Conclusion

Once Human is a free-to-play survival game with MMO and looter-shooter elements. You can play it solo or with friends, and you can also matchmake with randoms.
Overall, the game looks rather good at higher settings, aside from character models, but the image is quite soft, most likely caused by the temporal antialiasing Once Human seems to use. As you can see in the optimized settings section, the game looks much sharper with FSR turned on, at least in screenshots. During movement, the situation's not as rosy, but you'll have to use FSR upscaling if you want to have a relatively stable 60 FPS experience.

The biggest issue with the game is that one option, called "VFX," controls lighting quality, reflections, and ambient occlusion, possibly even more effects. Setting "VFX" to medium drops the performance considerably on both the Steam Deck and ROG Ally. It would be much better if the game had a separate ambient occlusion setting because that way, you'd be able to turn on ambient occlusion and remove the flat look Once Human has on lower settings, without sacrificing a good chunk of performance by being forced to turn other effects up, too.

Another nitpick is the tiny UI, without an option to make the menu elements bigger. This can be a problem on handheld screens, which is exacerbated by the fact that the game includes a ton of UI elements, making it quite busy and hard to keep up with.

When you first launch the game, it goes through a shader compilation phase that doesn't take too long. You get another shader compilation screen once you cycle through the five graphical presets for the first time. We recommend cycling through them while in the main menu so you can test different presets in-game without waiting for shaders to build.

Regarding performance, the game heavily punishes the Steam Deck's puny quad-core CPU, so get ready for heavy stuttering that can be pretty jarring in certain game areas, such as the one we selected for your performance benchmark, as well as during intense action. That said, you can still get a pretty solid gaming experience if you drop settings to low or very low in combination with FSR upscaling, but occasional CPU-induced stutters will remain.

On the ROG Ally, the game works noticeably better. At lower wattages, however, you will also notice CPU-induced stuttering, just like on the Steam Deck. These can be reduced by setting the TDP to 20 W and higher, but not completely dealt with. I recommend the ROG Ally over the Steam Deck if you fancy playing Once Human on the go.

Regarding the controls, I was ready to conclude that the game should under no circumstances be played on a controller, mandating a mouse and keyboard, but the recent patch that introduced native controller support swayed my opinion the other way. Now, I think that Once Human plays great on a gamepad, aiming is tight and there are a number of well-designed control combos, offering a pleasant experience when using both our handheld's inbuilt controls.

After playing the game for about four hours in preparation for this performance review, I can say that the shooting feels great, the exploration is rewarding, and the game world does look rather attractive. The overall visual theme reminds me of Control and Tom Clancy's The Division, along with aspects of anime/manga character design. That said, it looks like the game includes pay to win elements (not surprising considering that the publisher is NetEase), but since the game is free, the only resource you'll be spending if you decide to check it out is your free time. As for me, I don't think I'll return to Once Human since I personally don't favor survival/crafting games, but this isn't a criticism of the game.