Gothic 2 Warning for Gothic 2 NotR on Steam Deck

[txa1265]

As discussed in the thread about Risen on Switch, Gothic 1 & 2 (and Risen) work well on the Steam Deck. I'm in the middle of another replay of Gothic 2 Gold on the Steam Deck and it is easy to configure settings and assign controls.

HOWEVER, when you try to take the portal into Jharkendar and it tries to load the zone the game will crash. If you try to load a save in the expansion area ... the game will crash.

To get things to work, you need to go into the game Properties, choose Compatibility, and under Proton version choose 3.7-8. This is a very old version of the Proton compatibility layer, but it is the one that works. Note: this is reportedly exactly what happens when you play on any SteamOS device or Linux.

Unfortunately, while that version works, the performance is terrible - whereas the main game chugs along at 60FPS reliably, there are areas in the swamp where the game stuttered as low as 4FPS ... even with draw distances way down and details dialed back! Once done with the expansion I switched versions and cranked everything back to maximum ... which I will keep until revisiting that area in Chapter 4.