By AION 2’s playtest is finally here, and as a huge fan of the original AION, we’ve been looking forward to seeing how NC’s return to Atreia holds up on Steam hardware ahead of its October 5 launch. AION 2 is a free-to-play MMORPG built on Unreal Engine 5, and it leans hard into vertical, aerial combat across a world said to be 36 times larger than the original game. We put the current playtest build through its paces on both Steam Deck and Steam Machine to see what to expect when it launches in just under a month.
Steam Deck performance
On Steam Deck, AION 2 is playable, but it won’t win any beauty contests. Even at the lowest graphics preset with performance TSR (which looked a bit better than performance FSR in our testing), the game is still fairly rough around the edges visually. Frame rate holds up reasonably well, though: towns dip just under 30fps thanks to all the other players rendering around you, while instanced dungeons run in the 40 to 50fps range and feel genuinely playable. It’s a fine way to grind dailies or knock out some quick quests on the go, but given how much better this game can look elsewhere, we’d lean toward streaming AION 2 to the Deck via something like GeForce Now if that ends up being an option, rather than running it natively.
Steam Machine performance
Steam Machine is a completely different story, and it’s the same build and the same game delivering a genuinely striking experience once the resolution and settings are dialled in. At full native 4K, things hold together while standing still, but movement introduces noticeable jitter and some hefty loading spikes, particularly in busy town areas with lots of players rendering at once — 4K is asking a lot of the hardware here. Dropping to 1440p with TSR quality gets dungeon instances comfortably over 70fps, and boss fights look fantastic, with cutscenes rendered in the game engine at full quality. Heavier boss encounters with lots of on-screen effects pull that down into the 50s and 60s, and a full-scale world boss with a hundred or so players could push it further.
At 1080p on the very high preset with native anti-aliasing (no TSR or FSR), visuals are strong, but movement introduces some jankiness, particularly out in open areas like the meadows where the FPS counter reads 40-plus but doesn’t translate to a smooth feel. Switching on TSR quality at 1080p smooths things out nicely, even if it’s not a locked 60fps and still shows the occasional load spike. Interestingly, resolution alone doesn’t move the needle as much as the quality preset does — dungeon instances stayed above 70fps across our 1080p and 1440p tests alike.
Our recommended settings
For the best balance on Steam Machine, we recommend sticking with the 1440p medium preset and dropping shadows to low. That combination delivered a consistently smooth experience throughout our testing, holding above 60fps even during crowded battles, while flying, and with plenty of world detail rendering in the distance. The only real dips came when diving into areas packed with other players, where frame rate settled into the 40s regardless of the mode used — a limitation of how much is being rendered rather than the settings themselves.
So, where should you play AION 2? Steam Deck will get the job done for dailies and quick sessions, though it’s the least visually impressive way to experience it. Steam Machine is where this game truly shines, especially once you land on the 1440p medium preset with lowered shadows. We’ll be revisiting performance once AION 2 officially launches to see how much further NC can push it before release, but either way, we’ll be diving back into Atreia.