I’ve got some news about Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, and it's not quite what I was expecting. There was a lot of hype for this game, but it turns out it's much more Souls-like than anticipated, meaning the difficulty ramps up quickly with a steep learning curve.
The game offers an interesting range of weapons, including assassin-style muskets, but you only get three shots. There's also a flintlock pistol for parrying enemy attacks if timed right, along with standard parry and melee attacks. One major issue for me is the controller mapping. The main attack is mapped to R1, dodging to B (which is normal), the flintlock pistol to R2, dodge to LB, and healing to X. I keep mistakenly using X to attack instead of dodge, which is frustrating. The parry mechanics and timing are tough to master, and I’m not sure if it’s due to the Steam Deck or just the game’s strange mechanics. There’s also a fox god you use to distract enemies, but it doesn’t seem very effective in the early stages.
Graphics-wise, the game holds around 40 to 45 frames per second, running at the lowest settings with texture quality on medium, Intel XeSS on balance, DirectX 12 mode, V Sync off, and a frame cap of 60 FPS. You might consider capping it at 30 FPS, but that introduces more input latency. Given how challenging the parry timing and overall tactics are, adding latency isn’t ideal.
Despite these challenges, the graphics and performance on the Steam Deck are better than expected. We can see why it's only marked as playable status on the Steam Deck, as it took some tweaking to get it to run smoother. It still pushes over 22 watts, giving you around two hours of gameplay at best.
Let me know if you've tried diving into this game and what your thoughts are on the gameplay.