I’m a longtime Nintendo fan, which means accepting graphical compromises compared with the competition—such as the Game Boy’s pea-soup-green screen and the Wii’s lack of HD visuals. The most aesthetically pleasing Nintendo games, the titles that have aged most gracefully, prove that great art trumps raw horsepower. But objectively speaking, Nintendo has historically lacked that muscle.
This sentiment applies to the Nintendo Switch 2, a hybrid system featuring specs within striking distance of the Xbox Series S but far from the PlayStation 5 Pro. However, that power gap is less significant in an era when current-gen games look barely better than last-gen releases. Case in point: Resident Evil Requiem. I played it on the Switch 2, and it’s a visually stunning release that doesn’t look compromised at all. It’s left me excited about how far devs can push the hardware, despite some teams releasing games that demonstrate that they have much more to learn about the Switch 2’s inner workings.
Buy Resident Evil Requiem
Resident Evil Requiem Looks So Good, It’s Scary
Resident Evil Requiem will land somewhere on my 2026 game of the year list. I love its blend of gameplay ideas from across the franchise’s history, including high-octane action and shocking horror. In fact, it might be the most thematically coherent game in the series, thanks to its post-apocalyptic take on regret. And on top of all that, it’s simply gorgeous, even on Nintendo Switch 2, the platform where I played it all the way through.
Although I don’t have hard testing numbers, Requiem’s Switch 2 graphics consistently impressed me with clean image quality and high frame rates. It maintains the atmospheric lighting crucial for the horror atmosphere, and I can’t tell if certain dramatic cutscenes were real-time or pre-rendered. Newcomer Grace Ashcroft, an FBI agent, carefully tiptoes around dimly lit corridors splattered with blood and other gruesome details. Returning hero Leon shoots his way through a huge, ashen Raccoon City, a community frozen in time at the moment of its death. Requiem is graphically phenomenal, from action set pieces that task you with driving motorcycles through collapsing buildings to the creepy, subtle animations of a zombie reenacting its past life.
Still, the Switch 2 is an extremely enjoyable platform for playing this blockbuster release. It looks like the real deal, not an underpowered imitation.
Sure, there are minor issues: Handheld play doesn’t look quite as nice as docked play, and the first-person view performs better than the third-person view, perhaps due to its narrower field of view. Still, the Switch 2 is an extremely enjoyable platform for playing this blockbuster release. It looks like the real deal, not an underpowered imitation.
Resident Evil Requiem is in the running for best-looking Switch 2 game, but what’s so surprising is how many titles are competing for that crown. Other notable RE Engine-powered Capcom games include Street Fighter 6 and Pragmata, the upcoming sci-fi shooter. These aren’t streamed cloud editions, the workarounds that Resident Evil 7, Resident Evil 8, and other large games needed to run on the first Switch; these are native versions. On the non-Capcom front, Square Enix released a crisp Final Fantasy VII Remake Switch 2 port earlier this year, with its sequel, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, coming in June.
The strong Japanese support isn’t surprising considering the Switch 2’s success in its home country. However, even AAA Western games, historically a blind spot for Nintendo, are coming to the Switch 2 as visual showpieces. Ubisoft brought two of its biggest recent open-world games to Switch 2, Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Star Wars Outlaws, and it’s shocking how well they run.
CD Projekt Red published an impossible Witcher 3 port on the first Switch, but the visual cutbacks were obvious. That’s not the case with its Cyberpunk 2077 on Nintendo Switch 2, which looks far more legitimate. That’s especially impressive given the game’s iconic visual identity.
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The Switch 2’s Ugly Ducklings
Of course, not every Switch 2 game is a graphical stunner. After all, the console is still a limited tablet, and developers are working on ways to best leverage its power. These less successful examples make me grateful for the eye-catching ones available and, hopefully, will help future Switch 2 game developers learn how to overcome the system’s shortcomings.
Bethesda’s releases have been wildly inconsistent. Despite being ported to everything under the sun, the Switch 2 version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim—a game from 2011!—launched with a disappointing frame rate and horrible input lag. These issues have since been patched, but it was annoying to see such an old game launch in such a bad state. On the other hand, Fallout 4 hit the Switch 2 with welcome 40fps and 60fps modes. This all leaves me curious about where other upcoming, high-profile Bethesda ports will fall, such as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The same goes for 007: First Light from IO Interactive, a team that had to patch its Switch 2 Hitman port into an acceptable state.
