Switch 2 Early Impressions Review

At the time of writing this video script, I’ve had around five days to play around with the Switch 2. A lot of that five days was spent watching and reacting on Twitch to several days of video game trailer reveal showcases. It might be fairest to say I’ve *had* a Switch 2 for five days, but I feel like I’ve put enough hours in with the system across a few very late nights playing to start forming some initial impressions of Nintendo’s newest handheld hybrid console.

In terms of build quality, the Switch 2 does feel immediately premium. The matt finish to the plastic helps it to feel less like a children’s toy, the larger screen is bright and vibrant, the new magnetically attached Joy-Cons snap into place with a satisfying solidness, and the handheld feels firm in hand, free from the slight wobble and flex seen with the original Switch’s Joy-Con rail system.

While the 120FPS screen isn’t OLED, the quality of the LCD panel is sufficient that I’m not missing the OLED Switch’s display as much as I expected I might. It is however a shame that there’s no first party launch title that takes advantage of the 120FPS screen, outside of Welcome Tour’s dedicated “spot the framerate” minigame.

The system’s magnetically attached Joy-Con controllers snap pleasingly into place, and thankfully cannot be inserted in a way which would cause damage to the controller or system. Joy-Con controllers can be inserted upside, or back to front, and will still correctly slot into the device without damaging any connectors. They’re also easier to remove than I expected, with a button pushed to pop one end of the controller away from the device at a slight angle, breaking the magnetic connection. There is a slight angle of wrist movement required to remove the Joy-Cons, but Nintendo have struck a good balance between magnetic strength when held into place on the tablet, and being easy enough to deliberately remove.

While the Switch 2 may on paper not stand up to the tech specs seen on some of the more expensive PC gaming handhelds currently on the market like the Lenovo Legion Go, in practical terms game performance does compare favourably to other portable gaming options out there, at least looking at the launch lineup. Cyberpunk 2077 at 30FPS may not appeal to those used to the game on high end PC setups, but the visual quality and framerate stability make it an enjoyable enough experience to play, without any of the fiddling around that’s usually required to get the game running at a stable framerate on other PC handheld devices. There’s a definite allure to just pressing start on a game and it running at a stable level of performance, and the Switch 2’s DLSS implementation means that visual results are decent without having to fiddle around as the end user finding the settings that are right for your handheld machine’s limitations.

Also, I can’t overstate how much more smoothly and quickly things load on the new Switch 2 eShop. The eShop on the original Switch is actively painful to browse, and while shovelware is still an issue on Switch 2, Nintendo have done a much better job of deprioritising it in results and making sure that you can scroll past it for actually interesting games more easily. The Switch 2 could still do with getting accessibility store tags added to the eShop like the ones seen on the Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 consoles, but fingers crossed that support is coming in the future.

In many ways, the Switch 2 right now does feel fundamentally like a Switch Pro. That’s not necessarily a criticism, it’s just kind of a reality of a lot of the launch day software support. Sure, there are titles like Cyberpunk available that definitely would not have run on the Switch 1 without major compromises, but a LOT of what’s available for players at launch on Switch 2 is enhanced performance patch boosted Switch 1 software, and Switch 1 games that just inherently run better than they did last generation.

The games that have been specifically patched for next gen performance, such as Pokémon Scarlet and Violet or Zelda Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom do look truly gorgeous with higher framerates, increased resolutions, and dramatically reduced loading times instantly modernising these games and giving them a fresh lease on life. The difference in these titles is night and day, I envy anyone whose first experience of these games happens to be on the Switch 2.

Games without performance patches are more of a mixed bag, but generally speaking any games that failed to consistently hit their framerate cap on Switch 1 tend to now much more reliably cap out their framerate targets with minimal issues. This is impressive in titles like The Legened of Zelda: Age of Calamity, but it’s a true game changer in titles like 1000xRESIST which previously caused me huge amounts of motion sickness due to its low and inconsistent framerate in a central hub area. While 1000xRESIST previously wrecked havoc on my motion sickness sensitivity, on Switch 2 the game seems to run pretty close to a locked 30FPS, a far more manageable level of performance from an accessibility perspective.

While much of the launch lineup available day one is enhanced Switch 1 games, the third party ports available at launch are fairly reassuring for the system’s strength, graphics performance, and ease of development. Cyberpunk does a good job of pushing the system technically with solid results, Street Fighter 6 runs at 60FPS with Series S comparable visuals, and titles like Civilization 7 run with considerably less stuttering and loading pauses during gameplay, while being undoubtedly better to play with a Joy-Con mouse than a controller.

Being able to at any time turn a Joy-Con on its side and use it as a mouse isn’t going to change the world for every game, but for the games that it’s supported on it is really nice the ease with which many of these titles allow the player to slip in and out of pointer access during play. I do have a lot of optimism for the future of strategy games and point and click adventure titles on Switch 2 as a primarily console gamer.

