Is Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 Steam Deck compatible? Yes, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is certified as playable on Steam Deck, meaning the hardware is capable of running it, but there are a few issues that hold it back from full Verified status. The game does work well with the Steam Deck controls, though, and the deck’s CPU and GPU are surprisingly capable of running this titan of an RPG at a playable frame rate for the most part, although the frame rate can drop significantly in the later stages of the game.
We recently gave this game a score of 9/10 in our Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 review, thanks to its superb storyline and voice acting, and it also gives you a big open world to explore. Amazingly, despite its detailed graphics, you can also play Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 relatively smoothly on the Steam Deck, meaning you can still get lost in this massive game world when you’re on the move.
Is Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 Steam Deck compatible?
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has playable status on Steam Deck, meaning the quad-core AMD Zen 2 CPU and integrated Radeon GPU can handle the game at a reasonable frame rate, but the interface isn’t completely optimized yet. Some of the text is too small to read without squinting at the small screen, for example, and you also occasionally see the mouse cursor appearing on the screen in menus.
In our time spent playing the game on the deck, though, we found it worked surprisingly well on the Steam Deck. You’ll need to run it at the lowest graphics settings and enlist some help from AMD FSR, but the game works reasonably well.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 recommended Steam Deck settings
You’re not going to be able to run the game at High or even Medium settings on the Steam Deck, but it works reasonably well at Low settings, where it still looks good on the handheld’s small screen. You’ll also need to enable FSR to get the best frame rate, but avoid the Performance section, as it blurs detail to the point where it can make text in books unreadable – the game even gives you a warning to this effect if you try to enable this setting.
These are the recommended Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 Steam Deck settings:
Graphics settings
- Window mode: Fullscreen
- Overall image quality: Low
- Show FPS: Off
- Vsync: On
- Frame rate limit: 60fps
- Horizontal FOV: 95
Resolution scaling
- Technology: FSR
- Mode: Balanced
Advanced Graphics Settings
- Object quality: Low
- Particles: Low
- Lighting: Low
- Global Illumination: Low
- Postprocess quality: Low
- Shader quality: Low
- Shadows: Low
- Textures: Low
How well Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 runs on the Steam Deck largely depends on your progress in the game. At the start, we found the deck’s frame rate could hit 57fps with the above settings in the early stages of the game, dropping down to around 45fps in busier scenes.
However, once you get to later stages in the game, such as the Kuttenberg map, the game gets harder to run. In the Kuttenberg tournament section, for example, where there are a lot of characters on screen, the frame rate was dropping as low as 28fps, while normally sitting at around 41fps.
We’d normally regard these frame rates as too low on a gaming PC with the best graphics card, but they’re an acceptable compromise on a handheld that runs the game above 45fps for the most part. Unlike a first-person shooter, it’s also not crucial to be running this game above 60fps, as the action isn’t as fast, but you do still feel it when the frame rate drops below 30fps.
You can think of this as a bit like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, a massive open-world game that runs at 30fps on the Switch. You can feel the frame rate slowing down in this game too, but it’s still basically playable, and it’s a fair sacrifice for the privilege of being able to play such a complex game on a handheld. It’s not perfect, but it’s not an unplayable slideshow either.
We also recommend installing this game on an NVMe SSD, rather than a microSD card. We had it installed on a 2TB TeamGroup MP44S, which we regard as the best gaming SSD for the Steam Deck, and even then it took over a minute and a half to load some of our save games – it will be much worse on a slower microSD card.
If you’re planning a romp through 15th-century Bohemia, make sure you also check out our guide to Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 quests, for a list of all the main and side quests in the game, as well as our guide to the best Best Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 swords, so you have the best weaponry at your disposal. You can also read our Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 best settings guide if you want to run this game on your desktop gaming PC.
