Will Remnant 2 Run on the ROG Ally? - First Impressions

Remnant 2 was provided to us by Gearbox Publishing. Thank you!

Remnant 2 has been playable out in the wild for a couple of days now and I have been having a blast. The game is phenomenal and improves over the prequel in almost every way. I am really enjoying it and playing this on-the-go has been on my wishlist, but so far, I have been running into some trouble.

Testing on the Steam Deck, holding anything over 30 FPS was near impossible on the lowest settings. The only way I could get to that was by reducing resolution and there were still some drops and battery drain spikes. It was still playable and enjoyable, which is fantastic, but the game looks way more blurry than I would recommend to others. With that testing done, I wanted to take a moment and try the game on a more powerful handheld that may be able to play it without as many compromises, and that's where the ROG Ally comes in.

So, how will it run on the ROG Ally? Well let me tell you a little bit about it:

Remnant 2 on ROG Ally - The Big Issues

As of right now, I would not recommend getting Remnant 2 if you are playing primarily on the ROG Ally for two reasons specifically. First, there is no cursor for any menu. This means that whenever you go to select something in the main menu, settings, or any shop menu, you will not see where your cursor is to select an option. Luckily, you can use your finger, but I find this to be obnoxious as I want to just use my controller.

Second, and much more importantly, the game crashes a lot. At first, the game only crashed when I used Armoury Crate's overlay to change resolution and refresh rate while in-game, but then I noticed more crashes outside. In total of 3 hours of play, I had 8 crashes. 4 from Armoury Crate's overlay, 2 from playing the game in 1080p, and 2 just regularly playing the game at 720p on the lowest possible settings. With so many crashes, it is hard to recommend at this stage as you will need to relaunch the game a lot.

Those are the reasons why I would stay away, but if you already own the game or decide to play it on the ROG Ally anyways, performance will be a bit of a hit or miss.

Performance and Settings

When it comes to performance, the game runs around the same as the Steam Deck, but on a higher resolution. I decided to push AMD FSR to Ultra Performance, while keeping all settings on Low, I was able to hit 40 FPS in 70% of the areas I was in. Unfortunately, the spots where it did dip were quite important. I saw the most dips in certain corridors, combat scenarios, and worst of them, the bosses. Bosses need a stable rate to really have a chance against them, especially in souls-like games, so capping to 30 was something I felt necessary.

This doesn't get rid of all the drops though. Some areas still dropped below 30 and there are still crashes, like one I had as I was writing the article where I just teleported back to Ward 13 and immediately crashed, but this is playable when it's working. It does mean you will have a very blurry screen and that's a bummer, but unlike the Steam Deck (which needs a significantly lower resolution), you are able to read the text well.

Should You Buy Remnant 2 on the ROG Ally?

As of right now, my answer is a firm no. While the quality will look a bit better than the Steam Deck, there are significantly more crashes and much harder navigation in the menus due to an invisible cursor. I am a bit disappointed with performance as I was expecting a bit more from the increased power, but this didn't matter as much.

This is not a knock against the game itself though, Remnant 2 is a fantastic game that I am thoroughly enjoying. If you have another PC to play on that is more powerful, I would consider picking this up. I do hear about performance issues across all PCs, not just these two devices, so I believe it isn't the Deck or Ally's limited specs completely at fault here. I am still having a good time with it, even at 30 FPS with a blurry screen, but I wouldn't consider it the ideal way to play.

In the end, to each their own, but if you can wait for a patch or update from the team to see if performance will improve, I would. The game is fantastic, so I am really hoping performance will be improved upon in future updates.

Remnant 2 releases tomorrow on Steam and can be purchased for $50. The Ultimate Edition, which is $70, has early access and you can play now with that edition.

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