LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight Is Surprisingly Playable on Steam Deck

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LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is finally here. I have been waiting for this game for quite some time, and I’m so excited to see that it is out now. While I didn’t receive a key for review, I still wanted to purchase and go over how the game is running on the Steam Deck. I’ve had my worries since they released the spec sheet, so I wanted to test it for myself and report on what my experience is like in the opening hours. And honestly, I am so glad the spec sheet is wrong.

It’s worth bearing in mind that these are our impressions of the game so far. We have not played the entire game, so there may be sections later on that perform better or worse than what we go over here.

If you want to save some money, you can get the game on Fanatical for $61.59.

Before I get into my experience so far, I want to talk about the settings. The game defaults to the low settings with FSR upscaling at balanced. However, we do have some effects enabled, including Screen Space Ambient Occlusion. And I am happy to say that frame generation is off by default. The spec sheet for the game worried me, with its weird requirements and saying you need frame generation to play at 30 FPS. However, I am happy to report that this is not the case, and frame generation is not needed based on what I’ve played so far.

It seems like LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is split into two main sections: the contained levels and the open world. The contained levels seemed to be the majority of the story missions, while the open world is where we will be traveling to each of those missions. There seem to be some little side activities here and there. I helped stop a criminal stealing a purse, but I haven’t played enough to see what else is there yet.

In these contained levels, we will get a fluctuating frame rate of 40 to 60 FPS. There were some minor drops to 37 to 38 in the levels I played, but it will generally stick above 40 for the most part. When running around, it would usually stay above 50, but in the bigger fights with lots of enemies, there would definitely be drops into the 40s.

However, the open world is another story. I will preface it by saying it does stay above 30 FPS, with some minor spikes that did go into the 25-27 range. When running around Gotham, the framerate would generally stick to 34-37 FPS, but as soon as I got the Batmobile, it would stick to an average of 30, with more stutters and drops when boosting. If you leave the framerate uncapped, the stuttering will feel awful.

As for my recommendation so far, I would go for a 30 FPS lock all the way through. Those contained levels can handle more, and it feels great at higher framerates. But as soon as you get into the open world, it feels awful with an uncapped framerate. Driving around the world had constant stutters, which almost felt unbearable at times. Locking to 30 FPS feels overwhelmingly smoother for the most part when driving. It doesn’t get rid of some of the stutters when you are boosting around the city, but I would say it generally feels better than without the lock.

On top of that, I can confirm that the game supports 16:10 aspect ratios, so there will be no black bars at the top and bottom of your screen, and it has HDR support that doesn’t seem to affect performance too much. Everything else feels right at home on the screen, and if you have the OLED Steam Deck, those colors will pop.

So, based on what I’ve played so far, I would say LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is quite playable on the Steam Deck. It runs extremely well on the contained levels, and the open world generally sticks to 30 FPS or higher. I was also surprised by how good the game looks at the default settings, which sets almost everything to low quality with upscaling. It feels like it fits perfectly on the small screen, and I would say it should be a good experience on the Deck.

LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight can be purchased for $69.99 on Steam. And if you want to save some money, you can get the game on Fanatical for $61.59.

The Fanatical links above are using an affiliate link, which gives us a little back from sales at no extra charge to you. All proceeds go back into SDHQ and its development.

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