Worth the wait - a look at Elden Ring on the Switch 2
It’s been a long wait, but it’s finally out. You might remember that Elden Ring was originally slated for a 2025 release on the Switch 2, with things getting pretty uncertain after folks were actually hands on with the game at Gamescom and PAX. We had a decent stretch of radio silence before the August release date dropped a few months ago, and hands on with the game now, I can tell you they did a pretty great job.
Now I’ll just be open here and say I really like Elden Ring. If you want to know what makes the game so great, I’d encourage you to check out my original review from all the way back in 2022. It was for the Xbox version, and some of the comments about performance might not be relevant, but the larger sentiment remains the same. It’s a great game. What I’m more interested in answering here is whether it’s worth picking up on Switch 2, and to exactly what extent they actually managed to fix things up.
Out of the gate you get access to a few pieces of new content. For those who haven’t been keeping up with the game, the Tarnished Edition bundles together the base game and its Shadow of the Erdtree expansion. On top of this though, you’re also getting a few new classes to pick from when creating a new character, a few new weapons and sets of armour scattered around the map, and even some horse armour. It’s worth saying that all of the new content here is also available on other platforms through a £4 DLC, so none of this is fundamentally exclusive.
The new classes are fun, if not especially revolutionary. They each come with new weapons and are designed around new builds to kick start your adventure; I ended up trying out the Heavy Knight and did quite enjoy the new Curved Greatsword. Fat rolling with the starting gear was a touch rough though. I’ve only played with a few bits of the new gear, but having seen some of the later-game stuff in videos, I can say I’m suitably excited to play more. If you’re curious, give Leontinel's Greatsword a Google. I cannot wait to try it myself.
Though the new bits and pieces are nice, they’re useless if the game doesn’t perform well. And I can say the game performs well enough. We’re looking at a 30fps target that is generally hit, though notably this is not a capped framerate. The larger experience is perfectly cromulent, though you likely will pick up on the uneven frame pacing here and there. I do at least find that it fades into the back of my mind during boss fights, with the gameplay really just taking over.
For that 30fps performance, you do at least get a genuinely great looking game. A part of me was expecting one of blurry or pixilated, and the end result is something I wouldn’t turn my nose up at on the PC. There are some compromises that I’ve noticed after playing a little more, with pop-in certainly being more egregious than I remember on other platforms. It’s certainly not something that’s going to ruin the game for me though. Handheld graphics and performance seem similarly good, with the game fully playable offline as you’d hope. I will note here that you do need to be playing the game in offline mode though. If you happen to be playing online and end up disconnecting from the internet, you’ll get booted back to the main menu. A minor frustration, but one you can avoid entirely if you don’t care about online features in the first place.
The Switch 2 version does also feature full remapping for any button-oriented actions, with the only things you can’t swap being what the left and right stick do. If you do want this to be swapped around for accessibility or just for comfort, it is possible to do via the Switch 2’s Button Mapping menu.
So is this version of the game worth picking up? I’d say so, but there probably is more nuance there with the game costing somewhere between £55 and £65 here in the UK. If you’re already got the game on other platforms and you’re happy to stay rooted to whatever monitors or TVs you have around the house, there’s nothing extraordinary here to push you towards the double dip. What new content does exist is available to buy for a pretty reasonable price on your platform of choice, and it’ll probably run a touch better there too.
Where the Switch 2 version is worth buying is for those who haven’t already bought the game elsewhere, and for those who want a perfectly cromulent experience on the go. It’s not going to be winning any awards for its slightly shaky uncapped 30fps, but when you’re actually playing and fighting for your life against the larger than life bosses, you’ll likely come out more than happy. I’ll also throw a few words of positivity out for Bandai Namco here for taking the time to get the game to this point too. This isn’t the norm nowadays, with the release now fix later mentality being a lot more prevalent than I’d like. We waited for this one, and I’m glad we waited.
Is this one you’re likely to pick up? Let us know what you think!
Official GBAtemp Review (Xbox Series X|S)
