VARLET Is A Persona-Esque Game That Should Be Solid On Steam Deck

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VARLET was provided by FURYU for review. Thank you!

VARLET is an interesting game. It reminds me a lot of Persona in some ways, with its second world between real life and VR, how we activate our own powers by awakening the revolution from within, and some of the social aspects of High School life. While it does have some pitfalls so far, especially in its story format and some awkward combat, it's enjoyable so far.

We are in the process of reviewing the game, and need a little more time before our review is posted, but I wanted to take a moment to talk about performance on the Steam Deck and whether it's a solid experience on the go.

For the most part, it is playable, but it does drain on battery more than I expected. It's locked at 60 FPS, and defaults to Medium settings with SSAO on. In the glitch world, there seems to be no problem hitting 60 FPS at these settings. Running around in the first world ranged from 12W - 15W, while being around the actual high school usually sticks to 18W drain or higher when running around the school, with some scenes actually dropping the framerate.

The game is definitely a little GPU heavy, but there is a bunch of wiggle room. I haven't done my in-depth testing with settings just yet, but I have a good feeling of where the most demanding areas of the game are to test later. There's still a little to play around with though, and I am looking forward to seeing how the rest of the game holds up.

I would consider VARLET generally quite playable overall. It drains a little more than I would like, and I will be working hard to optimize the game for our review, but it's solid for initial performance. Just bringing down the framerate to a 45 FPS lock will solve most of the problems I encountered here, but I very much wanted to try pushing to 60 FPS. It feels great using the controller and fits like a charm on the Steam Deck, so even in its current state, I would consider it a great game to play on the go.

VARLET is on sale for $53.99 until September 10th. Look out for our full review coming soon!

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