Path of Exile 2 Highlights Another Issue With The Steam Deck Verified System

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Ever since its release, I have been playing Path of Exile 2 religiously. I love the game and all of the improvements the team has made. It’s become one of my most-played games recently, but there is one constant that has remained true: Path of Exile 2 is not Steam Deck friendly. There are pockets, especially in the beginning, where the game runs at the developer's target of 40 FPS. But it gets much harder to play, and I would not say the game should be rated Steam Deck Verified or Playable at this time. So, it was a bit of a surprise to see that the game had officially gotten the Playable badge from Valve, and it is another reason why the Verified system is not great.

On the Steam store page, the game is listed as Playable, with the only issue being small in-game text. While I do agree that some text is a little too small, I can't agree that the default graphics configuration performs well on the Steam Deck. In Act 1, there are not nearly as many enemies, and most of the larger areas are able to even hit 60 FPS, but there were already warning signs of what could come. Towns would drop when you go into them immediately, most likely due to asset loading and there being tons of people there, but there are also larger areas that still drop.

In Act 1, my testing ground was in Freythorn. It was semi-open, and I couldn't move around a lot due to all of it taking place in the trees, but there would be tons of enemies all in smaller spaces. This would cause the framerate to drop down to the mid 20s, and I was using lower settings than the recommended with FSR upscaling instead of NIS. There isn't a huge performance difference from NIS to FSR, but FSR makes the game look significantly better.

However, the real test is Act 2 and 3, as well as the endgame. People can only stay in Act 1 for so long, and the game gets harder to run as the story progresses. Some areas get larger with a higher volume of enemies, bosses tend to have many more particle effects floating around the screen, and I almost always saw framerate drops below 30.

One of the more prominent locations this happened was the Trial of Chaos. You can undertake different trials to ascend your character and become even more powerful, but they are very challenging. Both trials have many enemies in smaller spaces, but the Trial of Chaos stood out to me, and I can't recommend playing it on the Steam Deck. The part I wanted to test was Round 2, which has a corruption ritual. You could have almost 60-70 enemies coming at you if you can't kill them fast enough. Unfortunately, I couldn't get to Round 2 because Round 1 had dropped my performance into the mid-10s range.

Part of the framerate drop may be influenced by my character class. I chose a Sorceress, and there are a lot of different spells and effects that I can drop (which makes it very good for stress testing). But in Round 1, I didn't get to shoot any spells, and my framerate dropped almost immediately. These types of trials are a huge part of how you improve your character, and I would consider them essential. It also becomes exceptionally blurry, which gets worse if you have dynamic resolution on.

Even without that, it does highlight a bigger problem with performance. The endgame of Path of Exile 2 is filled with rituals and huge groups of enemies, yet I would consider it significantly more important than the actual campaign. While I haven't reached endgame yet to test, there's no way I could see it performing better than Act 2, 3, and the trials.

So, why would this game get a Playable rating when the lowest settings, which do need some changes, is rated Playable? Well, I am not sure. It does work really well with a controller, and shows the correct icons, but I wouldn't say this is playable on the Steam Deck past most of Act 1. The Steam Deck compatibility listing doesn't even mention that the game needs a network connection to play alone, and while it is fairly obvious for anyone who knows about the game, it's still important to mention.

Path of Exile 2 really is an amazing game, and if you have a more powerful desktop, I highly recommend it. I can't stop playing it myself. But I can't in good conscious recommend playing it on the Steam Deck due to the issues and framerate drops experienced later, and I don't think Valve should be recommending it either. I do hope there is more optimization that comes, and I can see performance being slightly better depending on the class you choose, but it is still going to be an issue regardless.

Path of Exile 2 is in early access and can be purchased for $29.99. It will be free to play when it fully releases.

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