STEAM DECK NEWS – With the default settings, Atlus’ (=SEGA’s) RPG is essentially unplayable in some places. This can be remedied!

Playing Persona 3 Reload on a handheld PC sounds handy, as it can offer a nice, relaxed experience. The problem is that if you don’t touch the settings, some scenes will turn into a slideshow. So pay attention to the areas where the frame rate is off. If you see reflective surfaces, you will have problems. The graphics settings on the PC port are quite minimalistic (typical console port, and of course with Denuvo…), you can turn off the glare. So go to the System menu, go to Config, Graphics Settings, set Reflections to Off, and it’s not a bad idea to set the framerate to 60 as well.

Taking the glass around the entrance to Wilduck Burger in the Iwatoda shopping mall as a good example, the difference is dramatic when you test here. With the reflections off, you get 60 FPS almost all the way through, less in some places, and the frame rate is a little off, but it runs pretty well. With reflections on? FPS in the teens, or ten at worst… but that could be due to the use of raytracing, and even with reflections off, they might show up in other ways here and there (like on the floor leading to the entrance to Tartarus). Or even in your dorm room: 50+ FPS with reflections on and unstable, and buttery smooth with them off…

But even with the reflections off, there are still some scenes with low frame rates. The fragile objects in Tartarus, for example, can slow performance, but you can also encounter this in some of the other rooms there. Basically, you can only adjust the quality of the shadows and the scaling of the rendering, and it’s subjective to whom it bothers you if the performance stutters in places even with the reflections turned off.

Hopefully this will all be fixed in the future, but one thing is for sure, in the current form of the Steam Deck (OLED display or not), ray traced reflections will degrade performance regardless of the game…

Source: GameSpot