Linux Review:

Bellwright

Establish and expand your own settlements, liberate the land and assist its villagers, and recruit others to your cause while learning more about a life you had to leave behind. Command your forces, prove your valor through combat, and cement yourself as the hero of your people.

PROTON TIER: GOLD

Bellwright is a settlement-building and combat-focused game where you liberate land and assist villagers.

Status Check Proton. Gold tier.

TWEAKS & TRICKS

• Launch Failure: The game may fail to launch, displaying a “fatal error” or “directx 12 not supported” error.
  • Solution: force_vk_vendor=-1 %command%
• Performance Issues / Stuttering: The game may experience low framerates (25 FPS in character creator, 50s during gameplay) and stuttering.
  • Solution: Install the latest GE-Proton version.
  • Solution: Create a 16 GB swap file and disable zram.
  • Solution: Set TSR to Low, Global Illumination quality to Medium, view distance to Medium, post-processing to Medium, Global Illumination method to Screen Space, and all other settings to Low.
  • Solution: Limit Steam FPS cap to 30 FPS.
• Initial Crashes: Crashes may occur before the game becomes playable.
  • Solution: Install CryoUtils (default config) and set UMA to 4GB.
• High Resolution Play:
  • Solution: gamescope -O DP-2 -w 2560 -h 1440 -r 144 -f --hdr-enabled --force-grab-cursor -- %command%
  • Solution: gamescope -w 3840 -h 2160 -r 120 -o 30 --force-grab-cursor -- %command%
• Frame Rate Limiting:
  • Solution: Cap the frame rate to 90 FPS.

Verdict Despite requiring significant tweaking, Bellwright is playable and performs well on Linux through Proton with the correct configurations. Linux gamers should anticipate spending some time optimizing settings to achieve a smooth experience.