I remember my brother playing this mod and I was just amazed at the sheer complexity of it. I love Factorio, Satisfactory and the like, but idk if I could do it in Minecraft
It really helps that there’s a quest book to guide you through some of the mods. Otherwise, you’re just searching for recipes in your inventory and hoping for the best.
I’m going to go against the general consensus here and say you would probably be better served buying a Switch 2. The Steam Deck is awesome but it is bulkier, has less battery life, and is overall less suited for a “pick up, play 10mins and toss is back” usage.
However if you are up for some occasional tinkering, the SD is far more versatile than the Switch and could even replace your laptop depending on your use-cases.
You could get one of those Bluetooth keyboard/ trackpad combos and a case with a kickstand for desktop use. Small screen but usable. I personally wouldn’t replace a laptop with it, but if you didn’t have a laptop it could be useful to buy one device that does handheld gaming and other stuff too instead of buying two devices
I’d still buy two, unless I don’t need a laptop (i.e. phone is sufficient). The ergonomics of a decent laptop are just too good, and I really don’t want to haul around a decent keyboard just to get that on a handheld PC. That said, if I’ll bring both always, then I’d get a portable monitor and make the Steam Deck work, but that’s a really niche case.
Battery life definitely depends on what you are playing. In BG3 I get around 2 ish hours. But I can play older games like Morrowind, or newer retro style games like Skald against the black priory (10/10, do recommend) for 6-8 hours, maybe more.
You also have a lot of control to improve battery life like clock speed, frame rate limiting, etc.
But yeah it has a huge screen and if you play newer games with good 3d graphics it drains fast. Switch doesn’t really have those kinds of games so it’s not a 1:1 comparison.
EDIT: I also agree with your points on it being very bulky and not well suited to a 10 minute session. Launching games is slower on the deck and most PC games have more loading screens before gameplay.
Personally, I didn’t like physically holding the steam deck. In my opinion, it’s much too heavy/bulky and even with a high quality comfort grip It just wasn’t working for me. Ultimately, I ended up going with an Ayn Odin 2 instead and I’ve been enjoying my portable/lounging game time much more now. I do miss the ability to play my steam library though. Even though I can still do this with streaming, I just don’t like streaming games as much. Other than the weight/size/ergonomics, which most people seem to be just fine with, the only other thing I’d mention is that steam’s UI is buggy as hell when you’re browsing around the store. I ended up doing most of my browsing on desktop as a result.
All that being said, you can’t deny the draw of it. Even though it wasn’t for me personally, I still like the system and I’d still recommend it to pretty much anybody. There’s a reason Steam Deck is the champ.
Also, look up retro game corp if you aren’t familiar. He just released a video today called ‘dude, just get a steam deck’
Poor ergonomics is actually a large reason why I sold my Deck. It is quite heavy and clearly made for hands bigger than mine, which made holding it for more than 20 minutes quite uncomfortable. Also the joysticks are just awful, awful, awful awful awful. Id say a hall-effect stick mod is basically mandatory.
The joysticks are way better than the Switch and comparable to regular controllers. I haven’t had any issues with stick drift, and generally find it quite pleasant.
What exactly were your issues with the joysticks?
And yeah, being able to replace them a/ hall effect sticks is awesome, and I plan to do so if the sticks ever run into issues or I need to open it up for some reason. But I have no complaints, and in fact love playing with gryo aiming.
They were much too big for my thumbs (going off the theme of the Deck in general being made for hands clearly bigger than mine). Too tall, too wide on top, and while I never had to deal with any drift - the deadzones suck to play games with. I keep a gamepad at my desk for racing and flying games and I switched it to a hall-effect gamepad about a year ago and I’ve never looked back. Potentiometer-based joysticks just feel like garbage in comparison and I think are inexcusable to use in a highend gaming product these days. I ended up using the touchpads instead for many things.
You can tune those, though the tighter you make it, the more likely you’ll run into drift issues. Replacing with hall-effect sticks is absolutely reasonable if you’re playing a lot of racing and similar games that benefit from slight adjustments near the neutral point. I mostly play action games, so I slam my sticks against the edges most of the time.
I totally understand size issues though. The Deck works a lot better with larger hands, so if yours aren’t large enough, it could be uncomfortable.
highend gaming product
I don’t consider the Steam Deck “high end” at all. There are handhelds with hall effect sticks and higher end graphics.
