As a Steam Deck enthusiast, my heart sank when Square Enix published its recommended PC requirements for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on PC. Why? Sitting there in the “minimum” column is Nvidia’s RTX 2060, a GPU far exceeding the Steam Deck’s capabilities. It’s the second game in recent weeks that demands at least an RTX 2060-class graphics card. The last one was Indiana Jones and the Great Circle which ran poorly on Valve’s aging handheld.
Adding weight to my concern that the upcoming PC version of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth wouldn’t perform well on Steam Deck? The disappointing performance of Square Enix’s last PC port on both the Deck and ROG Ally. That game was Final Fantasy 16, which has a much lower GPU requirement (Nvidia GTX 1060) than Final Fantasy VII does and had AMD-driven frame generation.
The only glimmer of hope that Square Enix is giving Steam Deck fans is buried in the publisher’s announcement blog: “The team is working hard to optimize the game for Steam Deck.” Square Enix says it will have more information about official Steam Deck verification “in the future.”
That single sentence sounds more like an aspiration than anything resembling a promise, so for now we cross our fingers and wait until the game’s release on January 23, 2025.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Minimum PC Requirements
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will bring some distinct advantages on PC, like a peak framerate of 120FPS, refined lighting, improved environmental details, and sharper textures. VRR and image quality upscaling courtesy of NVIDIA DLSS are also along for the ride.
Here’s the baseline hardware Square Enix suggests for hitting 30FPS on “low” graphics quality at 1080p:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1400 / Intel Core 14-8100
- GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6600 / Intel Arc 1580 / NVIDIA GeForce RRX 2060
- Memory: 16GB
- Storage: 155 GB SSD (!)
I’ll keep an eye on things as we approach the release date for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on PC next month. Aside from checking out the game’s performance on Steam Deck, it will also prove interesting to see how it runs on the slightly more powerful ROG Ally.
