Ever since Horizon Forbidden West came out running it on a Steam Deck has been a challenge due to a number of issues. The game goes through crashes, stuttering, and sometimes the controls stop working.
However, with the latest patch and compatibility improvements on Steam Deck, I have to say the game runs much better than before (not great). In fact, if you use the correct graphics and display settings, you can run it at a decent frame rate and minimum issues.
To start things off, the first thing you need to do is make sure you force the use of Steam Play compatibility tool. Proton 9.0-2 is the best one I tested so far.
Go into Horizon Forbidden West properties on Steam and under the Combability tab select the following:
Horizon Forbidden West Best Display Settings
| Options | Settings |
|---|---|
| Display Resolution | 800p |
| Aspect Ratio | Auto |
| Cinematics Letterboxing | On |
| Refresh Rate | 90hz |
| Vsync | On |
| Nvidia Reflex Low Latency | Off |
| Dynamic Resolution Scaling | Off |
| Anti Aliasing | AMD FSR 3 |
| Upscale Method | AMD FSR 3 |
| Upscale Quality | Ultra Performance |
| Frame Generation | AMD FSR 3 Frame Generation |
If you experience latency issues, turn off frame generation. You can also try SSAO to make the visual look slightly better at minimum cost.
Horizon Forbidden West Best Graphics Settings
| Options | Settings |
|---|---|
| Preset | Very Low |
| Texture Quality | Low |
| Texture Filtering | Trilinear |
| Shadow Quality | Very Low |
| Screen Space Shadows | Off |
| Ambient Occlusion | Off |
| Screen Space Reflections | Off |
| Level of Detail | Very Low |
| Cinematic Facial Detail | Performance |
| Hair Quality | Very Low |
| Crowd Quality | Low |
| Terrain Quality | Low |
| Water Quality | Low |
| Cloud Quality | Low |
| Translucency Quality | Default |
| Parallax Occlusion Mapping | Off |
| Field of View | +0% |
| Depth of Field | Off |
| Bloom | Off |
| Motion Blur Strength | 0 |
| Sharpness | 5 |
| Lens Flares | Off |
| Vignette | Off |
| Radial Blur | Off |
| Chromatic Aberration | Off |
Steam Deck Settings
With these settings you will bounce between 25 to 43 fps in Horizon Forbidden West on Steam Deck. I know that is not great, but hardware limitations mixed with lack of proper optimization for Steam Deck makes it really hard to run this game on the deck.
Zero Dawn also runs pretty much the same on Steam Deck. I have settings for that as well so do check them out before you go.
