all more offensive abilities that are quite diverse between each other. From creating tornadoes to spinning around like a maniac, the abilities feel like they help clear out whatever enemies you may face.

The combat itself feels quite fluid and enjoyable to utilize. Switching polarities was not as jarring as I thought it would be and kept me swapping to kill different enemies while moving around. It was a lot of fun to strategize on the fly about which mode I should be in and how best to deal with the enemies. The boss mechanics were a little bit obnoxious, but overall, I figured out how to assess the situation and win.

Steam Deck Performance

Batora: Lost Haven is a game that I feel would absolutely reach its fullest potential on a portable device and I am happy to report it is definitely the case with the Steam Deck. The game itself runs really well with a few modifications and, without official support for it yet, is very playable in its current state.

Through my testing, I found the perfect balance of the game to keep it looking fantastic and running it at a stable fluid framerate. I first decided to start dropping some settings down to see how it would affect the overall style of the game. I found a mix of medium and low settings brought it down enough to help me keep a very stable framerate, while still retaining the quality of the game itself.

When it comes to the framerate, I tried to keep it at a solid 60, and while it was playable, there were too many drops that were quite jarring for me. I figured out a 50 FPS was still very smooth, but significantly more stable with almost no spikes at all. I was able to set a TDP limit to 9 with a GPU Clock Speed Frequency at 1100 as well. This kept the battery drain around 13W - 15W for around 3 - 3.5 hours of battery life and temps generally below 70c.

I did notice that there were more drops when in some cutscenes way more than the in the gameplay itself. It is using real-time rendering, so there may be more going under the hood during these moments. Luckily, those drops almost immediately stop when the cutscene is over and you are back to the smooth gameplay.

Bugs/Control Issues

I feel these are more personal gripes rather than actual issues, but it did feel weird at times when playing the game. I didn't encounter any bugs in my playthrough that were very noticeable, but there were some things I would have loved to see improved upon.

Batora has full controller support upon release, and it may be possible my version of the build didn't have it all implemented yet, but using directional attacks when under the Sun (melee) polarity was not great. To continue a string of attacks, I had to continually press the right joystick in the direction I wanted to attack in. This did result in an unnatural movement while I was fighting that I wasn't a fan of. The Moon (ranged) polarity works perfectly with just holding down the joystick in one direction.

Batora doesn't have any 16:10 aspect ratio options either. That means you will have the black bars above and below it. You can remedy this by changing the game to "Windowed Fullscreen" and it will stretch to the entire screen, but you can't change resolution any further doing this. This won't be a problem for most people, but if you want to maximize the amount of battery life you get, changing resolution down a bit and using FSR would no longer be an option.

Conclusion

Batora: Lost Haven was a really fun time and not one I expected to enjoy as much as I did. From traveling to the other worlds, to the unique combat switching mechanics, I felt the game did a fantastic job keeping me interested and feeding me new abilities and such as I went along. I don't think this would be a game I play on my desktop PC though, I feel the enjoyment I got out of this game was purely due to it being on Deck.

I would love to see a fix to the directional attacks though, and maybe some official 16:10 resolution support, but overall, I would absolutely recommend Batora. I still can't get over some of those characters personally though...it was hard having to deal with them as often as I had to. Thankfully, the main characters don't speak like that, so it wasn't something I worried about too much.

Batora: Lost Haven can be found on Steam, where it has a tentative release date of Autumn this year. This will definitely be one to watch, and I can't wait to see how it will improve leading up to release.