Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road was anticipated by fans for the better part of a decade, and the game is a hit among players and critics alike. The game is also getting a manga adaptation, so there’s certainly a lot of buzz around it. It’s the type of game that’s great to lose yourself in, and what better way to do that than on the Steam Deck?
However, there are some questions around the Steam Deck’s aging hardware these days. Naturally, the question arises of how well Victory Road runs on Valve’s handheld. The short of it is that the game is Deck-verified, a badge that symbolizes that the game should run well. But let’s explore a bit further and check out real-world performance, the recommended settings, and the overall experience of playing Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road on the Steam Deck.
A Detailed Graphics Menu
A lot of Japanese games are scarce when it comes to options in the graphics menu for their PC ports. Elden Ring is a notorious example of this, as it’s a game where the menu is basic and lacking in robust optimization options. The FromSoftware game has a 60 FPS cap and lacks modern upscaling support like Nvidia DLSS and AMD FSR. Fortunately, that’s not a problem with Victory Road.
The game lets you turn off features like Bloom, Depth of Field, and Motion Blur. There’s a max framerate cap setting, which you can set to 30, 60, 40, 120, 144 FPS, or uncapped. You can also mess around with Object Count, High Quality Object Display, and the number of background characters. By default, the game supports the 16:10 aspect ratio and is capped to 60 FPS on the Steam Deck. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any upscaling support yet. Thankfully, you might not need it for the Steam Deck.
Performance And Recommended Settings
A “Deck-verified” badge always translates to a stable, enjoyable experience on the Steam Deck, and Victory Road is no different. The game runs flawlessly without any user tweaking required, truly making it a plug-and-play title. When you start the game, the settings are set at a Medium Graphics preset and are capped at 60 FPS. For a JRPG game like this one, 60 FPS is more than enough.
The game looks sharp on the Steam Deck’s display, particularly on the OLED, where the HDR really shines. Unless you want to turn off effects like Bloom, Depth of Field, and Ambient Occlusion, I’d leave it at the default settings on the Deck. Just turn on HDR if you’re using the Steam Deck OLED. By default, most graphical options are set according to the Medium Graphics preset, and the game looks quite good with these settings.
Focusing on Docked Gameplay and online multiplayer, the performance is similarly stable. To ensure any issues with cross-platform play, the developers have capped the FPS at 60, and this is quite reliable whether you are playing the solo Chronicle mode or the online PvP tournaments.
