The action-RPG Monster Hunter Wilds is about to be released. It seems that the game's optimization is not going well: even stationary consoles can't handle it. Unstable FPS, low-quality textures, etc. But owners of the Steam Deck portable console are even more unlucky. Even on the minimum settings with FSR, it's impossible to get 30 FPS. In fact, the game starts and you can try different settings, but you won't be able to play it comfortably. PCGamer has published a fairly detailed article on this topic. The author installed the current version of Monster Hunter Wilds and downloaded his saved game from the cloud. It takes the player to the bustling base camp of the starting zone. Even without the complex calculations required to battle large monsters, Steam Deck was struggling. The lowest settings were set: AMD FSR (version 3.1.3) in the highest performance mode. Every graphical setting is set to "low" or "lowest," and some components are turned off completely: grass and leaf vibrations, contact shadows, ambient occlusion, and water effects.
However, even with these settings, the frame rate in the base camp did not reach a comfortable level. When trying to leave the camp, the game crashed twice, unable to cope with the usually smooth transition to the hunting area. To improve performance, Bloom was additionally disabled, the sky/cloud quality was set to minimum, the 30 FPS limit was activated, half-shading was enabled to reduce the load on the GPU, and the GPU was overclocked to a maximum of 1600 MHz. After such manipulations, Monster Hunter Wilds showed an average of 25 FPS if you are in a relatively unloaded part of the plains with no monsters nearby and with a terribly blurry image. When the camera is rotated, the value drops to 21 FPS. Only once did we manage to see how the frame rate reached the cherished 30 FPS mark. It mainly fluctuates around 20-25 frames per second, while the graphics turn into shapeless pixelated spots.
On a standard ASUS ROG Ally in 25W mode, it is possible to achieve a stable 30 FPS with a combination of low and medium settings, FSR 3 Performance and frame generation. According to the tester, the game "works, but you can't enjoy it." So for now, the only possible way to play Wilds on a portable console is to stream.