Assassin’s Creed Shadows doesn’t look that bad on ROG Ally and Legion Go in early performance tests
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Assassin’s Creed Shadows will launch on March 20th, but reviews for the game have already gone live. Importantly for PC gamers, this includes performance tests, and this extends to the handheld market. We’ve already tested AC Shadows on Steam Deck, and it offers an acceptable level of performance that earns it a coveted Steam Deck Verified badge.
However, moving away from the Valve handheld, how does the rest of the competition hold up? Well, reviewers with the ROG Ally and Legion Go have been busy testing the game on these Windows handhelds. Both of them feature the very same Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip but target different native resolutions.
AC Shadows on the ASUS ROG Ally & Lenovo Legion Go
The first thing to note is that both these handhelds run on Windows 11. That’s an important distinction from the Steam Deck, as Ubisoft locked the settings on the Valve handheld running SteamOS, opting for a default configuration with only some wiggle room in the upscaling settings. For the ROG Ally and Legion Go, though, you have full access to the settings menu as you would on a desktop PC running Windows.
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ROG Ally Z1 Extreme
Let’s start with the performance of the ROG Ally Z1 Extreme. These performance tests are courtesy of Deck Wizard, who has tested the device in a wide range of configurations. Enternity.gr has also tested the game on the Ally with all low settings at 720p, FSR Performance, to achieve a stable 30 FPS.
Based on the gameplay footage so far, we can see that AC Shadows runs decently well on the Ally. The video below demonstrates the game running between 30-35 FPS using FSR 3.1 performance mode with low settings at 720p, this is boosted to around 60 FPS after enabling frame generation. We cannot speak for AC Shadows, but if our experience of using FSR 3.1 Frame Gen in Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is anything to go by, you can expect a noticeable amount of input lag at this level.
Legion Go Z1 Extreme
Moving on to the Legion Go now (the original model, not the Legion Go S), you can see a similar level of performance. Generally speaking, targeting 30 FPS without frame gen, and 60 FPS with frame gen. This is to be expected considering both these handhelds feature the same Z1 Extreme chip. The gameplay is relatively smooth as well – a far cry from the consistent stuttering we witnessed in Monster Hunter Wilds. Reddit user u/iANiMeX reports similar performance on their Legion Go using CachyOS.
Again, you’re better off targeting a lower resolution than native. The ROG Ally’s 16:9 1080p screen makes sense to drop down to 720p (also 16:9), but for the Legion Go, its 16:10 1600p native resolution should be lowered 800p, putting it at the same level as the Steam Deck. Of course, the larger 8.8″ screen of the Legion Go will make it easier to notice the compromised graphics.
Overall, we hoped to see Assassin’s Creed Shadows running a little better on these popular handhelds, especially since it is Steam Deck Verified – and Valve’s handheld has notably weaker hardware. Access to full settings on the Windows version is a nice bonus at least. However, despite that, these rival handhelds don’t offer performance that is leaps ahead of the Deck.
It is not immediately clear what Ubisoft has done with the locked Steam Deck settings, and it’s possible the Deck may make further compromises, lowering settings even more than what’s possible via the interface in order to achieve more stable gameplay. We can’t confirm anything in that regard, but we can say that performance in AC Shadows is relatively similar across the ROG Ally, Legion Go, and Steam Deck.
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