The best Steam Deck settings for Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut
17.5.2024
Translation: Jessica Johnson-Ferguson
Almost four years after its release, Ghost of Tsushima is finally available for PC. I checked out the game’s performance on a Steam Deck and was pleasantly surprised.
Want to play Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut on your Steam Deck? Then I’ve got great news for you! The game runs outstandingly well on the handheld. Surprising, given that it’s not supported according to Steam.
The golden mean
The reason why the Steam Deck doesn’t support Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut is its multiplayer mode. It requires Windows in order to gain access to PlayStation Network features. However, the single-player mode including its Iki Island expansion can be played without any problems. According to Sony, the performance of handhelds has been taken into account. But there’s no Steam Deck setting, so you have to figure out how it runs best yourself.
So let’s not beat around the bush. Here’s what you need: with the graphics preset to «Medium», the native resolution of 1280 × 800 and AMD FSR 3.0 on the «Quality» setting, you’re off to a good start. This will usually give you around 40 frames per second (FPS).
Source: Kevin Hofer
Make sure to deactivate the upscale technology FSR in the Steam Deck settings. In the game itself, you activate FSR in the main or pause menu under «Display». AMD FSR 3.0 should already be selected by default under «Upscale method». If not, change it. The «Upscale quality» option below is greyed out. To be able to change it, you need to set the slider under «Dynamic resolution scaling» to «Off».
With a few adjustments, you can even achieve a stable 40 to 50 frames per second. Starting with the default setting «Medium», this is what I changed:
- Texture quality: high
- Texture filtering: 4× anisotropic
- Shadow quality: low
- Volumetric fog: low
- Depth of field: very low
- Ambient occlusion: SSAO performance
Finally, ensure HDR is activated under «Display». Otherwise, the game is simply too dark and unplayable. With the OLED model, you can play for around two to two and a half hours on battery power. On the LCD model, it’s around one hour less.
This is what the performance looks like with other presets
To give you an idea of the performance, I played the opening sequence of Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut several times and measured the FPS. I activated FSR 3.0 with the «Quality» setting in each case. See for yourself how the Steam Deck performed in the following table:
As a general rule, I’d always leave FSR 3.0 activated. It helps keep the frame rate stable. I got the best results with the «Quality» setting. «Balanced» only adds a few FPS. With «Performance» and «Ultimate performance», the quality takes too much of a blow, in my opinion. Here’s a comparison picture.
If you take these settings into account, playing Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut on Steam Deck is a lot of fun. Admittedly, it’s no comparison to a high-end PC on the highest settings and with a higher resolution. But it still looks great on the small screen despite the low resolution. The fact that a game like Ghost of Tsushima runs so well on the Steam Deck speaks for the port, which is very well done – apart from the darkness without HDR.
Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut has been out for PC since 16 May 2024. The game was provided to me for testing purposes.
Header image: Kevin Hofer
Kevin Hofer
Senior Editor
kevin.hofer@digitecgalaxus.chFrom big data to big brother, Cyborgs to Sci-Fi. All aspects of technology and society fascinate me.
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