Dragon’s Dogma 2 launches tomorrow, but stay excited handheld gamers, because your new pride and joy won’t be the perfect travel companion for this adventure.
This is because your handheld may not be able to run the game well in the first place.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 – Action Trailer
According to RPGsite, aside from streaming Dragon’s Dogma 2 from another PC or console, you won’t be able to play it on handheld devices like the Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, or even the Lenovo Legion Go. If you have a more powerful gaming console than the Steam Deck, the Ayaneo 2, you can run the game, but this console has its issues and is not recommended.
The reason is Dragon’s Dogma 2’s memory requirements. While the Steam Deck meets the minimum 16GB of RAM listed in the system specs, even at the lowest settings the game takes up 13GB of system memory and an additional 5GB of VRAM. According to RPGsite, these requirements translated into performance issues, with frame rates plummeting below 15fps and numerous stutters making the experience unplayable.
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While the site says it didn’t test Dragon’s Dogma 2 on the ROG Ally or Legion Go, both handheld devices come with the same amount of RAM as the Steam Deck, meaning your experience will likely be the same.
The PC version isn’t immune either, with performance slowing down in bustling cities full of NPCs. Capcom acknowledges these CPU-induced framerate issues and is “researching ways to improve performance in the future.” While some PCs can indeed hit 80-100 fps when out and about, even truly high-end systems can only hit 60 fps in the city, and even drop to 50 fps in Fernworth.
Our own Alex Donaldson played Dragon’s Dogma 2 using this beast of a PC and enjoyed “a solid 60 fps at 4K with everything maxed out,” however, He still encountered sub-60 fps. On consoles, 30fps is “a soft target,” but even the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions can drop to around 20fps – all due to CPU limitations. Additionally, due to the emerging, AI-driven nature of the game, all of this must be calculated to impact performance.
Despite this, Alex said in his Dragon’s Dogma 2 review that playing the game on a powerful PC can generally deliver performance well above 60 fps, with some degradation.
You can test the processing power of your gaming system on launch day, March 22nd.