Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve Struggles Hard on Handhelds
A new Bandai Namco flight combat game reportedly needs serious power draw just to get moving on Steam Deck and ROG Ally X, according to one channel's extensive hands-on testing.
Thirteen minutes. That's how long it reportedly took just to get past menus and options before Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve would even let someone start playing on Steam Deck, according to testing posted by Santiago Santiago. Then came another half hour of trying, and trying again, before gameplay actually showed up on screen. That's not a smooth launch. That's a game fighting its own hardware before the player gets a shot at fighting anyone else.
The channel's chapter breakdown tells the story on its own: a stretch labeled simply "TRYING to get to gameplay" that runs over thirty minutes on Steam Deck, followed by an ROG Ally X segment that only gets moving once the device is cranked to 30 watts of power draw. For a handheld, that's not a small ask. That's the kind of number that chews through a battery and turns a couch session into a hunt for the nearest outlet.
What the testing actually found
According to the chapters laid out in the video, here's the rundown of what got tested:
- An extended options menu before any gameplay was reachable on Steam Deck
- Gameplay on ROG Ally X only becoming viable at 30 watts
- A pass at 900p on Ally X
- A follow-up pass at 720p on Ally X
- A look at Steam user reviews for the game
That's four separate configurations tested on two of the most popular handhelds on the market, and none of them come across as a clean out-of-the-box experience. Dropping resolution down to 720p on a device built to punch above its weight isn't a footnote. It's an admission that the game needed the extra headroom just to behave.
Bandai Namco provided the code, the questions are still fair
Worth saying plainly: the game code for this test was provided by Bandai Namco, and the video carries an affiliate discount link on top of that. None of that changes what the chapters show. A publisher handing over a review copy doesn't make a thirty-minute wall between menu and mission go away, and it doesn't lower the wattage a handheld needs to burn to keep the frame rate acceptable.
Steam reviews got their own segment in the breakdown too, which suggests the rough handheld showing lines up with what other players are reportedly saying on the store page, though the specifics of those reviews weren't detailed beyond the chapter marker itself.
Nobody buys a handheld to babysit a settings menu for a quarter hour before takeoff. If a fix lands and the game runs clean at a sane wattage, that's worth revisiting. Until then, anyone eyeing this one on Steam Deck or Ally X should go in expecting to tinker before they ever get airborne.