Metaphor: ReFantazio feels right at home on Steam Deck
When Atlus' Project Re Fantasy was officially revealed as Metaphor: ReFantazio, I wondered where I'd end up playing it the most. As someone who has replayed Shin Megami Tensei V (with Vengeance) and Persona 5 across several different platforms and versions, I wondered if Atlus' new fantasy RPG would be something I spend the most time with at home on my console or on the go via Steam Deck. With Valve's handheld, I got to do both, and I've now put in over 120 hours into Metaphor: ReFantazio exclusively on both my Steam Decks. I've also played about 30 or so hours of the console versions, but I'm going to focus on how the current build of the game I have is on Steam Deck and what settings I recommend for the best possible experience.
Before going further, the PC review build of Metaphor: ReFantazio has gotten a few patches already with performance improving on Steam Deck with every patch. Valve has currently marked Metaphor: ReFantazio as Steam Deck Playable and not Verified. This is because Valve says some text is small and may be difficult to read while the game's graphics settings require manual tweaking to have it perform well on Steam Deck. After playing it, I agree with both of those caveats for the rating, and I'll get to them below.
Right off the bat, Metaphor: ReFantazio hasn't gotten the best PC port when it comes to optimization and graphics options. It feels like a step back from even Persona 5 Royal in ways, and the overall image could do with good anti-aliasing. There is a rendering scale option that defaulted to 125% for me. While that does help cleaning up the image on the Steam Deck's screen, I do not recommend playing above 100% rendering scale at least right now.
Just like the demo, there are different menus for the graphics and display settings in Metaphor: ReFantazio. You can adjust the graphics using presets (custom, low, intermediate, high) or change the settings individually. I recommend doing the latter on Steam Deck.
After seeing how every location in Metaphor: ReFantazio including optional dungeons look and run on Steam Deck, there are a few areas where performance tanked well below 30fps before patches. These were the opening desert area, the first main hub city, one mid to late game location, and the final dungeon. The final dungeon actually had the worst performance I had seen for Metaphor: ReFantazio on Steam Deck with it dropping below 20fps before the patch. As of the latest patch, that same location runs above 30fps almost throughout with it even hitting 45 and 50fps.
As for the earlier locations I mentioned with performance issues, they barely dipped below 30fps and I didn't see anything below 28fps when checking those locations on older save files and also in New Game Plus.
Had I written my Metaphor: ReFantazio Steam Deck performance review before the newest patch, there would have been a lot of caveats to this recommendation, but things have changed for the better now. My experience has improved quite a bit across the patches pre-release, and Metaphor is getting close to perfect on Steam Deck.
My Metaphor: ReFantazio Steam Deck recommended settings are rendering scale (100%), texture quality (normal), running in fullscreen mode, ambient occlusion (off), and limiting the frame rate to 30 fps. This will give you a more consistent experience, although you can do what I did and leave it uncapped so the game runs closer to the 40s and 50s in many locations while sticking to the low 30s in big open cities and villages.
Getting a locked 40 or 45fps at 90hz is not doable right now because even if you play at 720p and lower the rendering scale to 75% it drops below 40fps in places like the final dungeon. While I would love to have a 40fps or 45fps at 90hz option available for Metaphor: ReFantazio on Steam Deck, it isn't doable without dramatically lowering the image quality, and that is not worth it. Playing at native resolution and targeting 30fps is the most consistent experience on Steam Deck.
If you, like me, also enjoy using your Steam Deck plugged into your TV or monitor, there are a few more things to keep in mind. There's almost always a performance impact to running a game via HDMI out or DisplayPort. My recommendation for playing docked is running the game at 1080p with the rendering scale set to 75%. This ensures the UI is crisper than at 720p, but the game still runs lower. You can also try playing at 1440p with a 50% rendering scale, but this really pushes the system too much with the current version of Metaphor: ReFantazio. You will start to see regular dips below 30fps in places where it usually ran in the mid 30s.
As for display settings, Metaphor: ReFantazio only runs at 16:9 regardless of the resolution you set in-game. I played with it at fullscreen and 800p. For v-sync, leave it off if you cap the frame rate using the Quick Access Menu on Steam Deck to limit the frame rate or turn it on if you are using the in-game frame rate limiter at 30fps.
While not necessary, Metaphor: ReFantazio also lets you choose the button prompts displayed or have it auto detect based on your controller. Since I was using my new PS5 controller to play docked, I forced Metaphor: ReFantazio to display PS5 button prompts (Type 2) while playing handheld as well. The dash option is also good to have since I dislike holding a button to run in RPGs and prefer having it as a toggle. As of this writing, the toggle dash option is seemingly only available in the PC version. One more thing I love about playing it on Steam Deck is being able to tap the touchscreen to progress dialogue like I do in most visual novels or adventure games.
With the options available on PC and the recommended settings out of the way, I want to also note that I did run into an issue where I couldn't launch the game offline before going online and having it check (probably for DRM reasons). I tethered my Steam Deck to my phone over hotspot to fix this the first time, and then just started leaving the game in sleep mode before heading out. This isn't unexpected given the many recent SEGA-published titles that had similar issues, but I wanted to note this since I ran into it twice across the many hours I put into Metaphor: ReFantazio on both my Steam Decks.
Visually, Metaphor: ReFantazio is quite different to what we are all used to from Atlus, especially from Studio Zero's staff. It is closer to Catherine than Persona, but it really feels like unlike anything Atlus has released so far in its structure despite borrowing some structure from the newer Persona games.
Looking back, I can see myself wanting to replay Metaphor: ReFantazio a lot more than Persona 5 given the combat and structure of the game's flow here. The locations are varied throughout the 100+ hours I put into a single save, and I also love the many optional dungeons including two I didn't fully complete yet. I'm working to do that in my New Game Plus save.
Based on what I played of the demo as well, the original demo release was very close to the first build of Metaphor: ReFantazio I had on Steam. It struggled right out of the gate to hit 30fps, and was worrying. Fast forward to today, Metaphor: ReFantazio looks and runs very well on Steam Deck all things considered.
With stylish menus, great character designs, and fantastic music, my only real issue with the technical side of Metaphor: ReFantazio is the lack of any sort of anti-aliasing. Running at a higher rendering scale is a poor solution given how heavy the game is on current hardware including consoles. I hope we see even basic anti-aliasing added as an option in updates.
While this isn't the first Atlus game to get a day one release on PC with the console versions, it feels like the most significant one given it is from Studio Zero. I loved my time with Metaphor: ReFantazio, and I'm glad that it has improved considerably in its optimization since I started playing, making it an easy recommendation for Steam Deck owners looking to dig into a gigantic RPG on the go. Hopefully we see more optimization and features added to the PC port to remove the few caveats I have.
Metaphor: ReFantazio is well worth playing on Steam Deck, and I look forward to continuing my New Game Plus save over the coming weeks. I know a lot of folks own a Steam Deck in addition to a console, and if you were hoping to have a good portable experience from day one with Metaphor: ReFantazio, grab it on PC to play on Steam Deck.
Make sure to read our lengthy review of the full game as well here.