Can you play Men of War 2 on Steam Deck? Compatibility and performance, explained
Summon your troops, invade the enemy territory, and even use direct control in the palm of your hand. Or at least that’s what we hope we can do. Will you be able to play Men of War 2 on the go with your Steam Deck? Let’s talk about that.
Is Men of War 2 compatible with the Steam Deck?
If you have purchased your favorite Valve handheld – although the Steam Controller is close to my heart – then you are in for some great news! Men of War 2 is compatible with the Steam Deck and you will be able to play it on the go – as long as you have an internet connection, the game is always online at the moment. Be ready to dig your trenches and shoot at the enemy while taking the bus!
This is thanks to the fact that Men of War 2 has native Linux support, which is what SteamOS is built on top of. That said, you will have to use the touchpad to be able to move the cursor through the screen, so take that into account if you are hoping for a seamless experience in the Steam Deck.
Men of War 2: Best settings for performance in Steam Deck
As said above, since Men of War is perfectly compatible with Linux and SteamOS, it means that the game is very well optimized for the Steam Deck. So, thankfully, you won’t have to play much with the Graphics options to get some decent FPS on your handheld. With the following settings, you can get to 40 FPS even during combat:
- Resolution: Use desktop settings (1280×800)
- CPU usage: Maximum
- Anti-aliasing: None
- Texture detail: Maximum quality
- Shadows: Soft self-shadowing
- Texture filtering: Anisotropic 2x
- Model quality: High
- Effects quality: High
- Water reflections: Dynamic
- Grass: On
- Parallax: On
- Depth of field: On
- SSAO: On
- View distance: 100%
- Gamma: 50%
However, if you would like to improve your performance, I would suggest deactivating Shadows, downgrading the Model, Effects, and Texture quality, and lowering the View Distance slider to 70 or even 50%. That way, you can expect a higher FPS range, but since this is an RTS, I would think twice before lowering the detail given that FPS is not a big deal as it is in other game genres such as first-person shooters.