Conclusion

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is a great action game that forgoes the multiple skill trees and tons of unlocks seen in almost every other modern action game and instead offers gamers stacks of old-school pure, unadulterated, and bloody combat where you don't have to worry about leveling your character, your gun, and every piece of equipment you're wearing.

The game looks rather good. While you won't find fancy stuff like ray tracing or a zero texture pop-in experience found with tech such as Nanite, Space Marine boasts detailed character models, authentic-looking animations with realistic movements of 7.5-foot-tall human terminators in power armor, and grand-looking battlefields. The only nitpick we've got concerns the quality of textures, which could've been more detailed.

The Space Marine 2 Steam Deck experience leaves a lot to be desired. While the game works fine out of the box, it's quite demanding, both in terms of CPU and GPU. Even when you drop everything to "low" and set FSR 2 to "balanced" or "performance," you can't get locked 30 FPS performance.

The game doesn't stutter, but sub-30 FPS drops are fairly common. During heavy action scenes that feature massive invading hordes, the performance can drop below 20 FPS. I find this performance level not playable, and I cannot recommend getting the game if you only plan to run it on your Steam Deck.

On the ROG Ally, Space Marine runs much better. With a mix of low and medium settings, 900p resolution, and FSR 2 set to "performance," you can achieve stable 30 FPS performance with the frame rate oscillating between 30 to 40 FPS, with very rare sub-30 FPS drops during the heaviest action sequences. It's not great, but it's playable.

Space Marine 2 plays great with Steam Deck's and ROG Ally's inbuilt controls, and while the game is slightly easier to play with a mouse and keyboard, you can have a great time playing it with a controller. If you plan to solo the game with your Ultramarine brothers being controlled by AI, think about playing the game on the "normal" difficulty because the AI isn't great, and bosses and bigger enemies usually go straight for you, often ignoring the two AI-controlled characters.

I've played Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 for about three hours in preparation for this performance review, and I will definitely finish the game. The combat's great, the level design is simple yet effective, the visuals are pretty solid and nail the Warhammer 40K aesthetic identity, and the game doesn't overstay its welcome; you should finish it in about 10 to 12 hours.