In terms of accessibility there’s some quick bullet points that I can rattle off, to answer some basic accessibility questions.

Text to speech narration is great to see added to the Switch 2, and the maximum speed supported is pretty high, but it isn’t a supported feature when browsing the eShop, and can’t be activated until after the Switch 2’s initial setup process is complete, so the Switch 2 isn’t going to be accessible for sightless blind players to navigate without a degree of sighted player assistance.

The Hori Flex accessibility controller is supported on Switch 2 at launch, either connected to the dock or via a USB Adapter in the top USB-C port when playing in tabletop mode. The only negative is that you can’t wake the console from sleep mode using the Hori Flex, as Switch 1 controllers can’t be used to wake the console.

The Switch 2 still doesn’t support Controller Assist mode, previously called Co-Pilot mode on Xbox. This means that you can’t, for example, use a single Joy-Con held in one hand and the Hori Flex in tandem as a single controller.

If you activate Speech to Text transcription in GameChat, by default swear words and other vulgarity are indeed transcribed accurately(ish), and not filtered out or blocked from transcriptions. This is great, let Deaf people read their friends’ swearing at them when they lose in Mario Kart.

Mario Kart World, the Switch 2’s primary first party launch title, supports both the Steering Assist and Acceleration Assist features seen in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but also supports Item Assist, which automates throwing items at other players when appropriate.

The Switch 2 packaging, as well as that of Nintendo produced Switch 2 official accessories, doesn’t feature any specific accessibility accommodations. Much of the packaging is sealed shut by stickers with no raised or unsealed edge, and twist ties are used frequently on cables within official Nintendo packaging. It’s not the worst packaging I’ve seen from an accessibility perspective, but it won’t be winning any awards any time soon.

Lastly, the new Switch 2 Pro Controller and Controller Grip both feature a pair of programmable GL and GR back panel buttons. These can be quickly programmed by holding down the home button, and can be programmed per system user and per game, with their custom bindings being remembered and recognised when returning to software.

Beyond that, let’s talk about accessories and side features a little.

GameChat is a pretty decent feature, for what it is. The system’s built-in microphone is of decent quality and does a good job detecting voices and cutting out background noises automatically and from a distance. Yeah, the gameplay feed previews are low framerate in their little on screen squares, but in the midst of gameplay it’s not a big issue, it’s just nice to be able to glance, like old school screen cheating, to see what a friend is upto and where they are while playing a multiplayer game together, or to see what they’re upto as you parallel play separate games in each other’s company.

GameShare works pretty well – It’s a feature that lets you play a multiplayer game on multiple systems with only one person owning a copy of the game, by having a single Switch 2 generate two views of a game and streaming one locally or over the internet. The ability to invite a friend in another country to play a multiplayer game that they don’t own or have downloaded, while in a chat call, and send them high quality and low latency gameplay footage, with them sending their inputs back, works way better than I expected it to. I played a good amount of F-Zero style racing game Fast Fusion this way, and was impressed how little input lag was detectable while playing together. It also works locally with a Switch 1, allowing Switch 2 games to be played on the last gen Nintendo system which is a pretty neat trick.

The official Nintendo camera is okay, but doesn’t detect neon blue hair very well in its automated green screen mode. The Hori Piranha Plant camera is only a 480p resolution camera, but the bigger issue is its horribly low framerate. Don’t buy the Hori camera, it’s simply not worth it.

The new pro controller feels silky smooth and premium, but you don’t need one if you already own a Switch 1 pro controller, unless the back buttons or GameChat button particularly appeal to you, or you want to use it to wake the Switch 2 up from sleep mode, which Switch 1 controllers for some reason are not allowed to do.

At the end of the day, the Switch 2 is a more powerful Switch. That’s what I wanted it to be, and that is what it is. I’ve played as much Deltarune on it as I have Mario Kart World, and that should be telling. Mario Kart World is gorgeous and takes advantage of the new hardware to great effect, but I’ll just as happily use my Switch 2 to play games that I could have graphically been playing on Switch 1, just on a bigger screen and a nicer device. It’s a continuation of my Switch 1 ownership, with more power under the hood. I’m glad it’s going to allow me to play Street Fighter 6 as a second screen experience, but equally glad that I can finish playing 100 Line: Last Defense Academy with faster loading times. Right now it’s mostly a Switch Pro for me, but that’s all I really need it to be right now. It’s great that it has mouse support and can play ports of modern console games, but I mainly just like that it’s thinner than a Steam deck, and gets great performance without all of the settings fiddling to get things running nicely.

It’s kind of just a Switch Pro, and… I kind of love it.