Optimization takes time and money, so publishers must invest in creating a successful port. Unfortunately, that’s not always a guarantee. Every other week, it seems like we get a surprise Switch 2 port announcement. That’s awesome…until the other shoe drops. The System Shock remake doesn’t run stably. Neither does Daemon X Machine: Titanic Scion. Tomb Raider could’ve implemented higher-quality graphics. Divinity halves the frame rate in the Switch 2’s handheld mode. Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero doesn’t hit 60, greatly weakening it as a fighting game. Again, a good patch can always turn things around. For example, Carmageddon: Rogue Shift on Switch 2 went from a slideshow to a serviceable bit of undead vehicular carnage. But when you buy a game, you don’t want a question mark hovering over how good it looks and runs.
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The fact that graphical issues seem to be holding up some games from hitting the Switch 2 is also concerning. Borderlands 4 doesn’t run well on any device, but the Switch 2 version faced so many technical challenges that its development has been paused. Meanwhile, the Elden Ring port was delayed from 2025 to an unspecified 2026 after poor preview showings, though more recent looks have been more promising. There’s always an adjustment period with a new system, but eventually, gamers will have less patience for these excuses.
Switch 2’s Beauty Will (Hopefully) Last
Missteps aside, the increased visual fidelity of Nintendo Switch 2 games continues to make me happy I upgraded. It also convinces me the device has juice for the future. This is even more apparent when a Switch 2 game has a Switch 1 counterpart. Fast Fusion builds upon the technical wizardry developer Shin’en pulled off with previous sci-fi racing games. Simple yet superb games like Hades II and Hollow Knight: Silksong look great wherever you play.
However, Fortnite or No Man’s Sky might as well be Switch 2 exclusives, even if Switch 1 versions do exist. Fortnite’s increased frame rate and graphical boosts helped me shoot foes more effectively. Meanwhile, the extra power lets the Switch 2 handle No Man’s Sky’s string of free game updates more effectively and better render the colorful planets that make outer space such a joy to explore.
Even Nintendo’s own games, which are built to catch your eyes through art direction rather than polygons, look the best they’ve ever been thanks to Switch 2. Masterpiece Zelda games, such as Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, get massive performance bumps (higher frame rates and increased resolution) that unlock the full beauty of the already acclaimed open worlds. The new Hyrule Warriors has an actually solid frame rate, compared with the Switch 1 games that ran so poorly they were barely playable. Metroid Prime 4 runs at blistering 120fps while the latest Pokémon open-world games (Scarlet and Violet, Legends Z-A) aren’t a technical disaster for once. Again, it’s not perfect. Xenoblade Chronicles X charges for an enhancement that arguably makes the image worse via AI upscaling. But across the board, these Nintendo games now have modern(ish) graphics to uplift the timeless gameplay.
Nintendo Switch 2: The Switch Just Got Better
Eventually, the Switch 2 will age to the point where its games look quaint (though the RAM crisis potentially delaying the next console generation may make that process take longer than usual). But right now, I’m loving this period when I can boot up Resident Evil Requiem on my Switch 2 and say, “That’s a great-looking game” without any qualification. It has a haunted house so nightmarish that I relate to Grace Ashcroft’s terror. It has a Leon S. Kennedy who looks so cool swinging a chainsaw through a zombie-filled hospital, I understand why the internet is obsessed with him. The added power and Switch 2’s ongoing success incentivize developers to at least try to get their biggest titles onto the system. So hopefully, the age of big, beautiful Nintendo Switch 2 games has only just begun. Maybe Grand Theft Auto VI on Nintendo Switch 2 isn’t so far-fetched after all.
About Our Expert
Jordan Minor
Senior Writer, Software
Experience
My PCMag career began in 2013 as an intern. Now, I’m a senior writer, using the skills I acquired at Northwestern University to write about dating apps, meal kits, programming software, website builders, video streaming services, and video games. I was previously a senior editor at Geek.com and have written for The A.V. Club, Kotaku, and Paste Magazine. I’m the author of the gaming history book Video Game of the Year: A Year-by-Year Guide to the Best, Boldest, and Most Bizarre Games from Every Year Since 1977, and the reason everything you know about Street Sharks is a lie.
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