Visions Of Mana: A Missed Opportunity for Steam Deck

• Visions of Mana runs adequately on Steam Deck.
• Text doesn't scale well but remains readable.
• Adjust settings: AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 to Quality.
• Set Graphics settings to High for best performance.
• Docked mode not recommended due to poor performance.

Visions of Mana on Steam Deck: A Mixed Experience

On paper, Visions of Mana seems tailor-made for on-the-go play.

The combat doesn't require complex button mashing.

The clearly marked story objectives help orient you even on a small screen.

The many side quests are perfect for pick-up-and-play sessions.

The remakes of the first three Mana games are all on mobile devices, so the series has a history of portable-friendly play.

Everything's in place.

So how does Visions of Mana fare on the Steam Deck?

Performance on Steam Deck

In short, Visions of Mana runs adequately on Steam Deck.

It looks good enough after you fiddle with the settings and can hover above 30 frames per second.

However, the text doesn't scale well and looks kind of ugly, albeit readable.

Still, it's a passable experience, and I personally enjoyed killing time doing side quests on the Deck.

I wouldn't recommend making it your primary platform for playing the game, especially if you have access to any other system that can run it.

Optimizing Your Experience

To really enjoy Visions of Mana on Steam Deck, check out these tips below:

• Before you hit the Play button, press the cog icon on the right side of the screen.
• Select Properties and then Compatibility.
• Check the box that says Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool and then select GEProton7-53.
• If the compatibility modes don't work, you may need to reinstall the game.
• Select the cog icon again, choose Manage, and select Uninstall.
• Try running the game using the compatibility tools again.

Best Steam Deck Settings for Handheld Mode

Now that you've got Visions of Mana running on your system, you'll notice limited graphical settings in the options menu.

Your resolution is unfortunately locked to 1280x720, which doesn't quite fit the 1280x800 resolution of your screen.

This means you'll have to deal with black bars as you play.

Only two options here really impact the game's performance:

• Set AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 to Quality.
• Set Graphics settings to High.

Some areas in Visions of Mana can cause dips to the frame rate, so you may prefer to adjust that first option from Quality down to Balanced to gain some extra frames.

These settings should still preserve the game's visual splendor on the Steam Deck's small screen.

You could consider limiting the Frame Rate to 30 in the interest of saving battery life, but I'd personally recommend a shorter and smoother play session unless you don't intend to actually fight anything.

Best Steam Deck Settings for Docked Mode

I'll be real with you: I don't recommend playing Visions of Mana with the Steam Deck docked and connected to a TV.

At 1080p, Visions of Mana seriously chugs on the Steam Deck.

Frames drop so dramatically that the 20 FPS of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the N64 will seem smooth by comparison.

This can be fixed by setting the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2 to Performance and the Graphics settings to Low, but this leaves the game looking horrid.

You're better off sticking to the 1280x720 resolution option and reusing the handheld mode graphical settings.

However, when this image is blown up on a big TV, Visions of Mana winds up looking predictably blurry.

It works, but you're probably better off just trying to stream the game from a dedicated PC if you have one.

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