Lost Soul Aside Is Not Going To Be A Great Steam Deck Experience

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I feel like PlayStation games are very popular, and I see them all over the place, but Lost Soul Aside is one that almost slipped under my radar. I remember seeing it a while back, but not much since then. It always looked interesting to me, reminding me a bit of Final Fantasy Versus 13 with its aesthetic. After purchasing the game, it seems like a solid experience so far, but with it just releasing now, I decided to check it out on the Steam Deck, and that Unsupported rating it got is mostly accurate.

You can save some money and get the game for $50.99 on GreenManGaming with coupon code AUG15.

Lost Soul Aside starts on a bad footing, and while it gets a little better, it doesn't stay that way for long. The prologue's first cinematic slows to a crawl, getting around 2-4 FPS throughout. As soon as it gets to gameplay, it does spring up to 20-30 FPS, but as soon as we get through the final fight, the game will crash. It feels like a RAM crash, since it would go to a black screen, automatically close the game, and bring us back to Game Mode. It's definitely not playable this way.

With my RAM issue suspicion, I decided to try changing the UMA Buffer to 4GB, which you can do by holding the volume up button while rebooting the Steam Deck, to see if that would help push the game through, and it actually does. It doesn't increase performance, but it did stop the RAM crashes, and I was able to continue playing past the opening prologue. However, this doesn't last long. During the first gameplay area after the prologue, I experienced my next RAM crash. Rebooting the game and loading the auto save did allow me to get past where the crash happened, but RAM usage is still very high.

There are some moments where the game runs very well, like when in very closed-off areas, and can even get up to 60 FPS, but it will quickly drop to the 40s in combat, and there are still going to be so many areas that drop even further below 30. Since this is a preview, I haven't played a significant amount of the game, but with how high RAM usage can climb, I wouldn't be surprised if there are more crashes. I also tried to turn on FSR upscaling, and nothing changed with performance, even with the upscaling quality set to Performance mode.

I did also test using Lossless Scaling Frame Generation to see if it helps, but I still wouldn't recommend it. It does feel smoother in general gameplay, but the input lag for a game like this is felt. If you decide to use Lossless Scaling, I recommend keeping it at 2x, since 3x or 4x introduces too much input lag. There will still be crashes and 2 FPS cutscenes, any minor drops will be felt much harder, and areas where there are drops will have much more noticeable input lag, but it's still within a playable state.

Without the UMA buffer change, Lost Soul Aside should have that Unsupported rating. It consistently crashes in the same spot, and while the UMA buffer does fix that, it still has high usage, and crashes will still happen. Performance-wise, it fluctuates depending on the area, but seems to generally stick to 30-40 FPS, with some areas going down further. With this being an action-packed experience, it can make it feel a little jarring overall. If you can deal with crashes and slowdowns, with unwatchable cutscenes that stick to 2-4 FPS, then this could be playable on the Deck. However, I can't recommend it.

Lost Soul Aside is available on Steam for $59.99, but if you want to save some money, you can get it on GreenManGaming for $50.99 with coupon code AUG15.

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