As Final Fantasy VII Rebirth releases on PC, the opportunity to play one of 2024’s most celebrated games is open to a wider audience. Quest Daily’s Shaun Fullard gave the middle chapter of this epic saga a 9.5/10 in his review and it ranked third on QD’s 2024 Game of the Year list.
This release also means that we can get this former PS5 exclusive running natively on Valve’s capable handheld PC, the Steam Deck. I’ve spent the past week bench-marking the game to best determine whether you can continue the adventure of Cloud and co. during your daily commute.
Rocky Rebirth
Playing a pre-release build of a game can be a tricky experience sometimes. You don’t always know if a problem you’re experiencing might be something the public will face when release day hits. But I did hit a major issue with my testing that is worth flagging.
READ MORE: Review | Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (PlayStation 5)
Much of my time trying to play Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was plagued battling constant crashes to the home screen. While it ran smoothly for the first half hour or so, the game began to crash to every 5-10 minutes. Trying to brute force through the crashes became worse, eventually failing roughly thirty seconds after I’d load a save.
I went through my usual troubleshooting tricks. Trying to run it through different Proton compatibility layers. Re-installing the game (twice!). Starting a new save. Even factory resetting my Steam Deck in an effort to resolve the issues. Nonetheless, the crashes persisted.
What I did find interesting is I could run the game successfully from the Steam Deck’s desktop mode. After roughly five hours of playing the game in this setup, I returned to gaming mode with much greater success. This only leaves me even more confused about what was causing the issue.
The Steam Deck can be a fickle device, so it’s hard to say whether these were isolated issues. Even still, I was surprised that a game with a Steam Deck Verified badge caused this much trouble. Hopefully, this isn’t a widespread issue, but if you are facing problems, desktop mode may cure what ails you.
With all that said, I’ve since put a number of hours in to the game. You can read below about how I maximised my Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Steam Deck experience.
Default Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Settings
Screen Resolution: 1280×720
Framerate: 60 fps
Graphics Quality: Medium
Dynamic Resolution Scaling (Maximum): 100%
Dynamic Resolution Scaling (Minimum): 50%
Background Model Detail: High
Ocean Detail: High
Character Model Detail: High
Effect Details: High
Texture Resolution: Medium
Shadow Quality: High
Fog Quality: High
Low-Resolution Font: Enabled
As mentioned earlier, I installed this game three times during my troubleshooting. The reason I bring this up is that the first time I installed it, the game defaulted all of its settings to low across the board and I had left it this way during my initial play-through. Upon the two re-installs, the settings defaulted to the settings above.
Given these were the settings following a factory reset, I reckon this is the intended default experience. I find this interesting as it simply seems too high for the capabilities of the Steam Deck.
Firstly, it’s worth pointing out that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth does not render at the Steam Deck’s native 16:10 resolution, much like its predecessor. With these 720p settings, you’ll be playing with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. This is never a big issue for me personally, particularly with the Steam Deck OLED, but if this is bothersome for you, it’s worth noting.
READ MORE: Review | Final Fantasy XVI: Echoes of the Fallen (PlayStation 5)
With the frame rate set to 60 fps and the graphics quality pushed to its limits (the Graphics Quality option maxes out at Medium on the Steam Deck), the game ends up trying to pull off more than it can deliver. It rarely approaches that 60 fps target during gameplay and the dynamic resolution regularly forces the image into a blurrier mess.
The high level of detail doesn’t feel well suited to a smaller portable screen. If I wanted the greatest graphical showcase for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, I’d choose to play it on my PlayStation 5 or PC.
On any graphical setting, the game suffers from frequent pop-in of objects in the environment. The increased detail makes this distraction more pronounced. The performance hits needed to run the game with more detailed graphics feel like a situation where the drawbacks outweigh the positives.
I also found that the game was prone to jittery frame pacing issues, particularly in big open environments. These seemed present in just about every setting configuration I tried, so if you’re sensitive to that, it’s worth being aware of.
READ MORE: Review | Corsair K70 CORE TKL Keyboard
The battery life isn’t impacted too heavily from these ambitious settings, possibly resulting from the dynamic resolution downscaling and the game rarely trying to hit its 60 fps target. I found that it generally hovered around the 2.5 hour range.
Finding the right settings to run a game on Steam Deck often comes down to personal preference, but I feel like these default settings aren’t well suited to anybody. For my Steam Deck gaming, I generally prioritise stable performance at the expense of image quality. Therefore, I’ve included my ideal settings for how I’ve spent most of my time in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
My Ideal Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Settings
Screen Resolution: 1280×720
Framerate: 30 fps
Graphics Quality: Low
Dynamic Resolution Scaling (Maximum): 100%
Dynamic Resolution Scaling (Minimum): 50%
Background Model Detail: Low
Ocean Detail: Low
Character Model Detail: High
Effect Details: High
Texture Resolution: Low
Shadow Quality: Low
Fog Quality: Low
Low-Resolution Font: Enabled
Perhaps the biggest compromise here is forcing the game to limit itself to 30 frames per second. Generally, I’d love to aim for a high frame rate above all else. But I just wasn’t satisfied with the dips in frame rate you’d get even with these settings as low as they are.
I’m rarely this person, but I found myself getting used to 30 fps quite easily in this game. It may just be me marveling at how they got this huge-budget AAA game to run on a handheld that left me happy to take a more compromised experience.
Aside from the frame pacing issues mentioned above, I found Final Fantasy VII Rebirth to be a satisfying and stable experience with a 30 fps limit and you can expect a three hour battery life with these settings.
I left the character model detail at high because you spend so much time looking at these characters, and did the same with the effect details since the particles flying off during battles look so gosh-darn cool.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth makes for a terrific portable experience with its massive world and endless mini-games and if you want to boost your battery life and have a more consistent visual experience, I think these settings will serve you well.
In the end, these all boil down to quirky preferences and personal choices and what you may like is bound to be different to me. So, overall, how does Final Fantasy VII Rebirth play on a Steam Deck?
Final (Fantasy) Thoughts
I can safely say the developers did impressive work to get this massive game running smoothly on Valve’s handheld PC. When this port was announced, I thought there was no chance this game could make for a good Steam Deck experience, but my time with the game has continually satisfied me.
I haven’t had an ideal time playing this game for the purposes of the article. Hopefully the crashes I’ve encountered are an isolated incident or an update will resolve the problems I’ve faced.
Those issues aside, if you’re looking to continue this ongoing adventure on a device you can carry in your backpack, this port of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth looks to deliver the goods. As Square releases the game to the wider public and presumably patches it with improvements, I’ll update this article with my ongoing observations.
Are you looking forward to the PC release of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth? Will you be primarily playing on your Steam Deck? And most importantly, do you think you have the solution to my crashing problems? Reach out to the Quest Daily crew on social media with your thoughts!
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth releases January 24 on Steam and the Epic Games Store.
Quest Daily was provided early access to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for the purpose of this article.
