Ready to explore Kamurocho on your Steam Deck? Here's the best settings to use when playing this Yakuza prequel.
It's no secret that SEGA's Yakuza games are a guarantee for offering up thrilling plots, weird side characters, and dozens of curious Japanese mini-games that’ll keep you occupied for weeks.
The whole series has been on sale on Steam lately, so naturally many will now dive into the compelling narrative around Kazuma Kiryu, set in the urban sprawl of 1980s Tokyo-like Kamurocho. Let’s adjust your settings for the best possible performance in Yakuza 0 on the Steam Deck, shall we?
Out of the box...
Let's start with good news: Essentially, Yakuza 0 starts up straight away with pretty balanced settings pre-applied.
It’s a mix of high and ultra, minus supersampling anti-aliasing (SSAA) without altered Render Scaling. Weirdly enough, the game initially resorts to borderless window mode instead of fullscreen – which, in reality, is the first thing you should change to in every scenario on a handheld like the Deck.
In some cases, Yakuza 0 also opts for a letterboxed 1280x720 view, which is a 16:9 aspect ratio. On Steam Deck though, the screen has a 16:10 aspect ratio - hence the device’s native resolution of 1280x800. You can switch to 800p without any issue, but will face some artsy letterbox bars in various cutscenes.
There’s a mod available that will fix this, trading for some minor "out of frame" glitches, such as areas in cutscenes being visible that obviously weren’t planned to be seen at all. This is just a small tradeoff, but you have the choice.
Without any changes, you’ll get an acceptable experience, with the game mostly hitting 60 FPS and only a few dips into the mid-50s seen during in-engine cutscenes and while exploring Japanese streets.
There are some things that you will want to tweak, however. Especially in Kamurocho’s busier areas, the overall frame rate tends to struggle down to around 50 FPS. The good news is: Our tweaks will give you a nearly rock-solid 60 FPS experience, while also saving some precious battery life.
Yakuza 0 Recommended Steam Deck Settings
| In-Game Settings | |
|---|---|
| SSAA | Off |
| Render Scale | Off |
| FXAA Quality | Ultra |
| Texture Filtering | Ultra |
| Shadow Quality | High |
| Geometry Quality | High |
As you can see, lowering both Shadow Quality and Geometry Quality a single step from Ultra to High nearly does the trick. But we’re not done yet, as the APU keeps juggling frequencies depending on the scene and sometimes won’t be able to keep up with quick camera movements during traversal. That’s where some Quick Action Menu tweaks come in handy and also give us longer playtime:
| Quick Menu Settings | |
|---|---|
| Use per-game profile | Enabled |
| Framerate Limit | 60 |
| Refresh Rate | 60 |
| Allow Tearing | Enabled |
| TDP Limit | Enabled |
| Watts | 10 |
| Manual GPU Clock | Enabled |
| GPU Frequency | 1000 |
All of this will give you a consistent experience without major stutters, even when strolling through the busy parts of Kamurocho.
One word of caution though: As of right now, there seems to be a bug with the current SteamOS version, which disables the Manual GPU Clock setting every now and then. You’ll notice this right away when exploring the open world and heading towards one of the city's bigger crossroads. Just head into the Quick Action Menu and re-enable it.
We hope these recommended settings help your Steam Deck Yakuza adventures!
