Can you play Rise of the Ronin well on Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally?

Many players are wondering whether Rise of the Ronin runs well on the Steam Deck and the Asus ROG Ally. With its fast-paced combat, deep RPG mechanics, and intense battles, it’s considered one of the biggest releases of the year. But can these handhelds handle it?

Unfortunately, Rise of the Ronin is barely playable on Steam Deck, struggling with low frame rates and poor optimization. The Asus ROG Ally offers a better experience, but performance issues still persist. So, is there a way to improve it? Let’s break it down.

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Rise of the Ronin on Steam Deck

A still from Rise of the Ronin (Image via Koei Tecmo)

If you're a Steam Deck primary user, Ronin is a hard pass. The game simply isn't built for the Deck’s aging hardware, and it shows. In one-on-one fights, you might get around 30 FPS, but the second you step into the open world, performance tanks hard. You can expect frame rates in the 14-22 FPS range while out and about, making the game feel sluggish and borderline unplayable.

Even tweaking settings and enabling frame generation don’t help. The Steam Deck’s CPU and GPU bottlenecks mean there’s just not enough power to handle the game’s open-world rendering. If you’re dead set on playing Ronin on the handheld, your best bet is to stream it, because running it natively on the Deck is a frustrating experience.

Oddly enough, Koei Tecmo’s Dynasty Warriors Origins title runs well on the Deck, but Rise of the Ronin just isn’t optimized for it. Unless Valve or Koei Tecmo pushes out major performance fixes, this is one game that isn’t worth the hassle on the Steam Deck.

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Rise of the Ronin on Asus ROG Ally

Rise of the Ronin features a character creation system (Image via Koei Tecmo)

The Asus ROG Ally (Z1 Extreme) fares better, but don’t expect a flawless experience. Out of the box, setting everything to default at 15-30W TDP gives you a stable 30 FPS, but the game's performance dips in open-world areas.

Manually tweaking settings doesn’t do much, either; reducing them hurts picture quality without significantly boosting FPS. The best approach? Stick to default settings and adjust the Asus ROG Ally's TDP as needed. At 15W, the game runs fine in smaller areas, but in open-world sections, you’ll need to bump the TDP up to 25 - 30 W in Turbo Mode to maintain smooth gameplay.

However, there's an annoying slow-motion bug when frame pacing is off. Locking FPS to 30 via RTSS helps keep things stable. However, increasing the VRAM to 8 GB might help in certain cases.

Now, let’s talk about frame generation. On the Asus ROG Ally, frame gen introduces heavy ghosting, making it practically useless. If you’re aiming for a better experience, drop the resolution below 1080p and enable FSR 3 upscaling. This way, the visuals won’t look great, but you’ll at least get a somewhat stable 30 FPS.

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Verdict: Should you play it on these handhelds?

On the Steam Deck? No. The game is simply not optimized for it and struggles to stay above 20 FPS in open areas. Even heavy tweaking doesn't really help with the playability.

On the Asus ROG Ally? Yes, but with compromises. The game runs at 30 FPS on low settings, but frame pacing issues and occasional slowdowns make it far from ideal. If you’re willing to tweak the TDP, lower the resolution, and deal with the visual trade-offs, you can get a decent experience.

Koei Tecmo is aware of these optimization issues, so there’s a chance future patches might improve performance. But as it stands, Rise of the Ronin on handhelds is not a good experience — unless you’re willing to deal with the rough edges.

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