Yeah, I didn’t like the shape/feel of the stock sticks either. I never really had any problems with sick drift or anything, but I also didn’t actually own the system for very long either.
To remedy this, I had actually bought some stick caps from skull & co (per recommendations from people on here actually) and they were quite excellent.
Yeah, it’s kinda big. I happen to have big-ish hands, so it’s fine, but I still wish it was a bit smaller. The Switch is too small though, so I mostly play with my Pro controller on the TV.
I do love my Steam Deck though. I love playing in bed while having access to all my PC games.
End of life as in? Battery not keeping a charge? Joystick drifting? USB-C connector messed up? Most of those problems can be fixed, ifixit has the parts and great walk throughs. Just fix it and keep playing what you like how you like.
Out of curiosity, what games do you play other than Cities Skyline?
If you just want something for portability + ten minutes of gameplay, what about an android phone you can emulate on + one of those phone controllers that turn your phone into a portable console?
Definitely go Steam Deck then. No question. You’ll have far more to choose from, and the Deck’s suspend and resume is shockingly good considering you’d never expect that feature to work on a Windows PC mid-game.
Oh, in that case you might have a swell time with using an android phone for emulation. Just ignore playstore games for a minute.
I feel like you might not understand what emulation is based on you commenting that you aren’t much of a gamer—basically, using a phone you can emulate different consoles. And they often don’t have ads.
What type of phone do you have? On my S24 I can emulate up to Switch games, but a lot of phones can emulate up to the PS2 era. You can also look into something called “Winlator” where you can emulate windows games on the phone too.
Haha honestly just go find a game that’s been on your backlog for a few years, look on Wikipedia, then see if it has a console equivalent. Then go download a console emulator from the emulation wiki recommended in another comment.
For example, if I wanted to play the original Disgaea, I know it plays on the DS in addition to the PC. So why not play it on a DS emulator like Drastic?
The only reason you should buy a Switch is if you have no self respect, don’t give a shit about being in an abusive relationship with Nintendo, and don’t care about sending thousands of dollars to a company that hates you to get an artificially limited device, and absolutely MUST play Nintendo first-party games, in the intended fashion.
The Deck is such a better device in nearly every way.
Steam Deck is great but keep in mind it’s way bigger and heavier than the Switch Lite. If you move around a lot, it’s not something you can just toss into a backpack.
I feel like the fragility is more of a concern than the weight. either console is sooo entertaining and nice to have on, like, a trainride or whatever that it more than pays for its weight burden in your pack; The risk of it getting its screen broken and needing to be fully replaced is a lot more daunting to me than the need to carry an additional 5 lb around. My steam deck came with a carrying case that I always really appreciate for just that reason.
Joysticks need to be replaced again, battery life is becoming tragic so that needs replacing too. Any time I pick it up at this point, the battery is dead.
Biggest issue to be honest is that I want a bigger screen and that isn’t the device’s fault.
I’m going to order a whack of parts from ifixit and spruce it back up for those Nintendo exclusive hankerings.
Obviously it depends on what games you want to play.
The one point I will mention in the Switch's favor is that I feel like it's a much better handheld. It's a lot lighter and I like the feel of the JoyCons better (or I did until mine went bad, we'll see how durable S2 JoyCons are). Still, both are ultimately too bulky for me to take on the go, instead I bought a Miyoo Mini Plus on sale and that's become my portable while the Deck gathers dust and the Switch no longer leaves the dock.
If you want to stay in the Nintendo eco system (or at least have no issue with that), the Switch 2 would be the better choice - better hardware, more options with the mouse feature and placing on a TV or display, etc.
If you want to be more flexible, like tempering around with a bit of config stuff and game / graphics settings, controller layout, etc. then I suggest the Steam Deck. I can honestly say that it’s a lot of fun. Non-Steam games are sometimes tedious to install and configure Proton with the right version of proton etc, bit you don’t have to do any of that, it’s just options that come with the device.
It’s gotta be from Final Fantasy, hard to choose just one when you got: Suteki da Ne, real Emotions, Eyes on Me, Sen no Kotoba, Otherworld, One Winged Angel, etc… there’s a reason why I love Theatrhythm. But if I had to it will probably be Melodies of Life.
Actually, I change my mind, this is the catchiest video game song.
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