Monster Hunter Wilds is officially out for PCs and consoles, bringing with it rather hefty system requirements. In addition to being quite demanding, the game is also very unoptimized, making running it on low end hardware quite the challenge.
As such, those with handheld gaming PCs will most definitely struggle while playing the game. In particular, the Steam Deck is going to be extremely handicapped with its low power RDNA 2 APU.
Monster Hunter Wilds runs on the Steam Deck, but you probably should not play on it
Wilds is a buggy, unoptimized mess and suffers from all sorts of issues – ranging from random crashes to graphical glitches, all while maintaining a very unplayable frame rate, at least without frame generation enabled.
As such, it runs quite horribly on the Steam Deck. The game is almost unplayable, dipping well below 30 FPS – even with the Lowest of Low settings and frame generation enabled. Playing the game on the Steam Deck is most definitely not recommended, and players might want to divert their attention toward alternatives handhelds such as the ROG Ally and Legion Go, which do a far better job at running the game (although not by much, if we do not consider frame generation).
If you still want to play the game regardless, consider unlocking your Deck’s TDP, and setting an in-game frame rate cap to 30 FPS. Try using alternative Proton versions such as Proton Hotfix and Proton GE in order to alleviate these issues.
Mods to the rescue
Modders have already rushed to make Wilds a more playable experience – which is something that Capcom should have done from the get-go. A host of performance enhancing mods can be found on the game’s Nexus Mods page, of which the following are recommended:
- Steam Deck preset (ultra low quality)
- DirectStorage upgrade (stutter fix)
- REFramework (miscellaneous other tools)
Keep in mind that you will require a Nexus Mods account (free to register) in order to be able to download these mods.
