NetEase's New Action RPG 'Where Winds Meet' is Tantalizingly Close to Playable on Steam Deck

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We covered NetEase's new Action RPG, Where Winds Meet, a few days ago while it was in a closed test, so you can check out our coverage of the gameplay there. But now that the game is fully released, we can finally try out the Steam version of the game, which means it's time to test how the game performs on the Steam Deck.

Where Winds Meet - Steam Deck Performance

Getting Where Winds Meet to work on the Steam Deck does require some fiddling. First, you'll need to go to Desktop Mode after the game is downloaded, and boot the game there. There will be a couple of window pop-ups asking you to accept cookies and the terms of service. They might appear black at first, but some tapping (ideally on the right side of the windows so you don't accidentally refuse) should get them to appear. Once the game has loaded to the main menu, you can exit and go back to Game Mode.

In Game Mode, make sure that "Steam Input" is disabled under the "Controller" tab of the game's Steam options; otherwise, the game will not detect the Steam Deck's controller.

With that out of the way, you can finally play the game!

Unfortunately, Where Winds Meet does not give us access to the game settings until after we've played the prologue, which is rather baffling. This means we cannot adjust our graphical settings and have to make do with less than ideal performance. Fortunately, the prologue is just some QTEs and an easy combat tutorial (Which you can lose and still progress, don't ask me how I know that). It at least gets you used to the controls, which work well on the Steam Deck.

Once we are in the game proper, we can adjust some settings. I've screenshotted the settings I used below, but essentially, you'll want to run on the lowest settings, with FSR upscaling set to 60%. With these settings, we're generally CPU-bound, rather than GPU-bound.

Sadly, even with the lower settings, we do struggle with performance. Out in rural areas, the game does by and large stick to 30 FPS, but once we get into any sort of area with a decent amount of NPCs, expect the performance to drop to unpleasant levels, around 20-25.

Power draw is also high, around 15W-21W, meaning you can expect about 2.5 hours of battery life on a Steam Deck OLED, and about 1.5 hours on a Steam Deck LCD.

Ultimately, I wouldn't call Where Winds Meet playable on the Steam Deck, but it's ever so close. A couple of optimizations here and there, and I'd be up for recommending this as a game to play on the Deck.

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