I plugged a few hours into Skyrim on the Nintendo Switch over the weekend, and I can tell you without a shred of doubt that it is absolutely Skyrim on the Nintendo Switch.
That’s not a bad thing. It’s an absolute technical marvel that they managed to cram the entire game – which still looks pretty great, six years later – onto tablet hardware. The experience of running Skyrim on a handheld is absolutely far more joyful than it has any right to be. I’m not exactly sure why, but it is. Every time I booted it up, it felt like a mini revelation. I don’t want to know what kind of black magic Bethesda implemented to make this possible.
Similarly, the experience of being able to pick up where you left off instantly – as you can with any game on the Switch – feels like a natural fit for the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR134hXaldY
It runs at a solid 30 frames per second without much hitching, even when there’s quite a bit going onscreen. If you dock the Switch and play it on your TV, you can definitely see where Bethesda has been forced to make visual compromises to run on the Switch hardware – the draw distance is noticeably shorter, the bloom and particle effects are restricted, and shadows are a whole lot less crisp. But that’s to be expected, and it’s barely noticeable when you’re playing it handheld.
One grievance that could easily be patched: when playing on handheld the game is pretty dark. There may be a good reason for this, but whereas on PC and other consoles I rarely needed to use torches or spells to illuminate dark spaces, I constantly need to do it on Switch when playing handheld. This might actually be a positive for some, but a gamma slider in settings wouldn’t go astray.
Some of the text is a little small when you’re playing in handheld, but it’s not really a huge drama. You might find yourself squinting at some button prompts or subtitles, but again this can easily be patched if enough players take issue with it.
There are some motion controls shoehorned on top of the Skyrim experience, and they work fine. I’m not particularly inclined to use motion controls unless they’re genuinely better than just pressing a damn button, but I did find myself aiming my bow with the Joy-Con because it was fun to do so while sprawled out on my couch supremely hungover. Does this make me a noble warrior? I believe it does.
If you’ve pumped as many hours as I have into Skyrim over its numerous releases and manifestations, then I should be pretty clear: you’re not going to find much fresh or new here outside of the novelty of being able to play it on the bus. It’s Skyrim, on the Switch. But if you haven’t revisited it in a while, or you’ve somehow never played it, then the Switch version is a great way to get stuck into it.
