The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition Switch 2 Review
Summary: Skyrim on Switch 2 compromises playability while trying to compete with PS5 and Xbox versions of the games in terms of visuals.
3.4
Flawed
After the Constitution of the United States was established, Benjamin Franklin famously said that nothing was certain in the world, with the exception of death and taxes. I think it’s about time that list was expanded to include the inevitable release of Skyrim on just about any platform that can handle it.
That’s right, Skyrim now has a native Switch 2 version available! I looked at it over the holidays to see how this version holds up. This release brings Skyrim on Nintendo platforms closer to that seen on PlayStation and Xbox, featuring many upgrades over the original Switch release. Most noticeable is the upgrade to the visuals presented in this new version.
Resolution has been bumped up to 1080p in both handheld and docked modes and takes advantage of DLSS when in the latter configuration to upscale the image even further. Textures look closer to the standard of the other console versions, and it produces a remarkably good-looking version of the game.
It’s a dramatic improvement over that seen in the Switch 1 release; aliasing is much better thanks to DLSS, so there’s a significant reduction in the jagged edges that plagued the original Switch version. Draw distance is vastly improved, with grass and trees being visible further into the distance.
One aspect of the visuals that seems to have gone wrong is with the water, streams, and rivers, which seem to present a bug of some kind where the image over the water ‘splits’ for lack of a better word and shifts around a little. It’s distracting, and I found it difficult to unsee once I spotted it.
Loading times are dramatically improved over the original Switch release, being as much as three times quicker in some instances. The overworld in Skyrim is largely a seamless area that is traversed without obvious loading, but when moving around in towns or dungeons that have multiple load zones, or fast traveling, it’s a welcome upgrade.
These visual upgrades do dramatically increase the install size. The Switch 1 version came in at around 13GB, while this new version is 53GB.
Performance is a little hit and miss at the moment. When the game first launched, it was locked to 30fps in both docked and handheld modes, but over the holidays, a patch was introduced that unlocks the framerate. Now, I fully advocate for always aiming for 60fps, but in this case, I think the 30fps lock might have been the way to go. In its original locked incarnation, performance was rock solid, seldom wavering if at all.
Now the game is a lot more unstable, jumping between what feels like 30-40fps in the otherworld, and occasionally getting close to 60 fps in indoor areas. The moments of 60 are nice, but the inconsistency is noticeable, at least to me. There are no performance modes; either it’s this or nothing. A mode with a lowered resolution that could hit 60fps or the original 30fps mode may well have been the way to go.
This Switch 2-port takes advantage of the Joy-Con mouse configuration for PC-like aiming. It works well enough, but the inconsistent framerate combined with the relatively high input lag meant it didn’t always feel that great to me, and as such, I fell back to using a traditional controller most of the time.
It’s worth elaborating on the input a little, as it is noticeable. On release, it was extremely laggy, with lag you could measure in tenths of a second rather than milliseconds, leading me to consider it unplayable at the time. This has been patched, however, and it’s somewhat better now, but still very much there. It’s something to be aware of if your Switch 2 is typically kept offline; you’re going to want to update your game at some point to fix the issue.
Final Thoughts
The Nintendo Switch 2 edition of Skyrim is flawed, consisting of several compromises to playability while trying to squeeze a more traditional console-like experience into the portable console. The visuals are great, but the performance is unacceptable for a game that was released in 2011. With that said, however, it’s still Skyrim. The game we all fell in love with in 2011 is still as great as ever, with hundreds of hours of gameplay to dive into.
Owners of the Anniversary Edition on Switch 1 can get this new version as a free upgrade, while owners of the other version can upgrade for $19.99/£17.99.
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