Subnautica 2 Runs Decently On The Steam Deck...With Some Compromises

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After a long wait and it becoming one of the most wishlisted games on Steam, Subnautica 2 has finally been released into early access. I’ve been extremely excited for the game, especially since I love the original. I’ve been ready to dive back into the alien oceans for months now, and I’ve been quite excited to do so on the Steam Deck.

Ahead of its release, we saw a dev vlog that showed the Steam Deck in the video, which fueled speculation that it could run well on the Steam Deck. On top of that, I had a chance to talk to the developers ahead of release, and they talked about how they have a specific preset for the Deck and that they are aiming for a solid 30 FPS. They also mentioned there will be progressive optimization throughout development to make it more playable, so we can expect it to get better throughout development.

But since the game is released, I wanted to check it out for myself and see if it is a good experience on the Steam Deck right now. So, I purchased the game and downloaded it so I can dive right in and see how it’s going so far on the go.

And while I am glad that it is playable, there are a good chunk of sacrifices that make it a little more difficult to enjoy in its current state.

Subnautica 2 defaults to the absolute lowest settings right now, with all graphical quality settings at low, and TSR upscaling set to ultra performance. For what it’s worth, the actual models and lighting don’t look too bad. There are still some beautiful sites in the ocean, and it was still very clear for me to figure out where I am and what was going on. And it’s stuck to 30 FPS the whole time, with maybe some minor drops when swimming out too far. I could see the framer dropping a little bit more if you’re swimming very fast.

However, it is significantly blurrier than I expected. Because of the upscaling, almost all of the shadows sparkle and look low resolution, and I can see hints of it in the ocean when swimming. It gets much worse at night, but even during the day, I can see hints of it. It shimmers enough to distract me, and while I won’t say it ruined the experience, it was definitely jarring.

Despite all of this, I do remain optimistic. The game was able to still stick to 30 FPS when I brought TSR upscaling up to quality, and it could maintain it decently if I changed the quality preset to medium while keeping TSR at ultra performance. I don’t feel confident that I could stick to the framerate just yet, and it does strain as much battery as possible during gameplay. But it does show that there may be some flexibility to make the game look better, especially as optimizations come in down the line. For right now, since the game just released in early access, I would say this is a cautious one to get on the Deck, but it should still be playable.

Subnautica 2 is $29.99 on Steam and is rated Verified.

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